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This month we examine, republish and translate into French “Nips Daimon”, a forgotten Victorian-era ghost story set in Montreal.

Haunted Research

In 1862, author C.E. Bockus penned a ghost story set in Montreal called “Nips Daimon”. Published in London in the May edition of Once a Week, the creepy tale features a Mount Royal tobogganer named Eugene Roy and his misadventures with an undead spirit. Based on the true ghost story of Simon McTavish and his haunted castle, “Nips Daimon” adds another dimension to the deranged legacy of the forgotten fur baron.

Known to toboggan down the mountain slopes in his coffin at night, McTavish’s ghost allegedly terrorized city residents in the 1800s. The McTavish tale is widely considered “Canada’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and C.E. Bockus’ fictionalized version adds to its mystery and intrigue.

C.E. Bockus was a businessman, financier and journalist. Born in 1833 in Pictou, Nova Scotia, he went on to study at McGill University in Montreal. Undoubtedly, he learned the ghost story of Simon McTavish during his time on campus. Bockus died in Boston in 1901 at the age of 67. It would appear that “Nips Daimon” is the only work in his literary record.

Haunted Montreal is proud to present this amazing Victorian ghost story, which is largely forgotten in the city. We are also thrilled to announce that the talented Claude Chevalot has translated “Nips Daimon” into French for the first time ever.

Nips Daimon

by C.E. Bockus

ꙮ  ꙮ  ꙮ

     Montreal is a wonderful place, unique in fact upon this continent, contrasting the ancient with the modern as no other American city can pretend to do, and showing buildings, dresses and habits, two centuries old, in picturesque juxtaposition with the extreme fashions and improvements of the present day. The grey and black robes of the nuns rub against hoops that are greatly beyond the gauge of the city sidewalks. Portly priests, or humbler frères chrétiens dispute the pavement with red-coated soldiers, and merchants whose credit is as solid as their granite stores. Convents jostle the counting-rooms of firms of world-wide reputation. A church, that counts its years by hundreds stands at the side of a market-house, much finer than any our city can show; while near them from the barracks issue in splendid array a little army of soldiers, whose march is like the moving of waters, and their drill a wonder and a school.

     It is not astonishing, therefore, that every summer brings to Montreal a host of tourists to marvel and admire, in whose train follow the inevitable travelling correspondents, who fill the columns of our newspapers with their little collections of thrice-told facts. We “stay-at-homes” expect annually to be informed by the different journals that the towers of the French church are higher than the monument on Bunker Hill, and that the Enfans Trouvés of the Soeurs Grises have clean faces, but bad bumps. The nuns themselves, it seems, are not so pretty as they might be; while the smallest children in the streets talk French with fluency – a fact which I wish you to note as an evidence of their surprising precocity.

     One special point no correspondent neglects. The Haunted House furnishes a paragraph to the whole tribe of nomadic scribblers.

      Sometimes it is stated that the builder of this ghost-ridden mansion hung himself from a beam in its cellar, on discovering – what any sensible man would have expected – that his architect’s estimate covered less than half of the required outlay. Again, we are told that he died from the effect of a cup of “cold poison,” swallowed in humble imitation of the sad example of the illustrious Dinah. I remember one correspondent who struck out an original path, and declared that the devil carried him off bodily – though with what purpose or for what crime, this inventive writer unfortunately omitted to specify. 

     But, however they differ regarding the exit of the troubled spirit, all agree upon its occasional return.

     Haunted the house is, – and deserted, – the very picture of desolation, standing alone, upon as fine a site as fancy can conceive, having behind it the broad green belt of lofty trees that garters the foot of the mountain, and in front a wide slope, which stretches its lawn-like expanse in regular descent from the great doorway of the mansion to within a short distance from the public street.

     This hill affords summer-pasturage for hundreds of cows which lounge among the fruit trees at its base, or dot its surface with their forms. But in winter it is put to a livelier use, for which it is admirably fitted by its length, and height, and the evenness of the declination. 

     To wit – as a slide for tobogans. 

     “A what?” you ask; “in the name of euphony, what is a tobogan?”

     Let me tell you. I must premise that the orthography of this word belongs to the important unsettled questions of the world. Authorities differ; usage affords no guide; and its etymology is lost in the dim ages of the aboriginal tradition. The way I write it comes as near the sound as can be, and pleases me accordingly. But any reader who feels dissatisfied has perfect liberty to spell it as he thinks proper. 

     All I know about toboganing was learned nine years ago. Understand that. Many changes may, nay must, have come since then. The hill may offer no longer an unbroken slope. The practice itself may have grown unfashionable. But in my time, everybody toboganed, and the slide was the glory of the town. 

     Tobogans – to resume them – are Indian sleighs, perfectly flat, without runners supporting themselves above the lightest snow, on the same principle as the snow-shoe, by offering a large surface to its resistance. They are about eight feet long, and sufficiently broad to leave a margin of a few inches on each side of the sitter. They curve upwards in front, like the runner of a sleigh. Light poles, tied along the sides, support the occupants while going over “the jumps,” which are holes worn by the constant ploughing of the curved fronts in their rapid rush down the steep incline. 

     Indian sleighs are often very neatly painted, and almost always christened by appropriate names, – such as the ‘Dart,’ the ‘Snow Wreath,’ and the ‘Bird on Wing.’ Their bottoms, by long use, grow wonderfully smooth. When the snow is a little beaten, or has a light crust, through which our New England sleds would crash in a moment, the tobogans glide along as easily as a ship passing through the water, and as swiftly as an arrow just loosened from the bow.

     I spent a winter in Montreal, during the height of the furore, and visited the ground many times in company with as pleasant a set of gentlemen as I have ever been privileged to know.

