by Debra Komar
Finlayson did not have the stomach to detail McLoughlin’s transgressions. Given his priggish nature, the offense was likely as inconsequential as McLoughlin taking a local bride or perhaps some saucy talk around the office, although Simpson tinkered with the statement until it alluded to something more. Regardless, Finlayson wanted the brass to know he had never joined McLoughlin “in having sexual relations with the Indian women,” adding that once he made his lack of interest clear to his superior, McLoughlin never again “troubled me with such a proposal.”
In hindsight, Finlayson’s statement to the Company reads more as self-promotion than as an indictment of McLoughlin. Finlayson was adamant that “Mr. McLoughlin, tho’ he was my master, could not divest me of my self-control.” Indeed, he used his deposition to blow his own horn, claiming “the deceased’s good Conduct while I remained with him may be mainly attributed to the influence of my example in resisting many temptations which, if I had indulged in, would now have given me much reason to blush with shame.” He went on to credit himself with any good behaviour evident at the outpost: “All hands in the Fort, as soon as they were rid of my presence, began to pic & steal every description of property on which they could lay their hands & deal it out…to their Indian paramours.” According to Finlayson, he alone stood between order and chaos at Stikine.
Finlayson closed by saying he shared “the general opinion” of many in the Company that McLoughlin’s “appetite for women had provoked a number of the ‘ruffians’ in the fort’s complement to rid themselves of him.” In truth, his observation was far from the consensus. Both Simpson and McLoughlin Sr. had support for their respective theories, but at no point did they believe that John Jr. had fornicated his way into an early grave.
Although Finlayson failed to take the Company’s temperature regarding the motive for the killing, he was not far off when he pinpointed women as the catalyst of McLoughlin’s demise. McLoughlin’s appetite for the “dusky maidens” — whether real or imagined — had been troublesome, but it was his reported taste for one particular woman that ultimately led to his downfall.
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For now, set aside all talk of liquor and beatings, conspiracies and contracts, for they are secondary to the cause. John McLoughlin was not killed in self-defence or as part of a mutinous rebellion. His death had much more biblical roots, for he was murdered in a jealous rage after “allegations surfaced that McLoughlin had taken ‘liberties’ with Heroux’s wife on the very night he was killed.”
Only one witness testified as to the “liberties” taken: Phillip Smith. Just after ten o’clock on the evening of April 20, 1842, Smith “met Mr. John near the door in company with Heroux’s wife.” Phillip’s testimony reads: “On seeing me, he said ‘is that you, Smith?’ I answered it was and he told me to keep a good look out.” This tepid dialogue represents the only evidence of indiscretion on the part of McLoughlin. The chief trader was never alone or unaccounted for in the hours before his death, and he had no time or opportunity to engage in sexual relations with Heroux’s wife, nor did Smith claim to have seen any inappropriate touching or intimacy between the two when he encountered them in the doorway. It appears the entire exchange was taken out of context. Thomas McPherson claimed that, just moments before, McLoughlin had asked each man if he had seen Simon’s “wife or Antoine’s wife or Joe the interpreter’s wife.” Why he was searching so fervently for the women was not clear, but it indicates McLoughlin’s interest in Heroux’s wife was neither sexual nor specific.
McLoughlin’s tête-à-tête with Heroux’s wife was innocent, but no one could convince Heroux of that. By this point, Heroux was certain there was something illicit between the two. When questioned, Antoine Kawannassé said, “I think Urbain’s hatred of Mr. John arose chiefly from jealousy, as he suspected an intrigue between Mr. John and his Wife.” Curiously, the statement prompted no follow-up questions during Kawannassé’s interrogation. Other men revisited the topic in later depositions. On July 24, 1842, Donald Manson asked Charles Belanger if he believed “Urbain was jealous of Mr. John McLoughlin with respect to his wife?” Belanger replied: “Yes but I do not believe he had any cause. I never saw nor heard from any other man in the fort that he had any cause for being so.” Once again the matter was dropped without further questioning, dismissed as inconsequential gossip.
