At Any Price

The life of Donald Morrison, the Megantic Outlaw, is the stuff of myth and legend. To many he was a hero; to others, a ruthless killer. His short life came to represent not only the struggles of an individual against injustice but also the attempt of a community to preserve its cultural identity. To call Donald Morrison an outlaw is a bit of a misnomer. He was no Robin Hood. Except for a relatively brief period of his life, Donald Morrison was a law-abiding and hard-working citizen, committed to his family and his community of Megantic in the Eastern Townships of Québec. In 1876, as a young man of eighteen, he headed west to work as a cowboy in Colorado, Montana and Texas. After six years, Morrison returned to his family to help them keep their farm out of debt. But corruption and greed, tempers and politics all conspired to alter Morrison's life from one of obscurity to being the most hunted man in the history of Québec. Donald Morrison killed a man - of that, there is no doubt. On a sunny day in June 1888, Morrison shot a man on the main street of Megantic in front of scores of witnesses. The man had a warrant for Morrison's arrest for arson and attempted murder. But the circumstances behind that terrible act are rife with all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy. The characters of this tragedy play their parts to the fullest: the land-speculator and loan shark who deceives an illiterate old man, robbing him of his life's work; the rum-runner and bounty hunter whose braggadocio lands him a one-way ticket to an unmarked grave; the brother who turns his back on his own flesh-and-blood; and the childhood sweetheart who tries desperately to save her lover. There are other characters who make their contribution to this tragedy, characters representing the temper of the times and its politics. The most significant of these is the Scottish community of the Eastern Townships. Without them, Donald Morrison would have been arrested within minutes of his crime and would have been sent to prison without so much as a ripple on Lake Megantic. The Scots, who for two generations had carved out a meagre existence from this rugged land, watched helplessly as their children headed west in search of greater fortunes. By the 1880's they had become a minority in the region. For the Scots, Donald Morrison was not only a man who had been "done wrong" by the justice system, he had become a symbol of the very survival of their cultural heritage. They would not only fight for him; they would fight with him.