     One of these, whom I shall call Roy – Eugene Roy – for this most excellent reason, that it does not sound at all like the real name, was almost always the leader of our party to the hill. He was a young man, quite dark enough to justify the suspicion that he had Indian blood in his veins, – a strange, quiet fellow, who said very little to any one, who steered magnificently, and appeared to love sliding as he loved nothing else in the world.

     No wonder. He owned the fastest sleigh on the field. It was a narrow tobogan, painted blue, carrying its name, the ‘Indian Chief,’ in wide gold letters upon the front. Its bottom was seamed with countless cracks, and worn so thin in many places as to be almost transparent. But it flashed down the hill as no other tobogan could be coaxed to do, darting out from a flight of its most formidable rivals, like a hawk sweeping past a cluster of slow-winged crows.

     No hand save his own ever steered this sleigh, for, though Eugene was free as air with whatever else he possessed, he steadily refused to lend the ‘Chief,’ even for an occasional slide, to his most intimate friend. 

     He and I had some rooms in the same house, we always walked home from the hill together, and, indeed, soon became as intimate as his peculiar disposition allowed. 

     It is not surprising that the sliders, who spent so many evenings in the vicinity of the Haunted House came to feel, in time, a thorough contempt for its terrors, and passed, as regards the existence of its Ghost, in rapid progression from doubt to scepticism and positive unbelief. Many a shout from strong-lunged scoffers has rung through the rafters of that unfinished building, challenging all the spirits who dwelt therein to come forth and try their wings in a race along the hill. But I noticed that the boldness of the call invariably bore a nice proportion to the number of the party, and that, when no more than two or three sliders remained near the mansion, its reputed tenants were treated with the most respectful consideration by all. For there was something so utterly lonesome about this deserted dwelling, standing with blear boarded windows, white in the moonlight, the tomb of the pride of its builder, that its contemplation often chilled the boldest hearts and stayed the noisiest laughter.   

      We all spoke of it lightly, however, when distance had dissolved its spell; and at the suppers, which occasionally followed our return from toboganing, the spectral occupant of the desolate mansion was a frequent toast with the lads of the hill. One excepted, Eugene Roy, never emptied glass to that health, never smiled at the jokes, nor joined in the boasts that allusion to his ghostship had a tendency to call forth; nay, when pressed by our banter regarding his reserve, he always answered – that there were things he thought it ill to jest about, and that, perhaps, we would not find the devil so black as he had been painted; a supposition involving a corollary not very complimentary to the company.

     One evening some person inquired of him if he “dare race his ‘Indian Chief’ with any other tobogan in Canada?”

     We all felt interested on this point, as there had been talk of bringing up a famous sleigh from Quebec, and matching it against his for a medal. The supper drew towards its end when the question was asked. Roy had been drinking pretty freely. He looked up from his glass quite hastily, and replied with an oath that – “the winner of the race he had run one Saturday night need fear no wood that ever skimmed snow-drift.”

     All at the table laughed. They had never before found Eugene influenced by his liquor. I reflected; and that evening on our homeward walk renewed the subject which we discussed rather warmly, till at last I taxed him with knowing more about the tenant of the “Haunted House,” than he appeared willing to admit.

     On this he turned round upon me sharply.

     “Do you believe in ghosts, in bodied or disembodied spirits?”

     “Pooh!” I blew the answer out like a bullet, for I considered his question a reflection upon my good sense.

     He stopped suddenly, and pointed towards the building, which from its commanding situation was visible at a great distance.

     “So you have no faith in haunted houses?”

     “Haunted they may be,” I laughed, “by rats, or owls, at the farthest by nothing more formidable than a skulking mountain fox.”

     He caught my arm.

     “Suppose I told you that I, myself, am the ghost, the devil, the thing whose accursed presence heightens the horror of those lonely walls?”

     His voice and the light in his eyes were unnatural. Shaking myself from his grasp, I jumped into the middle of the road, but came back ashamed enough when I heard his mocking laugh.

     “Again, as ever,” Eugene cried. “You are like the rest of mankind. Liars and cowards all of you – in matters supernatural,” he added calmly. “You scoff at ghosts. That goes without telling. ‘Brave comme un lapin,’ says the proverb, and you jumped from my side like a rabbit, because I spoke a few wild words in a deeper tone. Well, be not afraid. No matter what does haunt that old house; I don’t. Only take this advice from a friend. Till you get stronger nerves, never stay on the hill alone after midnight; and of all evenings of the week, choose Saturday least for solitary sliding!”

     Of course, after such a speech, there were no means of resisting my eager curiosity. He  told me his story that night, as we sat in my room together, while the flashes from the fire-light flickered about  the chamber, till the shuddering darkness of the winter night overshadowed the room like a pall.

     Impossible to give it in his words; needless my interrupting queries. You have it here, as I remember it, plus the many imperfections of a bad narrator, and minus more of the charms derived from his quaint expressions and peculiar manner, than I am at all willing you should realize. 

 “One Saturday night,” he commenced, “about four weeks ago, the tracks, you will perhaps remember, were in a terrible condition. There had been good sliding for a week, on snow deep enough even to cover the big rocks at the foot, and all the world had gone mad about tobogans. With Friday came a dash of rain, followed by severe weather, till on Saturday the whole hill was a sheet of glare ice, so thick that our sticks could not break through it, and so smooth that our hands found little hold to steer. 

     Few cared to go on it that afternoon. Those who did left early. For the sleighs shot down like arrows. To guide them was all but impossible. One boy went off with a broken arm; another, who had cut his ankle, was carried home on his tobogan. 

     It was towards ten o’clock in the evening when the moon got up, heartily cheered by half a dozen of us who were waiting, impatient at the hill. Little cared we for ice or danger; a moonlit slide at such a pace was cheaply bought by any risk. Good steerers all of us, you may be sure, and our tobogans the best of the town. George had the old ‘Hawk’s Eye’ cut down to half her original size, but with a bottom smoother than the ice itself. Mark brought a new sleigh which he had selected out of a hundred in Lorette. Frank, too, was with us; large-hearted Frank, whose name describes his nature, as good at cricket as at steering – deservedly a favourite with girls and men; and Andrew with the ‘Arrow,’ and Arthur’s ‘Falling Star.’