Although there was no legitimate evidence to support the insinuation, the question of whether McLoughlin was actually carrying on with Heroux’s wife was irrelevant. Urbain Heroux believed he was, and that was motive enough to kill. The rumours were baseless but they were well planted, and if we trace the perfume back to its flower, the whiff of scandal emitted from a single fetid source: Thomas McPherson, the final crucial piece of the Fort Stikine puzzle.
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Recall, if you will, the moment John McLoughlin caught Thomas McPherson stealing from the storeroom and turned him from the captain’s table. That insult wounded McPherson’s fragile ego, and he came undone after McLoughlin “put him with the men and made him work as a common man.” In that moment, McPherson began to plot revenge. His scheme would require all of his nefarious talents, but luckily he could lie effortlessly and without conscience, and his ability to manipulate was second only to that of George Simpson.
Banished to his quarters and stripped of the storeroom key, McPherson became an object of pity. He carried his wounds for all to see, and in so doing, he managed to rally the other men to his cause, which was to rid Fort Stikine of its tyrannical leader. He found strong allies among the camp’s Canadians, particularly the Iroquois; McPherson played to their independent spirit and their refusal to submit to any form of servitude. His message particularly resonated with Urbain Heroux, who strained the hardest against the Company’s shackles. McPherson truly believed he would assume command once McLoughlin was out of the picture, and he dangled a tantalizing carrot: the promise of liberal access to local women once he was in charge. McPherson bore his suspension as if it was a death sentence, and although the reprimand had been relatively light, Heroux was angered by the punishment because it restricted his own ability to leave the fort at night and visit his country wife.
Heroux was never interrogated by any Company official, but a record of his thought process survives nonetheless. Mere minutes after McLoughlin was shot, Antoine Kawannassé asked Heroux why he had pulled the trigger. His answer surprised everyone: “The reason he gave was Mr. McLoughlin’s ill usage of McPherson, who had been punished for a theft he had committed.” Heroux’s trivial motivation sickened Dr. McLoughlin, driving him to ask: “Can any man Blame my son for punishing this villain who steals the provisions of the Fort to give to Indian whores?” In the final analysis, McPherson’s suspension may have been the first tipped domino, but it would not be the last.
The first step in McPherson’s plan was to wage a misinformation campaign. He began by warning his fellow traders that McLoughlin had a wandering eye and to keep close watch on their wives. He also harped on the lawless nature of the northern wild; he used the Iroquois to spread his propaganda, yet every malicious word can be traced back to McPherson. Pierre Kannaquassé told Joe Lamb and several Kanakas that “men were not hung in Canada for murder,” a feeble effort to convince the Sandwich Islanders “that we had nothing to fear if we killed” Mr. John. Lamb and his cohort refused to take the bait, so Kannaquassé tried his luck with Okaia, urging the Kanaka to kill the chief trader, “as the life of the people at the fort would be much improved with him gone.” Okaia was fine with the status quo, and he too declined to serve as assassin.
Urbain Heroux tried to convince another trader that McLoughlin Sr. would personally thank any man who killed his son. Phillip Smith said he had heard Heroux say sometime before the murder “that Mr. John’s Father would be happy if he was put out of the way.” The blatant lie failed as a recruitment tool, and McPherson urged Heroux to try a different target: George Simpson. Heroux told some locals he had heard of a case in Montreal involving a trader who
“was never punished” for killing his superior, as Governor Simpson had turned a blind eye to the whole affair. Heroux went on to say “that he thought if Sir George Simpson knew of Mr. John’s misconduct, he would not prosecute anyone that would murder him.” It proved to be a prophetic statement; Heroux was not wrong — the HBC archives are littered with such cover-ups — but the aboriginals were not convinced.
There can be no privacy in a fort the size of Stikine, and it was not long before John McLoughlin overheard the assassination plot. He grew paranoid and added an additional two weeks to McPherson’s suspension. McPherson was incensed and launched the next phase of his scheme in February 1842. He began to “prepare the paper,” a document Dr. McLoughlin later described as the contract on his son’s life.
