Well of Lies Read online

  Once past the bridge, the river hugs the north edge of town as it flows westward, a high bluff to the north, a grassy, and treed plain to the south. Just past the second bridge, across from Lobie’s Park and the old iron foundry, Silver Creek emerges from under a building and empties through an arched stone tunnel into the river. It was in April 1951 that the normally innocuous creek flooded amid torrential rain and mild weather, washing out three bridges in the process. In the 1960s, the floodprone creek was rerouted upstream to spare the homes and yards that line its banks.

  From its meeting point with Silver Creek, the Saugeen flows almost due north to Paisley and a rendezvous with the fast-flowing Teeswater River, whose waters have pushed north through the Greenock Swamp. The swamp is perhaps the single largest forested wetland in southern Ontario, although its vast, magnificent stands of old white pine are long gone. Huge canals dug by hand in the late 1800s provided logging access. For a quarter-century, millions of board-feet of white pine were taken, some finding its way to the fine furniture factories for which the area was once renowned. In the 1920s, with much of the logging heyday over, the labyrinthine canals in the inhospitable swamp proved to be an ideal hangout for bootleggers defying Prohibition. Still, even now, the wetland acts as a giant sponge for the Teeswater as it rushes to join the Saugeen, which presses onward past Port Elgin and onto Lake Huron hard by Southampton, 345 metres below the highlands from which it sprang.

  Walkerton, one of dozens of small towns and hamlets that dot the landscape of Bruce County, owes its existence to the Saugeen. Its waters supplied the power needed for the saw- and gristmills that Joseph Walker built in the mid-1800s. But the large-scale logging and land clearing that came with the early settlers also left the town prone to flooding. Spring is the most dangerous time of year; a sudden mild spell, especially if compounded by heavy rain, can create a fast snowmelt. As far back as 1891, newspaper reports from Toronto, about two and a half hours and a world away, describe floodwaters washing out the bridge that gave the town road access to the north. In March 1929, merchants and shoppers on Durham Street, the town’s main road that everyone simply calls Main Street, found themselves trapped in their stores as the Saugeen spilled its banks, sending waves of muddy brown water gushing down the thoroughfare, and tearing up the recently laid cement sidewalks. Boats ferried them out. A boy drowned in the raging waters as he tried to cross the street to take a pair of boots to his father stranded at the old station. They found his body in a field. Record snowfall led to another severe flood in 1947, prompting the town to begin constructing a series of dikes. Seven years later, those dikes saved the town from catastrophe. It was in October 1954 that Hurricane Hazel swept north up the Atlantic seaboard, causing devastation and loss of life in Toronto before it blew itself out. On October 16, the Saugeen crested almost 3.5 metres above normal. The lower end of town was again under a metre of water, but there were no deaths.

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  Walkerton is not a whole lot larger than it was fifty or even one hundred years ago. It is not a quaint town. It is a working town. It is sturdy, not pretentious, like the tough-minded pioneers who founded it. There is little that grabs a visitor’s attention on a casual drive through. Its charms, of which there are more than a few, are mostly hidden. The area offers deer hunting in the fall, and the summer Saugeen provides pleasant if not spectacular canoeing. But it lacks the beach playground allure of a Port Elgin or Kincardine – it is not a tourist town. The simultaneous arrival of more than a few score overnight visitors taxes the capacity of its three motels. Coming west from Hanover over the bridge near the dam, Highway 4 runs into Durham Street. The small stores that line the 250 paces or so of the main road are tidy and utilitarian. The buildings, even the public ones, exude a humanscale sensibility rather than an imperial folly. There is a sense of history embedded in every street name, in the faded yellow brick houses and weathered stone churches. There is a spaciousness without sprawl: Walkerton is cradled on three sides by hills. Stores and schools and churches and bars are all close at hand. A casual dress code prevails. This is jeans and baseball cap territory. It’s the kind of town in which an unveiled bride, in full splendid regalia, can enter a packed bar at midnight on a Saturday and still have trouble catching the eye of the harried servers, perhaps even of the patrons who find it difficult to avoid stepping on her train. It is not a welcoming community, but it is a friendly one. The extended family, social, and church ties are strong. There are few visible minorities, yet there is a tolerance for diversity and a certain measured acceptance of eccentricity.