     We had a glorious time. The speed was greater than I had ever before known. We did not slide; we flew, – dancing over “the jumps,” and flashing past the stone-heads, each steering as carefully as if there were a dozen ladies on board – for a mistake would have been no laughing matter. We tried all the runs, even the unusual one which, passing obliquely behind the college buildings, leads towards a bridge that crosses the little brook. 

      Near twelve o’clock, tired of our sport, and bed-weary, we ranged our sleighs at the door of the Haunted House for our last slide.

     It was Frank who proposed that we should try the track on the extreme right, which as yet we had not attempted; and George who suggested that we should go far back among the trees, shoot through the  fence which separates the inclosed ground from the rough foot of the mountain, and thus sweep along the right-hand track with all the advantage which our unusual start would give. By so doing we would nearly double the length of our slide. The track on this side was entirely free from obstruction till you approached the bottom of the hill, where the difficulties increased – rocks being in great plenty, and the trees inconveniently close together. 

     No one dissenting, we dragged our tobogans up the mountain, till we reached the ledge off which we purposed pushing; some of us, whose moccasins were travel-worn, finding it no easy task to scale the slippery ascent. 

     At the top, all tarried a moment, spell-bound by the beauty of the night. Not a cloud soiled the sky. No breath of air rustled through the leafless branches above us. The moonlight seemed unnaturally bright, even for that latitude, showing the towers of the French church on guard over  the sleeping city below us, and beyond, blue in the distance, the crossed summit of Beloeil. Behind us rose the Monument, girt by a high wall of stone. We could see its shaft white among the tree-trunks, marking where rests the builder of the house in, as many believe, his troubled and terrible repose. But none of us thought of the monument or its tenant while we marshalled our tobogans along the edge of the incline – of nothing, in fact, but the track before us, and the wild scamper over it that we were about to take.

     “Now then! The first to the bottom of the hill,” cried George.

     “Give us to the fence, Roy, if you want an even race.”

     “To the house you mean,” two or three called out; “at less than that for a start, ‘the Chief’ will be up with us before we reach the bend of the hill.”

     “Hadn’t you better say half way down at once?” I answered. “You are a plucky set to have a race with. I would not take an inch from the devil himself.”

     “Then stay, and try with him,” they shouted; and all, pushing off at once, dashed over the ice down the hill, darting in and out among the trees, shooting through the fence at different openings, and emerging in a body upon the clear field beyond. They were so well matched that it seemed as if a blanket would have covered them, and swept out of sight round the house in a moment, cheering and daring each other on like the fine brave fellows they were. 

     I sat quietly, a hand down on each side, ready to shove forward, waiting till they had reached the bottom of the hill. My patience was not tried; their halloo, coming through half a mile of that clear air as distinctly as if uttered ten yards off, told me that the track was clear for my run.

     With this halloo came to my ears, from the steeples of the city, the sound of the bells ringing midnight; and I listened to distinguish the clear tones that bounded out of the belfry of Saint Patrick’s from the heavier clang of the Cathedral and the gentle music of the Seminary chimes.

     Those  twelve strokes, ringing above the sleep-bound city, were wonderfully subdued, and blended by the distance into so soft a peal, that I thought they sounded like the tongues of angels, proclaiming, with the advent of the Sabbath, a season or rest and tranquility to men. ‘Twas a devil’s blast succeeded them – a summons flung among the shuddering trees to chill my heart with horror. 

   “Arrête un peu, mon ami. Est-ce que c’est la mode maintenant de toboganer tout seul?”

     The tone crisped my nerves like a musket-ball. I turned, and saw behind me a tall man, dressed in a blanket-coat, who carried snow-shoes at his back, and dragged behind him a tobogan unpainted, but so dark with age that it looked as if it had been varnished. His coat was buttoned to the throat, and  tied about the waist with a silk sash, not red like mine, but of a peculiar shade resembling clotted blood. His leggings were ornamented along the seams by a fringe of long hair; a small fur-cap, adorned with the usual fox’s tail, partially covered the wealth of straight black locks that fell down towards his shoulders; while his feet, at which I glanced instinctively, were protected by moccasins, beautifully worked in beads, and coloured hair. No foot is handsome in a moccasin; his, as far as I could judge, seemed small for his size – voilà tout. His features, though marked, were far from disagreeable. He had the nose of an eagle, the eye of a falcon, a brown complexion, and a figure so slender as to be almost waspish. But long arms swung from his well-set shoulders, and it was plain that he possessed strength, combined with activity, in an uncommon degree. He moved, in fact, like a tiger, noiselessly, easily; in every motion the play of muscles seemed capable of sending him yards through the air at your throat any moment.

      “It is the fashion now to leave a question unanswered?” he said with a sneering emphasis.

     The smile, more than his words, recalled me to myself; for pride came to the rescue of my courage – the shame of cowering thus before a stranger, odd, but not bad-looking, at all events decidedly gentlemanlike in carriage and address, who had spoken to me twice civilly enough, and remained now waiting for my replies with politeness which must be changing very rapidly into contempt. 

     “I beg your pardon,” I said; “I was greatly surprised by seeing any person on the mountain at so late an hour.”

      “Not half so much as I,” he cried, “It is generally lonely enough up here long before midnight.”

     “Do you come, then, often after twelve o’clock?” I inquired, astonished.

     “Often,” he answered. “Does not my sleigh look as if it had been used? This is the best time for a slide. The tracks are not covered with shouting fools, who could hardly steer clear of a haystack, if one stood in the middle of the hill.”

     He glanced at my ‘Indian Chief’ – the glance of a connoisseur, appreciating all its merits, and discovering every defect. 