The paper was also another sign of the growing allegiance between McPherson and Heroux. In their depositions, all the men stated the petition was kept in Heroux’s house, but they signed it at Thomas’s insistence. Once again the confederates targeted the Kanakas and coerced them into signing the paper. McPherson convinced Nahua to add his name by telling him “it was a good paper to be sent to Vancouver.” Joe Lamb acquiesced after he was told “the paper contained nothing bad.” Anahi affixed his signature at McPherson’s urging, “merely to please him.” McPherson and his co-conspirators were only a skosh more honest with the Canadians. William Lasserte signed the pledge, saying, “[I] cannot read myself but I was told that it mainly contained charges against Mr. McLoughlin.” McPherson later claimed the document was simply a petition, intended for George Simpson, demanding that McLoughlin be stripped of command. McPherson swore he was only trying to get McLoughlin fired, not killed, but at the time Pierre Kannaquassé openly referred to it as the “kill McL” paper. As McPherson secured the last few signatures, he suddenly found himself back in McLoughlin’s good graces, although how he came to be there was a matter of opinion. According to Pierre Kannaquassé, McPherson’s suspension simply ended, and “Mr. McLoughlin then took him back.” McPherson, on the other hand, claimed he was reinstated only after McLoughlin fell ill and was forced to stay in bed for several days. Either way, “McPherson destroyed the petition immediately after he was restored to his place.”
With McLoughlin temporarily sidelined, McPherson expected to return to business as usual, but McLoughlin kept a tight hold on the storeroom key, handing it over to McPherson only as needed and then demanding its immediate return. The chief trader also took to sleeping with the keys in his room. Lust is a powerful motivator, and McPherson soon found a way to circumvent McLoughlin’s punitive measures. He entered the “room in the night while [McLoughlin] was asleep, and took the keys of the Fort from the table to bring a strumpet into the Fort.” McPherson did this on several occasions, and the master knew nothing of it.
McPherson’s luck did not hold, and McLoughlin caught him red-handed. Once again, McLoughlin chose not to berate McPherson in front of the men; instead, he simply cut McPherson off at the source. Less than one week before he was murdered, McLoughlin had his craftsmen fabricate a barricade to bar his bedroom door from the inside. That bar, and all it represented, was the final domino.
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On April 20, 1842, McPherson no longer restricted his pilfering to fabric and trinkets for whores. Sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m., McLoughlin handed McPherson the keys to the stores, along with an order to extract some rum and give it to the five Indians from Tako. McPherson opened the warehouse and proceeded to give rum to “Every Canadian and Iroquois in the place, one Bottle of pure Spirits Each.” Although McPherson “told Sir George that on the night of the Murder, the deceased gave them liquor,” he later confessed he “did it of my own accord, contrary to Mr. McLoughlin’s orders.”
His compatriots found McPherson’s sudden generosity to be “highly unusual,” for, as one of them said, “[He had] never gave us rum at any former time without his masters orders.” Many of the windfall’s recipients knew nothing of McPherson’s deception, or so they claimed. William Lasserte recalled, “There was a light in the passage into which the store door opened and there was no appearance of dishonesty in the transaction. If I had known that he took action without orders, I would not have taken it.” Charles Belanger was more forthcoming: “The porch was dark so that it was easy to carry anything out of the stores without being discovered.” When questioned, McPherson said he hoped “the men would drink it quietly, in their houses, and that the theft would never be known,” but even his co-conspirators did not believe him. Although the liquor flowed freely to all, it was intended only for one. The true motivation behind McPherson’s largesse was revealed in an offhand comment made by Charles Belanger, who said McPherson never “gave Heroux any rum, except on the night of the murder.”
Once the men were pliably drunk, McPherson set his plan in motion, although how much of the plot was orchestrated and how much was providence is unknown. At some point in the evening, Heroux loaded at least three rifles and hid them in strategic points throughout the fort. The conspirators —McPherson, Heroux, and Kannaquassé, at a minimum — agreed that, at a given signal, Kannaquassé would sound the attack alarm, rousing the men to arms.
