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This Side of Heaven: Determining the Donnelly Murders, 1880 by Norman N. Feltes

2002; University of Western Ontario Libraries; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/esc.2002.0054

1913-4835

James Reaney,

Canadian Identity and History

ESC 28, 2002 dwindling number of diehards making their way to Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. One hopes that McGimpsey is still to be found among their number enjoying the kind of panoramic and unobstructed view of the game that Imagining Baseball offers of its many cultural productions. JAMES D. MILLER / Carleton University Norman N. Feltes. This Side of Heaven: Determining the Don­ nelly Murders, 1880. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. 208. $40 cloth. The title of this study of the economic background to the Don­ nelly story is lifted from the epitaph on their tombstone at St. Patrick’s, Biddulph, a tombstone that used to be eleven feet tall and is now (because of attracting swarms of sightseers with “murdered”) only two feet tall with “murdered” changed to the less challenging “died.” Still, money and flowers are left on the stone, visitors still chip away souvenirs, and there are signs that the Donnellys are becoming a beloved cult, quite a change from the virulent hatred that generated their massacre. The still unchanged epitaph reads: Farewell, we meet no more On this side of Heaven. The heartfelt parting scene is o’er. The last sad look is given. Since Norman N. Feltes’s book “suggests that this legendary event cannot be fully understood through conventional nar­ rative, but only as the historical product of the diverse eco­ nomic, socio-political, and ideological conditions that under­ lay Biddulph Township during the late nineteenth century,” the readers may find it necessary to refresh their memory of the “legend” by referring to Orlo Miller’s The Donnellys Must Die (1965), William B utt’s doctoral thesis The Donnellys: His­ tory, Legend, Literature (University of Western Ontario, 1977), and Ray Fazakas’s The Donnelly Album, The complete and au­ thentic account illustrated with photographs of Canada’s famous 552 REVIEWS feuding family (1977). Completely avoided is to be Thomas Kel­ ley’s pack of lies, The Black Donnellys (1954), which, believe it or not, is taught as gospel truth in many of our schools! And Feltes is in agreement with me here. A brief re-telling of the story is necessary, however, in the interests of recording what Feltes has notably achieved. Blessed or cursed with a Protestant gentry ancestor, “Miss Goodwin,” James Donnelly at the time of his marriage to Judith McGee (8 November 1840) was living in her parish, Dunkerrin, near his brothers who lived in this North Tipperary parish as well. Known for its feuding and its violence against landlords, Dunkerrin was Biddulph’s ancestor in more ways than one. By 1844 Donnelly and his wife had arrived in London Township, Southwestern Ontario, soon in 1847 to take up residence on VI-18, Biddulph Township, on the Roman Line, almost com­ pletely occupied by Roman Catholic Irish from Dunkerrin and other North Tipperary parishes close by. Donnelly is said to have squatted on the above lot; close examination, however, re­ veals that he and the potential owner of the farm, John Grace, a London carpenter, knew each other quite well; Grace needed someone to clear the property for him. After Grace had finished paying the Canada Company for vi-18 (6 May 1856), Donnelly expected to have first chance at buying the property. In a quar­ rel with one Patrick Farl, a quarrelsome neighbour who kept insisting that VI-18 should be his, Donnelly killed the man at a logging bee on 25 June 1857 and was sentenced to hang on 14 May 1858 by Sir John Beverley Robinson, Chief Justice of Up­ per Canada. On 26 July 1858, however, the Governor General changed Donnelly’s sentence to seven years in Kingston, the re­ sult of Robinson’s advice that the circumstances surrounding the murder indicated manslaughter. By this time, the Donnellys’ landlord had sold the southern half of the farm they had been clearing to one Michael Maher for£250; after some negotiation, however, he let Donnelly have the northern half for £50 in September 1856. To my mind the basic reason for killing the Donnellys was to get the Donnellys off the northern half, and, consequently, they became scapegoats, but instead of leaving Biddulph as they should have, they...