     “That is a pretty piece of wood you have there. Hardly heavy enough in front, and too wide for a night like this, though I dare say it does very well on a light snow.”

     “You may say so,” I interrupted, with some warmth. “Drift or ice-flake matters little, for on neither have I found its equal.”

     He drew his sleigh toward him, and placed it alongside of mine, which looked three inches broader.

     “My own is narrow” – he continued, speaking no longer in a defiantly-sarcastic tone, but low and very sadly, till his voice thrilled through me like the wail of a winter wind –”too narrow, indeed. It hurts me, and I am weary of it. I would gladly change it for your painted ‘Indian Chief.’ Ah me! I have seen many chiefs, painted after a different fashion. The smoke of their wigwams is with yesterday’s clouds, and the track of their tobogans on last year’s snow. Come,” he added, more cheerfully, “I will make a bargain with you. Have you heart enough to race me one slide along the hill?”

     “Why not?” I answered. “I will beat you if I can with all the pleasure in the world.”

     I felt so ashamed of my late cowardice that, if he had asked me to follow him over the mountain, I believe I would not have refused; and, besides, il faut quelque fois payer d’audace.

     “Then let us start,” he said. “If you are the victor, you may keep your tobogan as long as wood and deerskin hold together. But if I conquer, I warn you that I shall want your sleigh and that you must use mine.”

     “A moment,” I answered. “This is a strange bargain – ‘tis heads I win, tails you lose. I am to keep the swiftest in any event – mine, if it best yours, yours if better than my own.”

     “You agree then?”

     “I should be a fool to refuse.”

     “That is not my affair. Eh bien, c’est connu. Touch there, my friend.”

     He stretched out his hand, which I touched at first as you would handle hot coals, but more heartily when I saw the sneer starting over his face once. How brave we are – afraid even of being afraid. 

     The stranger slipped his snow-shoes from his back, and flung them against a tree, remarking that he would pick them up on his return.

     “Are you coming up the hill again to-night?” I inquired with surprise.

     “It is not night now, but morning,” he answered; “the morning of the Sabbath.”

     “And will you slide on Sunday?” I asked.

     “You should have remembered that ten minutes ago,” he replied, in his old sarcastic tone. “Think no more of it. Think of nothing but the stakes in the race before us. All other considerations are now too late.”   

     We got off together, but parted company from the very outset, for he shoved to the left at once and steered toward a gap in the fence directly behind where a break in the wall of the Haunted House gave access to the cellars beneath – an old doorway, in fact, which pilferers had plundered of its boarding, and the mountain winds of its stones, till an irregular opening had been formed large enough to admit a loaded waggon.  

     At first, as the stranger headed in the direction of this door, I thought that he had mistaken his course, or that his tobogan had become unmanageable. But the skill with which he handled it dismissed this last supposition. His sleigh bounded from knoll to knoll, obeying a touch of his finger, scraping the trees as it flew past them, and taking advantage of every bend in the ground, till it sprang straight at a hole in the fence not much wider than itself, and shot through, as the thread goes through the needle when guided by a woman’s hand. I never saw such steering before or since. After what followed, you may believe that I hope never to look upon its like again.

     I had got abreast of the fence myself by this time, running down it towards an opening farther to the right. The pace was awful. My tobogan sheered along the ice so that I could hardly keep it upon the track, and I came within an inch of missing the gap altogether. When I reached the other side, the stranger was just flashing into the gloom of the opening that led downwards to the cellars of the Haunted House. 

     I screamed. But my voice was drowned in a peal of infernal laughter, and the clapping of countless hands, which rattled from every story of that fiend-ridden building.

     Straight in front of me I stared – not a side-look for a million. On my head each separate hair crawled upward, snake-like, and my breath went and came pantingly, as that of a man who struggles body to body with a mortal foe. My tobogan bounded on with redoubled speed. It seemed to share my terror. 

     ‘Twas not without an effort that, as I passed the end of the mansion, I mustered courage for a Parthian glance.

     What I saw will live before my eyes till they close on this earth and its terrors for ever; a vision of horror ineffable – beyond belief or bearing – compared with which all I had before imagined of ghastly, soul-subduing phantoms, became mere babble of old nurses to frighten timid children.

     Out of the darkness into which my companion had plunged came forth a skeleton bearing in its skinless arms a coffin of unusual size. Its knees rattled as it strode forward staggering under the terrible burden. Nothing of life about it save its eyes; not earthly, even these. From the browless holes beneath its bony forehead looked out two balls of fire, the same that had glared on me a moment before, as I was looking up in the stranger’s face. To look at them now threatened madness. I felt it, and shut my own, pressing my hands over them to keep out the hateful sight.

     So I saw nothing more. But I heard the thud of the coffin upon the ice, and the clatter of the skeleton’s bones, as it bounded into its sepulchral vehicle; then the grit of  the frozen snow beneath the rush of that devil’s tobogan!

     This last sound chased irresolution. I knew what a struggle lay before me. With strength gained from despair I nerved myself to meet the danger, feeling that human skill and courage must be strained to distance my demon pursuer.

     If I failed, what then? I shuddered to think of it. New light had been flung upon the strange conditions of our race, and well I understood their meaning. No marvel that he found his tobogan too narrow. No wonder that he wearied of it and would change it for my ‘Indian Chief’. In the coffin, which thundered behind me, I was to make the next skeleton. Had he not said that I must use it, unless I conquered in this hopeless race?

     Thus, life and death on its issue, I bent myself to the contest, losing not an inch that all I knew of steering and the hill could give me. 

     I have said before that the right-hand track was singularly free from obstructions till you approach the foot of the hill. The descent was much more even than on either of the other slides, so that, at first, dexterity and practice availed but little, the utmost any one could do being to keep the sleigh headed straight toward a stump near the bottom, round which the track bent at an angle unpleasantly acute. On a line with this stump — not quite two yards to the right of it — the sharp black top of a rock peeped out above the ice-crust.  