The squabble between McLoughlin and Fleury set the stage, and as Heroux joined the melee, his confederates took up their positions, and McPherson took up a lamp. Many testified that as McLoughlin made his last desperate run through the fort, the lone source of light (aside from the moon) was McPherson, “who carried a lantern.” The lamp served triple duty. First, it was the signal for Kannaquassé to sound the fort’s alarm. Second, McPherson planned to stay in close proximity to McLoughlin, so he held tight to the lantern to ensure he would not be mistaken for McLoughlin and shot accidentally. Finally, he kept the lamp trained on his master, painting McLoughlin with a target of light to aid his would-be assassin.
There was only one small glitch in the plan. Kannaquassé’s false alarm drew the men to the fort’s perimeter, but they did not immediately open fire. As McLoughlin crouched along the front of the men’s house, McPherson ran to the gallery level via the southeast bastion. The men still did not fire their weapons, so McPherson turned to the nearest man — the dolt, Oliver Martineau — and ordered him “to fire two blank shots into the air.” Martineau did as instructed, and his shots unleashed a hail of gunfire, providing the necessary cover for Urbain Heroux to step out of the darkness and fire the fatal shot at McLoughlin.
Thomas McPherson learned quickly that what a rogue does with you, he will do to you, for Heroux turned on McPherson as surely as he had been turned against McLoughlin. Kawannassé recalled that, in the moments after McLoughlin died, “I saw Heroux in a violent rage at McPherson, and heard him say that he would certainly shoot him if he said a harsh word to him.” There would have been a certain poetic justice in McPherson being destroyed by his own creation, but Simpson’s timely arrival at Stikine saved McPherson and ultimately rewrote the narrative.
McPherson’s assumption that he would gain command after McLoughlin’s death proved unfounded. His reign over Fort Stikine was mercifully short-lived, ending the moment Simpson set foot on the dock. The Governor bypassed McPherson completely, choosing instead to install Charles Dodd as the outpost’s chief trader and George Blenkinsop as second-in-command. Thomas was unceremoniously demoted to the status of clerk, but he once again extracted revenge in his own inimitable fashion. Dodd foolishly removed McLoughlin’s bedroom barricade, and McPherson resumed his magpie ways, creeping into Dodd’s room in the dead of night to pilfer the storeroom keys and buy the temporary affections of the local harlots.
McPherson may also have used his brief stint in the chief’s office to conceal his life of crime. In his quest for love, he stole a large quantity of goods, including the very trade wares Simpson first noticed missing. It is possible that, in the hours after the murder, McPherson forged the note and inventory of materials given to Fleury’s wife, placing it in McLoughlin’s desk to account for the items he had taken. It bears noting that m
any of the articles included on the list are those McPherson admitted to stealing, and that the spelling and grammatical errors in the inventory and cover letter are more consistent with McPherson’s writing than that of McLoughlin.
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In the end, the killing of John McLoughlin Jr. accomplished nothing for those who conspired to do it, but it also cost them nothing. Thomas McPherson escaped all earthly reckoning for the crime, as did his confederates Urbain Heroux and Pierre Kannaquassé. McPherson even remained on the HBC payroll for years following the murder. In 1844, McPherson and a dozen others were sent by John McLoughlin Sr. to Upper Canada to stand trial, but McPherson went as a witness, not a defendant. When Governor Simpson ordered them to stop, McPherson and his cohort disappeared into the mists of time — unreprimanded, unrepentant, and unremembered.
Neither Simpson nor Dr. McLoughlin understood McPherson’s role in the crime, but there was one man in the Honourable Company who recognized his culpability. In a letter to Governor Simpson, Committee secretary Archibald Barclay wrote: “If ever men deserved hanging, Urbain Herous, [sic] Pierre Kanaquasse [sic] and the scoundrel McPherson ought to be strung up.” But Simpson would hear none of it. He had based his knee-jerk verdict on McPherson’s self-serving account, and his elephantine ego would not allow him to reverse his decision. The Governor fired back at the Committee, defending himself against allegations that McPherson was too addled to be trusted and too mendacious to be credible: “Thomas McPherson…I firmly believe perfectly understood every question I put to him; and I further believe that his statements are true.” What other choice did Simpson have? To condemn McPherson after the fact would be to concede he had made a mistake. In the end, Simpson’s pride saved McPherson, just as his apathy had spared Heroux.