10/28/2024
We had been waiting years to take this tour, and it was disappointing when we finally got to attend.
Years ago, Charlene was scrolling through her Facebook when she came across a true crime story in Ontario in the 1800s. It fascinated her because the story surrounding it could not be told better had it come from Hollywood. It involves a family named Donnelly. They were somewhat aggressive in earning money and had a criminal reputation. They did serve time for crimes, including murder, and they became the scapegoat for all the bad that was happening in the community.
Lucan, Ontario, was considered to be the wildest, roughest, and most lawless part of the new country of Canada. Crime was the highest here, and the Donnellys lived in the midst of it.
I heard of the Donnelly Massacre from my youth but knew no other details. As Charlene recounted what she learned from this posting, I looked up where Lucan was and discovered a museum, a bus tour, and that it was only two hours from home.
I waited impatiently to visit this location. Whenever Charlene finds a place to visit, it is on my top priority list, and I do all I can to go. But there was this unpleasant period of COVID where the government closed so much down. Many places closed entirely, never to reopen. Some that survived did so barely, and they now finally offering services that match what they had before the restrictions the government forced on society.
This was the year we could go on the tour. Naturally, we were excited to be travelling, and the weather was perfect. Add the fall colours at their peak, and everything lined up for a great day.
Charlene had read two books on this massacre, including what led up to it and what happened after. I intentionally kept myself in the dark, and I wanted the tour to enlighten me on this dark period of Canadian history.
We love tours. A great tour educates us on the period, the importance of what we are touring, and the lives of those involved. We have been on so many phenomenal tours that we seek them out when we are out and about.
This tour disappointed me.
Big time.
I purchased tickets just hours after they went on sale earlier this year. The price was reasonable, even cheap, considering it included a bus ride to the local hotspots, which played an essential part in the story.
We watched a short film about the Donnellys, which did little to inform me about who they were, why they were hated and nothing about the fact that no one was ever convicted of the massacre.
The museum was a typical community repository of artifacts. Most of the items inside were related to the Donnellys, but going through the museum did little to teach me the events and, more importantly, the why.
The bus tour was good in that we saw the distance between the sites, but I knew next to nothing about the events, and the tour was designed so that it assumed the riders knew everything.
I started thinking about how I would have handled the whole tour experience. This is what I would have done.
We would meet at the museum and watch the short film as an introduction. From there, the group would board the bus to St. Patrick Parish. This is a beautiful church with a wonderful setting. At this location, we would enter the church and learn of the critical events there, like forming a community-led vigilante group. Lawlessness was high, and the entire community was feeling the effects. Law enforcement needed to improve, and citizens volunteered daily to help keep the law. Naturally, they did not go by vigilantes but gave themselves a more peaceful title.
After a tour of the parish and possibly learning specifics about the church itself, we would board the bus and drive to the schoolhouse, where the vigilantes would meet up on the fateful February night and decide to confront the Donnelly family. We would learn of the events that caused the community thugs/vigilantes and why the Donnellys were despised. It will be noted that we will be taking a bus, but the group walked in the winter night to the next stop.
At stop number three is an intersection. A second group was formed that met up with the first group that had left the schoolhouse. I imagine there was some conferring on what needed to be done. The Donnelly house was a short distance away, and the mob moved forward silently.
Unfortunately, the current resident of the Donnelly homestead is not in the best of health and no longer offers tours of the building. But the tour group would remain on the bus and learn of the horrible massacre that occurred. Did the group plan murder? Was it just to rough them up, and it got carried away? Whatever the intention, people died. One boy survived by hiding and listening to his family being murdered by the very same members of the church that he attended every Sunday.
The bus would drive to the next stop, the home of another Donnelly member, where the wrong person was murdered. But this time, it was approaching morning, and the mob was tired from all their walking and killing. They dispersed and went to their homes.
As the bus tour returned to where we started, the St Patrick Parish, we would learn that the murders of the Donnellys did nothing to stop the crime rate in the area. We would learn of the betrayal of friends and family, the corruption of the little law enforcement that was in the community and that no one ever had to pay for this violent night. We would stop at the Donnelly family grave. Four members share the same casket because that is all they recovered from the burnt-out remains of the home. The group would tour the cemetery and notice that every key player wound up in the same cemetery, at the same church, and as dead as the Donnellys.
That would have made a better tour.
Hopefully, this is such a great story of tragedy and injustice that it could have been an extraordinary tale. I hope that one day, the tour will improve.
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