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  If Walkerton owes its existence to the Saugeen River, it owes its name to Joseph Walker, who arrived in May 1850 not far from what would one day become the Biesenthal farm to stake his first plot in the Queen’s Bush. The vast swaths of untamed and unsevered territory had been home for ages to the Iroquois, Hurons, and Ojibwa. Settlement of the bush was encouraged, in part, to deal with the “Indian problem,” and Walker was part of that pioneer wave. Described as short and squat, Old Joe as he became known was a miller raised in County Tyrone in Ireland and had connections to the Family Compact, the ruling elite of the pre-Canada province of Upper Canada. He’d spent time in the Toronto area before taking the plunge into Bruce County. When he clapped eyes on the small valley with its wild fruit trees and bush, Old Joe knew he’d found his spot. Armed with coveted mill rights obtained through his family connections, the forty-nine-year-old Walker set to work building a log cabin that would become the centre of his operations. He acquired ten farm lots in the valley. With the help of son William, he started the arduous task of clearing the trees for a sawmill he erected along the meandering Saugeen. He built a dam on the river for power, and had the mill machinery dragged in through the bush. By early 1852, Old Joe was in business. A year later, he borrowed $1,600 to build a gristmill, and again had the machinery dragged in through the bush. Walker also built several bridges over the river. One was ten kilometres upstream just outside Buck’s Crossing, the settlement founded a few years earlier by Abraham Buck that would later become the town of Hanover.

  Walker became reeve of the newly incorporated township of Brant. By 1857, he started to subdivide his ten farm lots, giving birth to a new town. The post office, which until then bore the Brant township moniker, was changed to Walkerton. Undaunted by the fact that it met none of the requirements, Old Joe set his sight on having the fledgling town declared the capital of Bruce County. When the Governor General granted him his wish that same year, other towns, which felt more deserving of the honour, howled in protest and the proclamation was set aside. A portrait done about this time shows Old Joe smartly dressed in a bow tie, his face framed by a mop of grey hair that covers his ears, some of it spilling in curls onto his large forehead. A thick scraggly beard hangs from his neck behind a clean-shaven chin. There’s a hint of defiance in his eyes. Along with his strong political connections, he was after all one of the most prosperous businessmen in the county. Until the big crash of 1859. For several years, municipalities and settlers alike had borrowed heavily to buy property in hopes of big returns. But the buying spree drove up prices to the point where railway expansion was no longer viable. The speculative bubble burst. Municipalities found themselves strapped for cash or deep in debt, prompting the government to shut down the Municipal Loan Fund on which they had drawn so heavily. British investors began withdrawing. Then in 1858, drought struck Bruce County, causing massive crop failure. Even by pioneering standards, times were tough. The local newspaper accepted firewood for payment. The county exchanged flour and seed-grain for road work in an effort to stave off widespread starvation. The economic slump deepened with the turn of the decade and the American Civil War. In an early example of the perils of globalization, millions of people lost their jobs in England as imports of cotton from the United States dried up and British credit to the New World tightened further. There was no grist for Old Joe’s mill and little demand for the lumber that had once kept his
sawmill buzzing. Heavily leveraged, he went bust and was forced to sell off his holdings at fire-sale prices. By 1863, he’d sold almost everything, much of it to his influential friend, George Jackson, the Crown land agent who had turned federal politician and whose name still graces one of Walkerton’s main streets. There are those who say Jackson merely took title of Walker’s properties so they couldn’t be seized and that he would later return them. In 1865, with Jackson’s help, Walker at last won his crusade to have Walkerton designated the county town and he soon became its first mayor. But his days as tycoon were essentially over. Now approaching his seventies, Walker packed up in 1870 and headed north to Manitoulin, said to be the world’s largest freshwater island. There he erected another gristmill. He died a couple of years later. The exact whereabouts of his grave are unknown.