     The passage between this Scylla and Charybdis was not easy to hit on such a night, when a wrong touch of the finger would have sent the sleigh twenty yards from its course. But a greater danger lay beyond. Three or four yards further on, facing the centre of the passage, the trunk of a large tree, with wide-spread roots, completely barred the way in front, leaving only a narrow gap upon the left, into which the steerer had to turn so sharply and suddenly, that, even at ordinary speed, this bend was considered the most difficult piece of sliding on the hill. Of course the difficulty, as well as the danger, increased proportionally with the pace. That night both reached their maximum. A tobogan striking against any obstacle with the frightful impetus with which mine was bowling down the ice, would be knocked to pieces in a moment, and its rider be very fortunate if he escaped with a broken limb. 

      But I thought little of the perils before me. It was the danger behind that engrossed my attention. 

     I stretched myself at full length upon the ‘Chief,’ bringing my weight to bear along its centre as evenly as possible; for the Indian sleigh never gives its best speed to the rider who sits up-right. Thus, on my back, looking towards the stars, and listening to the grating of the ice-crust under the heavy coffin that followed me, I passed a moment of as intense agony as, I think, ever fell to the lot of mortal. Cold as was the night, the perspiration rolled in clammy drops down my forehead, while my teeth closed so firmly together that they ached under the pressure. 

     Judging as well as I could by hearing alone, I concluded that my pursuer followed not directly in my rear, but a little on the left of my course. An instant afterwards the noise grew more distinct, and my heart sank; for I felt that he was gaining on me. Then the noise changed to my right, from which I presumed that he had crossed behind me and taken an inside position, partly because the ground, being there somewhat steeper, favoured the weight of his ponderous conveyance, and partly because – if he could get alongside of my sleigh in this position – it would be easy for him to force me out of the path against the stump that guarded the left of the narrow strait toward which both were rushing. 

     Having now the advantage of the ground, and even, as was evident, the heels of me in an equal race, he overhauled me very rapidly.

     Nearer and nearer came the sweep of his infernal tobogan. It followed – it approached – it closed upon me. I glanced a-head – the trees were yet a hundred yards away – then around. The front of the coffin was level with the end of my tobogan.

     Another second. It was up with my shoulder, looking ever so black and hideous against the purity of the frozen snow. 

     In that breath a thought came to me; not so much a thought as an inspiration.

     I carried on my watch-chain a small gold crucifix, a present from my mother the night before she died. I remembered well, at that moment, what in my heedlessness I had long forgotten that this crucifix, which had remained in our family many years, was valued as possessing more than ordinary sanctity. It was of admirable workmanship. It had been blessed by a bishop, and, report said, worn once by the Superior of a convent, a lady of singular piety, whom, after death, for her good works the church had canonised. My mother, when confiding it to my care, made me promise that I would carry it constantly about my person – a promise kept neglectfully enough by attaching it as a charm to my chain.

     One vigorous pull tore open my coat, another broke the clasp which secured the crucifix. I held it high above my head, neither expecting or daring to hope for help, but clinging to the cross with the same strong, despairing grasp which drowning men fasten upon a straw. 

     With that, close to my right hand, I heard a clatter, as of boards falling in on one another, while a yell of rage disappointed, and terror indescribable, swept in the direction of the “Haunted House,” where it was taken up by an infernal chorus which seemed to send its echoes into the very heart of the mountain. 

     Then my sleigh rubbed with a sudden shock against some obstacle, and, overturning at once, hurled me many yards along the ice-crust, spun helplessly into insensibility. 

     When perception returned, I found myself surrounded by friends, who, in their anxious care, had placed me upon my tobogan, and were occupied in forcing some very good brandy down a throat not usually so reluctant to receive it. 

     My face was bleeding from a cut or two. One of my hands had been badly bruised in my scramble over the snow. These, physically, were all the injuries I sustained from my race with the devil down that terrible hill. Mentally, however, mischief had been done not so easy to cure. 

     To this hour Saturday midnight finds a nervous coward, terrified by every noise, alarmed by every shadow, imagining through each open doorway the approach of a flame-eyed skeleton, and hearing in each creak upon the stair-case the foot-fall of the lonely slider who stables his tobogan in the cellars of the “Haunted House –”

     Hic finit Eugene’s story, told toward its end to a listener who was buried under blankets. 

     “Very well;” you ask. “Now, is this true or false?”

     One test of its truth I might readily have applied. Nothing easier than to go upon the hill on Saturday evening, and stay there alone till twelve o’clock.

     This idea did not occur to me that night. But the thought and purpose to execute it forthwith came next morning. Unfortunately it happened, throughout the rest of the season, that I had some pressing engagement every Saturday evening, which either prevented me from going on the hill at all, or brought me off it, with the crowd, long before midnight.

     But be comforted. It is not unlikely that the hill and the house remain still intact. Should you happen to be in Montreal next winter, try the experiment for yourself. I can promise you a magnificent slide. If the spectre catches you, tant pis pour vous. 

– C. E. Bockus

ꙮ  ꙮ  ꙮ

Source: C.E. Bockus, “Nips Daimon”, Once a Week, (24 May 1862): 602 – 08

Company News

Haunted Montreal is entering the holiday season!

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today. Hear some of the spookiest tales from our tours and our blog told by a professional actor and storyteller. You provide the venue, we provide the stories and storyteller.

We are also offering Christmas Ghost Stories: A Quebecois Tradition, which we have previously offered as a virtual tour, as an in-person Travelling Ghost Storyteller experience.

To find out more, please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog. Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a holiday gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

We also have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise for the holidays. We are selling t-shirts, magnets, sweatshirts (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery.

Purchases can be ordered through our online store.

