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Vanderhaeghe’s book is set in the late summer and fall of 1939. The murder took place in Connaught which, in location and appearance, appears to be the fictional equivalent of the real life Esterhazy where Vanderhaeghe was raised.
The murder in August Into Winter was inspired by a murder that took place in 1939 in Esterhazy. On October 11, 1939 Ernest Flook, who was 24, killed Constable Norman Gleadow of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police.
In the book Ernest Sickert, who was 21, kills Constable Alfred Hotchkiss of the RCMP in Connaught.
The rest of this post will outline how Vanderhaeghe used the facts of the real life murder in his book. I warn that there may be more information in this post about August Into Winter than some readers would prefer to know before reading the book.
According to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix Flook had been arrested on the evening of October 10 with regard to a number of break-ins and thefts in the area and held in jail over night.
Hotchkiss suspected Sickert of committing petty crimes in and around Connaught including thefts, partially eating food in houses and masturbating on the undergarments of two older single women.
The paper states that in the morning:
Flook got the constable to take him to his shack in the village on the pretext of recovering some of the stolen goods.
Hotchkiss, lacking the grounds for an actual warrant, bullies Sickert. As set out in my review:
He calls the meaty palm of his hand his search warrant saying it is signed by Judge Donotfuckwithme before slapping Ernest.
Hotchkiss coerces Sickert into opening up the shed in the family backyard.
In both real life and fiction the RCMP officer finds stolen goods in a case.
Each officer makes the fatal mistake of turning their backs on the respective Ernest’s.
Flook takes up a hammer and hits Gleadow in the back of the head inflicting a pair of fatal blows. The RCMP records also state Gleadow was shot twice in the chest by a .22 rifle.
Sickert stabs Hotchkiss in the throat and then takes up a hammer and chisel and kills Hotchkiss.
Flook takes the keys to Gleadow’s vehicle and flees north.
Sickert takes his time to pack up and then leaves town in his father’s car.
Each killer takes the officer’s handgun and rifle.
Flook’s sister, seeing her brother depart, finds the injured constable. She “immediately ran to give the alarm”.
In August Into Winter, Corporal James Cooper had been away for the day getting a tooth pulled. Just after Cooper returns to Connaught a fierce storm hits town. Sickert’s mother “walks through sheets of rain” to the office to report the death of Hotchkiss. The storm disables all telephone and telegraph lines. Every road is turned to mud. Cooper “slogged through six miles of gumbo” to reach the farm of Oliver Dill to enlist him and his horses to enable the pursuit of Sickert.
The paper states an Esterhazy garageman who had serviced Gleadow’s police car aids the searching RCMP officers who find “the car in a pasture, hidden in a clump of bush” 20 miles north of town.
The search for Sickert is far more difficult. I think describing it would provide too much detail from the book.
The RCMP “surrounded the bluff, and called to Flook who stood by the car, to come out with his hands up. Flook told the police to come and get him, and as they started towards him, they heard a shot”. Flook has shot himself in the head with a .22 rifle. He dies shortly after.
Sickert is ultimately trapped in a cave in a bluff and surrenders. You will need to read the book to learn what happens to him.
Gleadow’s dog was with him when he went to the Flook residence and in the car when Flook took the police car but a “little while later, the animal returned to the side of his dying master”.
Hotchkiss has no dog.
The Star Phoenix reported:
Flook is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Flook, of Esterhazy, where Mr. Flook is postmaster. The Flook family is among Esterhazy’s oldtime residents.
Benedict and Grace Sickert had come to Connaught in 1903 from England to “put the Altantic between them and parental criticism” of their marriage. They built a “fine large house, three storeys of honey-coloured brick”. A substantial inheritance, “chronic inertia” and a “supposedly dodgy ticker” kept Benedict from working. He devoted his time to studying foreign affairs and writing long letters to the Winnipeg Free Press.
Esterhazy was officially founded in 1905 and Connaught must have had its beginnings about the same time.
In the newspaper reports I read there is no explanation why Flook decided to kill Gleadow.
A great deal of August Into Winter is about Sickert’s mind. Vanderhaeghe penetrated deeply into Sickert’s psyche.
In a CBC interview Vanderhaeghe said when he was 10 years old in 1960 his mother took him to the RCMP Museum in Regina where she pointed out an exhibit:
It was an RCMP Stetson hat with a big dent in it. The officer who had been under the hat had been murdered in my hometown by a young man who belonged to one of the more prominent families in town.
He said members of his family knew the widow of the slain officer and the murderer.
Vanderhaeghe further said about the similarities between the real life and fictional murders:
One of the things that does match is that my father told me that there was only one RCMP officer in town. When he was murdered, a posse of First World War veterans went after this young man who, when cornered, committed suicide. So that was the initial momentum to the narrative.
I find it interesting that neither the newspaper reports nor the RCMP report set out that it was the posse of veterans who actually pursued Flook. In the Star Phoenix it is “a posse of Royal Canadian Mounted Police”.
Vanderhaeghe skillfully used the facts of the Flook case to help him write a great book. I highly recommend it.
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It always interests me so much when a fictional crime is based on a real one. It takes research, of course, to get all of the facts of a case. But it also takes skill to present those facts in a way that draws readers in and makes them want to know more without being lurid. And it sounds as though this one really has a sense of place.
ReplyDeleteMargot: Thanks for the comment. Vanderhaeghe is a master storyteller. He uses a straightforward murder to focus a book about swirling personal lives and the consequences of wars upon the participants.
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