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  In 1871, the settlement Walker had founded was finally declared a town by a special act of parliament. With just 995 residents, it didn’t even meet the requirements for incorporation as a village. Still, the pioneers came, a hardy mix of mostly Irish, German, and Scottish settlers. Ever so slowly, Walkerton grew into a mini-hub for the farmers and loggers who braved the long, harsh winters and endured the short, hot summers. To the south and east, the province began its rush forward into the modern era, mostly ignoring the insular town and its hardscrabble inhabitants, who were more than happy to edge forward at their own quiet pace. Occasionally, big-city media did pay attention, such as when the Globe newspaper in Toronto reported on the floods of 1891. Toronto also watched closely in 1928 during a bitterly fought municipal election. The campaign pitted candidates in favour of getting the town’s power from Ontario Hydro, the province’s publicly owned electrical utility, against those who favoured staying with the local Walkerton Electric & Power Company. The company, which had begun supplying water-generated power for night use at the turn of the century, was the forerunner of the public utilities commission that Stan Koebel would one day run.

  Just Another Well in the Swamp

  STANLEY FRANCIS GEORGE KOEBEL was born March 23, 1953, into a staunch Roman Catholic family, the first of nine children. Not the brightest of students, Stan was nevertheless conscientious, quiet, and serious, unlike his younger brother Frank, who had a more impish streak and liked teasing his siblings. Frank would tell Stan made-up stories, then laugh at him when he believed them. Their father, Frank Sr., had worked for the town for years, becoming the well-regarded general foreman of the works department. It was through his connections that the nineteen-year-old Stan, who was battling his way through Sacred Heart high school, secured a job as a general labourer with the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Stan Koebel (pronounced cable) left Sacred Heart after Grade 11 in 1972 to begin working full-time for the utilities commission. There were two foremen at the time, one on the water side of the operation, the other on the electricity side. Stan worked under both. Three years after Stan started, seventeen-year-old Frank Jr. followed in his footsteps, also joining the PUC as a general labourer. Frank had just spent two months in Toronto training to be an auto mechanic when the PUC manager, Ian McLeod, asked him if he’d care to help out laying water mains. Frank accepted, soon becoming full-time. Stan eventually shifted over to the electrical side and became an apprentice lineman, passing his exams in 1980. It was the only formal training he had. Frank qualified as a lineman a few years later.

  As the years tumbled by, young Stan impressed those around him with his work ethic, his willingness to do as told. He became known as someone who could be relied on to get the job done and get it done right. There was nothing slipshod about the way he worked. In fact, he was finicky, perhaps to a fault. McLeod never considered him the sharpest tool in the PUC shed, but Stan could cut deep enough, and that’s what mattered. One morning in 1981, Stan arrived at work to find a white hard hat in his locker. He was now the sole foreman in charge of both water and hydro under a plan by McLeod to do away with the division between the two sides of the utility.

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  Although general manager, Ian McLeod was most comfortable out in the field with the boys, as he called them. He took an immediate shine to Frank, teaching him everything he knew about the water end of the operation. Perhaps it was the youngster’s impish nature. Perhaps it was his stubborn, independent streak. Perhaps it was a certain common love of the bottle. But either way, Frank became McLeod’s pet and the two men became fast friends. Where they might have disagreed was on the question of chlorination. Frank, who had grown up drinking raw water, didn’t see much need for it. McLeod, however, insisted that his own family drink treated water. When he built a cottage in Sauble Beach in 1957, he ensured its well tested clean. Even then, well water was used only for cooking, bathing, or washing. Treated drinking water was kept in a forty-five-litre container on the kitchen counter. If they ran low, McLeod headed into town with the kids to fill jugs with treated water to take back to the cottage.