Lastly, Haunted Montreal is soliciting donations on behalf of Lana Ponting, one of the last survivors of the CIA-funded brainwashing experiments at McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute. At 82, Lana is living with food insecurity in Winnipeg. Like other survivors and their families, Lana hopes that a class action lawsuit will eventually bear fruit.

Please consider making a donation, no matter how small, to the GoFundMe Page that was set up for Lana’s well-being.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or Google Reviews, something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. We are a small, specialized tourism company for fans of deranged history, ghost stories and the macabre and appreciate all the support and feedback we can get!

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on January 13: Sûreté du Québec Police Headquarters

Located on the site of the former Fullum Street Women’s Prison, the Sûreté du Québec Police Headquarters is rumored to host all sorts of paranormal activity. Disembodied screams echo throughout the building, officers have spotted a ghostly inmate wearing a straitjacket, and sometimes the nauseous stench of burnt food – wafting from an unknown source – disgusts staff on duty. To further the headaches of the commanders, a major cockroach problem has made working conditions even more uncomfortable for Quebec’s largest police force.

Author:

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

Translator (into French):

Claude Chevalot holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from McGill University. She is a writer, editor and translator. For more than 15 years, she has devoted herself almost exclusively to literary translation and to the translation of texts on current and contemporary art.

Happy Hallowe’en Season! With over 300 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal is dedicated to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly-researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th!

We are also pleased to announce that all of our award-winning ghost tours and haunted experiences are operating and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, the Haunted Pub Crawl and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery.

Our October blog examines a dark chapter in Montreal’s History when grave-robbing and body-snatching were rampant, leading to numerous sickening scandals and resultant haunted tales. Indeed, Montreal’s most infamous ghost story of the 1800s, that of Simon McTavish’s tobogganing ghost, is partially based on the antics of Montreal’s body snatchers.

Haunted Research

During most of the 1800s, Montreal had a serious problem with body-snatching. With the founding of McGill University in 1821, the Department of Medicine required corpses for education in the Anatomy classroom. Unfortunately, at the time it was illegal to carry out human dissections unless it was part of a criminal’s punishment.  Indeed, for the worst criminals, this ultimate and shameful punishment was sometimes written into sentences delivered by local judges.

For example, a lowly tavern-keeper named Charles Gagnon was sentenced to hang following the brutal murder of a client named Joseph Veau dit Jeanveau on Christmas Day, 1832. After being hanged at the old Montreal Gaol and his body collected by McGill University medical staff, the Montreal Gazette observed that it was “the final completion of the awful sentence that consigns the body of the murderer to the knife of the anatomist.”

Interestingly, in this case, the friends of Charles Gagnon hid in the McGill University Medical Faculty before his body arrived, and later stole the corpse, bringing it back to the St. Laurent Parish in today’s Laval where they begged the priest to bury him in consecrated ground. According to the newspaper: “The Curé of that Parish refused sepulture and gave information to the Professors of the College, who have had the body removed to the dissecting room.” Given a major shortage of legal corpses to autopsy in Montreal, the professors were very relieved that their macabre treasure, Gagon’s cadaver, was returned to the Anatomy Theatre.

Because it was rare to receive executed criminals, professors and students had to get creative in their constant quest for fresh corpses to dissect as part of the medical education offered at McGill University. The only realistic solution was grave robbery, or body snatching.

Medical students robbed graveyards and dead houses of their sepulchral possessions and smuggled them back to the university. With a surreptitious wink to the night watchman, the body was dragged into the Anatomy Theatre. In the early days, these “Resurrectionists”, or “Sack-em-up-men”, were a very clever bunch.

The corpses were exhumed by night and quickly stripped of their clothing and any jewelry to avoid any formal charges of robbery (the corpse itself was not legally designated as private property). Once stripped down naked, the cadaver was swiftly whisked away to the dissecting room.

One of the first bodysnatching episodes that triggered civic unrest among Montreal’s elite happened in the town of Chambly in 1843. The grave robbers burgled the corpse of a well-respected sergeant of the Eighty-Fifth Regiment and left his coffin and clothes strewn among the tombstones. It was an extremely scandalous affair. The police were summoned and soon traced the medical students to an old seigneury house only to find the militiaman’s corpse already dissected and disposed of in a storage vault.

The Montreal Transcript was outraged and denounced the students, describing their dissection room as “A Burking House”. Montrealers were familiar with the twisted legacy of William Burke, a Scottish criminal who murdered people in Edinburgh, Scotland during the 1820s so he could sell their bodies to medical schools. Edinburgh police eventually caught Burke and he was sentenced to hang and then be dissected in public.

Recalling the militiaman’s sacrifices for the British Empire and his many military honours, the Montreal Transcript concluded that “the least the soldier could expect… is that, when consigned to his grave, his remains should lie honoured and undisturbed.”

The scandal so shook the society, that the government took action and unanimously passed the Act to Regulate and Facilitate the Study of Anatomy in December 1843. It proclaimed that the body of any person who died in the care of a government-funded institution was to be handed over to the medical schools unless the corpse was claimed within forty-eight hours, by a “bona fide friend or relative.” Essentially, the law meant that those receiving charity, such as the destitute, the insane, convicts, and children who died in orphanages, would be given over to science unless the body was claimed.

Unfortunately, despite the law, there was still a shortage of bodies to autopsy and grave robbery continued unabated. The fact was that the body snatchers could earn a substantial amount of money per corpse. Many students paid their way through college in this manner, and were absolutely thrilled when Mount Royal Cemetery opened in 1852, followed by the Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery two years later. Not only were these burial plots secluded among the canopy of the mountain, but they weren’t too far a distance from the McGill Medical Building. Furthermore, from the cemeteries it is was all downhill to the campus, making body snatching easier than ever in Montreal.

