It was a murder that made headlines across the country.
The Pontiac has been raving since “Allumette Island Massacre” and Three Other Canadian Crime Stories, written by Keith Landry, hit the shelves in September 2019.
Landry first heard about the . . .
murder on Allumette Island at the young age of 10 and decades later he made it into the first and most popular of four true-crime stories in his book.
The story was told to him by his grandfather, Michael St. Germain, who was none other than the High Constable on Allumette Island at the time of the Bradley murders in summer 1933.
St. Germain was the first on the scene of the grisly crime and was there to find the five bodies of the slain Bradley family.
An article written July 21, 1933 in the Ottawa Citizen described the scene:
“Wabash road on Allumette Island, directly across the river from here, early this morning stunned the islanders into running for cover lest the slayer, still at large, turn his deadly .32 calibre high powered rifle upon them.”
The article, one of many, describes the massacre that took the lives of Thomas Bradley, Mrs. Mary Bradley, Joanna Bradley, Joseph Bradley, and John Bradley.
Reporters described the horrific way the bodies were found, after civilians took it upon themselves to take a look around to be the first ones with the gossip.
Landry said that the tale of the Bradley family murder, as well as the three other crime stories in his book, remained with him all these years.
“It was the case that brought Campbell’s Bay to the forefront,” he said.
Landry’s family are natives of Campbell’s Bay, the town where the hanging of the murderer took place on April 5, 1935.
It was the only hanging ever to take place in the Pontiac.
“It was like a circus atmosphere,” he explained.
“The Bradleys haven’t lived there for over 80 years since the murders, but even to this day it’s still called ‘The Bradley Farm,’” he said.
The out-building, where the murder weapon was found and where the family was murdered, can still be visited in Demers Center on Allumette Island, though the house has since been torn down for another.
Upon a decline of health, Landry decided to research the true events of the crimes he remembered so well, by diving into archived newspapers which held crucial, sometimes gruesome details, written by journalists whose names were hardly ever credited, but whose words created the base for the novel.
“I was inspired by the writing of these newsmen from the past,” Landry said. “Research was the most enjoyable part of the process.”
The articles helped when it came to painting the picture of what happened during the investigation and trial, Landry explained.
“When [the journalists] reported the activities of the trial they were reported in detail,” he said. “They made reports about the comments the judge and lawyers would make in the courtroom and just the whole atmosphere. They were having [a hearing] and a bird flew in from outside into the courtroom and fluttered around, just as an important part of the testimony was being said. The journalist wrote about that and put it so well, so I tried to bring that into the book the same way he wrote it.”
Landry said that the other three stories in the book came not by word-of-mouth but rather by personal experience of murders that happened around him.
“There’s one that took place in 1969 in Ottawa,” he said. “It was a couple of young fellas just leaving high school who decided to rob a bank just off of Montreal Road. I was going to high school at the time, they were actually the same age as me.
“Another one was in Lethbridge [Alberta] where my wife and I were raising our children in 1970. Right near our home a person murdered a woman. That event has always remained with me.”
“And then just outside of Regina,” he continued. “There was this group of young people who robbed a fall supper at a church and then they murdered two people who chased them.”
There seems to be a similarity between the interest in the murders back then and Landry’s novel now. At the time of the murder on Allumette Island, people would wait around the newsstands ready to snatch up the next copy of the paper for further information about the events that took place that fateful day in Demers Centre. This isn’t very different from the numerous Pontiac and Renfrew County inhabitants who have made various calls and trips to bookstores around the area, just hoping to get their hands on a copy of the book.
Listed on Amazon in the top 15 Canadian Detective novels, and at number two in sales back in January, just a month after Amazon published it, Landry said that it appears that everybody seems to like the book, saying that the initial 400 copies he self-published were sold out within four weeks.
“A man in Campbell’s Bay was the first to buy the book,” Landry said. “He actually would have been friends with my parents when they were alive.”
When asked about future writing endeavours Landry said that he is hoping to have several more books ready by next summer. One will feature the main detective, Dalpe, in another mystery, while another book will be about murder motives: what drove the murderers to do what they did.
“I hope to be able to drive around the area and Gatineau [next summer] to do book signings.” Landry said.
The mass murder on Allumette Island rocked the nation and continues to be a prominent piece of Pontiac history. If it wasn’t for the writings of journalists from almost a century ago, distilled for today’s readers by Keith Landry, we would not have the vibrant account of the events that happened that ill-fated day.
“I wanted to bring the writer’s writing back to life,” Landry said. “I just love doing what I’m doing.”
His book can be found online as a paperback or eBook on Amazon and Indigo and for a limited time at the Pontiac Printshop in Shawville.