  McLeod was a crusty fellow. He didn’t much like being told what to do. After all his years on the job, perhaps he figured he knew what he was doing and didn’t much like any suggestions to the contrary. He hated hearing complaints from townsfolk about their tap water. In the early 1980s, the newly elected mayor, postal worker Jim Bolden, discovered the manager’s prickly side at the first meeting he attended as a PUC member by virtue of his position as top civic official. When Bolden tried to ask some questions, McLeod exploded:

  “No goddamn stamp-licker is going to come in and tell me how to run the PUC!”

  Bolden, who suspected McLeod had been drinking, was dumbfounded. What angered him more was that no one else at the meeting spoke up in his defence. Still, he soon developed a grudging respect for the hard-working man who ran things his way and ran them well.

  Life under McLeod was pretty good all round. The girls in the office liked him, although he didn’t spend huge amounts of time there. So did the boys. The daily routine had its diverting moments, such as those provided by a gathering of “sidewalk superintendents,” those small-town old folk who can make a day of watching young men dig a hole in the street and fix the water mains below. Frank would pull the main and accidentally spray them, somehow hitting them dead on every time. Then there was the time Butch Kieffer got a job with the PUC and had to climb a hydro pole. He froze in fear at the top and wouldn’t, or couldn’t, come down. The other guys had to climb after him and throw a rope over the cross-arm and tie it to him. Even then, they had to pry the large man’s hands and feet loose so they could lower him to the ground. He didn’t stay with the utility.

  One day, PUC backhoe operator Don Herman received a distress call from his boss, whose truck was stuck out at one of the town’s wells. It was just before quitting time, but Hermy headed out in his backhoe, where he extricated the vehicle. McLeod retrieved a bottle of whisky and offered Hermy a drink, and the two men shared a stiff one before heading home. Having alcohol in the truck wasn’t exactly proper, but as McLeod liked to say, “Show me a man who never did anything wrong and I’ll show you a man who never did anything.” Hermy didn’t think much of it. He was used to using his backhoe for unusual chores. One Boxing Day night, Hermy’s highly pregnant wife said to him, “Maybe our child will be born tonight.”

  The snow was coming down heavily when the call came in: Hermy was needed to clear the roads. After promising to check in regularly to see how she was doing, he headed into the frigid night. He worked steadily as the snow fell, taking time out every thirty minutes or so to drop into the nearby police station to call home. At about four in the morning, she told him she could no longer wait. Hermy jumped back into his shiny John Deere loader and drove home, where he hoisted her suitcase and then his wife into the heated cab and drove her to the hospital a few blocks away. Having disposed of his passenger, he went right back to work.

  “How’s the wife?” a police officer asked when he got back about 5 A.M.

  “She’s up at the hospital,” a triumphant Hermy replied.


  “You’re lying,” the cop responded. “Your car hasn’t moved. I passed there a few minutes ago and it’s buried in snow.”

  Hermy chuckled. A short while later, his second boy was born safe and sound while dad tooled around in a backhoe, keeping the roads clear of snow. That’s the way it was at the PUC. When needed, everyone worked long and hard getting the job done and then coasted a little the following day.

  One summer, Herman began a Friday lunch ritual. He’d scoot over to the old Canada Spool and Bobbin factory on the other side of town and grab a bunch of turned hardwood bowling pins the factory had rejected. The other guys would stop by at the meat market and pick up a few steaks, while Hermy got a roaring barbecue fire going behind the PUC shop. The bowling pins made the finest coals. By 12:20 P.M., the feast began, accompanied by a beer or two from a twelve-pack one of the guys had stashed in the fridge, whose appliance whiteness stood out incongruously against the gloomy cement wall of the little room in the back corner of the shop. Ian McLeod always managed to show up just as they were tucking in.