Body-snatching was often a winter activity, due to the frozen ground preventing the burial of bodies. Until the ground thawed, corpses were stored above ground in cemetery “dead houses,” an easy target for students to forcibly enter and steal bodies. A winter body-snatching trip would typically include hiking to Côte-des-Neiges or Mount Royal cemetery in the dark of night, breaking in to a “dead house”, removing the corpses from their caskets, and then tobogganing the bodies down the snow-covered slope.

One professor named Dr. Shepherd recalled that students burgling the cemeteries of Mount Royal would wrap the bodies in blankets and toboggan them down slopes of Côte des Neiges Road.

Occasionally, there would be an incident in which the body would tumble out into the street in full view of passersby. To avoid suspicion, students would explain that there had been a fatal tobogganing accident, resulting in a naked corpse being sprawled across the snowy road.

In 1858, scandal struck again when the corpse of a widow of a high-ranking soldier named Captain Spillen was stolen from the dead house of the Montreal General Hospital.

The body had been claimed in the proper fashion, however when the funeral party opened the coffin for display, they found two sizeable maple logs instead of the widow’s corpse. The Montreal Herald reported: “A shroud was nicely adjusted over the logs of wood, and on the end of them was placed, with cruel ingenuity, the cap of the deceased lady.”

Following publication, a seething, angry mob gathered and began scouring the city for the perpetrators.

Terrified, the body snatchers dumped the naked corpse of Widow Spillen into an empty lot on the corner of Sainte Catherine and Guy streets and then fled as fast as their feet could take them.

Perhaps even more outrageous was a situation recorded in McGill medical student Griffith Evan’s 1862 journal. A group of students had snatched a corpse from a country graveyard only to be betrayed by their sleigh man when the bereaved family announced a reward for the body’s recovery. When the corpse was found at McGill, a humbled Board of G­­overnors returned it to the family, making great public assurances that from now on they “would not admit any corpse into the dissecting room except through the regular channel.”

However, this was an empty promise. Evans explained: “The ‘regular channel’ is from the United States where plenty of negroes are obtained cheap, packed in crates and passed over the border as provisions of flour.” Evans even added that it was somewhat rare for him to ever dissect a white body during his studies at McGill.

In another misadventure, Evans reported that one day deep in the winter of 1862 he was preparing to dissect a human corpse when the calm of the McGill Anatomy Theatre was suddenly broken. Two students, who had illegally stolen a corpse from some unnamed cemetery, were dragging it in for an autopsy when another student burst in, out of breath. He declared: “Good God! That is my aunt; my cousin, her son, is down below at the chemical lecture and will be up here soon.” With this, the anguished nephew fainted and those in the dissection rooms fell into a panic. “What shall we do?” one of them asked.

Another replied: “Dissect the skin off the face quickly!” As the nephew was being revived, the two students grabbed their instruments and immediately set about surgically removing the dead woman’s face, which was soon completely unrecognizable.

When the bereaved son finally arrived, according to Evans: “He went to see the new white subject, cheerfully joked with the dissectors, congratulated them for their successful adventure,” and then set about unwittingly dissecting his own mother.

That same year, a publication called Once a Week, printed by Bradbury & Evans in London, England, published a story called “Nips Daimon” in Volume 6 (December 1861 – June 1862). The deranged tale about a horrible apparition that toboggans down the mountain in a coffin is clearly inspired by the Simon McTavish ghost story. Following the untimely death of the Scottish fur baron in 1804, his ghost was said to terrorize citizens out snowshoeing or tobogganing on the mountain.

The story was made spookier by the fact McTavish had left an abandoned castle on the slopes above McGill Campus. Over time, the castle began to take on a look of dilapidation, as it slowly decayed and crumbled. Cattle wandered inside the ruin during the summer, and in the winter it took on an eerie appearance, as snow drifted through it. It was grey, gloomy, and almost skull-like, its empty windows staring down at the city below.

Further up the slope was a mausoleum that housed McTavish’s mortal remains.

McGill University was founded in 1821 and it is said that McGill students would go to burial vault in the winter, wearing snowshoes, and shout and holler to try and raise the ghost of McTavish. In 1827 the students went too far – the locks of the vault were smashed, and the interior of the tomb was violated.

An indignant article appeared in The Gazette condemning the vandalism. The locksmith later reported that he felt a frightening presence in the vault and noticed McTavish’s coffin had fallen on the floor, spilling its contents. Without venturing inside, he quickly repaired the lock and fled.

It didn’t take long before the castle was said to be haunted. Some people reported spirits flitting in and out of the doors and windows and horrible groaning noises coming from within the unfinished building, whereas others said that a ghost could be seen dancing on the roof. Even more strangely, it was said that McTavish could be seen on certain nights tobogganing down Mount Royal – not on a sled, but rather in his own coffin!

While many Montrealers believed the tales and stopped doing winter activities on the slopes, skeptics at the time claimed that it was probably just the Resurrectionists tobogganing corpses down from the cemeteries on Mount Royal to the McGill Medical Building – and not the ghost of McTavish. Whatever the case, the story fired up the imaginations in London. To read “Nips Daimon“, please see pages 602 – 608.

In 1861, the City of Montreal buried the McTavish ghost story, both figuratively and quite literally, by demolishing his crumbling castle and, using the rubble, to literally bury his mausoleum to protect it from further grave-robbery.

As the years passed, body snatching continued abated.  

Perhaps the most notorious case occurred in February, 1871, when two deceased Roman Catholic nuns were stolen from the dead house of a church in Lachine. The public exploded in fury, with the Montreal Gazette declaring “there has never yet been related a case of this kind of a more repulsive nature.” Priests thundered from the pulpits, citizens wrote outraged letters to the editor, and a large reward was offered for the return of the sacred bodies.

Perhaps afraid at the outrage they had generated, the thieves panicked and hid the bodies in a snowbank. They then concocted a ploy whereby they would claim the award anonymously in return for the location of the now-frozen corpses. The church complied, and the public outrage only worsened.

The English newspapers described them as “ruthless,” “heartless,” “ghoulish robbers,” “consummate scoundrels,” and “band of half-drunken and blasphemous students” whose “disgusting transactions” amounted to “atrocity” and “diabolical sacrilege.”

One anonymous citizen even published a vengeful warning in the Montreal Star, entitled “Body Snatchers Beware”, on February 11, 1871:

“We saw to-day a tremendous weapon just finished for the watchman at the Côte des Neiges Cemetery. The fun is of enormous proportions and will be loaded with about eight ounces of buck-shot. Parties meditating a raid on the above place of burial will do well to recollect the formidable shooting iron now in the hands of the wide-awake watchman. A pot shot gang of grave desecrators would most likely supply the dissecting room with enough subjects for several weeks.”

The reputation of medical students continued to sink. The Montreal Gazette even alleged that the Resurrectionists were capable of cold-blooded murder and infanticide, making them only more notorious and despised as the century wore on.

!n 1889, a citizen named R.S. Wright, who had graduated from McGill, wrote a letter The Daily Witness entitled “A Mockery of Death”. Wright complained about students from McGill and Laval universities parading human remains through the streets during a Carnival.

Wright recalled his days living in a residence at McGill, describing the medical students as such: “Among them was a clique, or gang, who used to flourish human bones, and talk of making tobacco pouches out of human hide, etc., etc. They were exceedingly drunken and immoral, and I used occasionally to see one of them with his head out of a window vomiting liquor into the quadrangle.”

After this gang threatened to throw Wight’s friend into an “ash pit, under the college, where refuse from dissecting room and other filth were thrown”, he stated: “since that time I have entertained a very poor opinion of men who flourished bones and skulls, or wore slippers made of human hide.”

Wright continued: “None but savages would make a mockery of human remains, or exhibit them in a pantomime.” He then pointed out that First Nations “generally show extraordinary care for human remains, and expend the most tedious ceremonies over them, and when a spot has been consecrated by funeral rites, severe punishment will overtake those who violate it.”

It soon appeared as though things were getting out of control. Illustrious Montreal anatomist Francis Shepherd recalled in the early 1880s, the McGill Faculty of Medicine was paying body snatchers between “thirty to fifty dollars” per corpse, a substantial amount at the time. Indeed, from December 1882 to March 1883 there were a reported 26 episodes of grave robbery in Montreal, prompting demands for stronger legislation.

In 1883, the Anatomy Act of Quebec was passed on March 30. The act effectively served to reinforce and empower the 1843 legislation with coercion and punishment. All hospitals, orphanages, prisons, poorhouses and other government-funded charities were forced to hand over corpses of those who had died there, and the body reclamation period was reduced to 24 hours. Medical schools that acquired bodies from anyone but the municipal Anatomy Inspector would be fined as much as $200, as would government-funded charities that refused to hand over their unclaimed dead. While St. Patrick’s Orphan Asylum initially objected, the government coerced them into sending the dead bodies of orphaned children to Anatomy under threat of punishment.

The Quebec Anatomy Act was an undeniable success. In March, 1884, the Canada Medical and Surgical Journal announced that no grave robbing had been reported in Quebec that winter, stating: “The requirements of the Medical Schools have been amply met.”

And thus, the dark and deranged arts of bodysnatching came to a crashing conclusion. Montreal’s era of grave robbery was effectively over and the twisted exploits of the Resurrectionists began to fade from the public memory. By the twentieth century, any mention of body-snatching had all but disappeared. Yet, as noted in the early issues of The McGill Daily, the legacy of these “brave resurrectionists” lived on in the medical faculty for decades.

Every year, students would celebrate “King Cook”, the medical faculty’s custodian who assisted students in sneaking stolen corpses onto the campus.

These celebrations consisted of a parade down Saint Catherine Street and humorous theatrical productions, which the famed professor Stephen Leacock was known to particularly enjoy.

The notorious “King Cook Celebration” last occurred in 1926, and since then the history of the medical student body-snatching has been largely forgotten.

However, these dark and twisted stories never totally disappeared from the imaginations of Montrealers. Indeed, they have been making a comeback ever since Haunted Montreal started resurrecting the McTavish story by doing in-depth research and offering ghost tours to his gravesite, starting in 2011 with the Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk. Haunted Montreal wants to ensure this deranged part of the city’s medical history and heritage is never, ever forgotten!

Company News

Haunted Montreal is ready for the Hallowe’en Season, with five different ghostly experiences available in both English and French! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, the Haunted Pub Crawl and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery. Tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal has also launched our first promotional video ever! Please share it if you like it!

Our new Paranormal Investigation of the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery is an experience designed for those interested in the paranormal and ghost hunting, as seen on ghost hunting programs like Rencontres Paranormales, Most Haunted, TAPS’ Ghost Hunters, Haunted Collector and others.

Hosted by an expert in the paranormal, clients will be provided with ghost-hunting tools such as dowsing rods, EMF Readers, Temperatures Guns and other devices to communicate with the many deranged spirits that haunt the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery.

The Paranormal Investigation runs every Friday night at 8 p.m. until early November and tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal would also like to announce that our company supports the Victims and Survivors of the Allan Memorial Institute, the only Canadian ghost story with over 300 human victims.

On Sunday, October 6 Haunted Montreal was represented at a protest in Ottawa and plans to continue working with the survivors as they demand justice through a class-action lawsuit:

“The Montreal Experiments consisted of extreme mind-control brainwashing experimentation on unwitting patients, making a mockery of the doctor-patient relationship. Simply put, the Montreal Experiments were a form of psychological torture inflicted upon hundreds of unsuspecting persons and which had traumatizing, damaging, and emotionally-crippling effects that lasted for the remainder of their lives and the lives of their families. To this day, neither the Canadian government, the CIA, McGill, nor the Royal Victoria Hospital have issued formal apologies for their involvement with the Montreal Experiments.”

We will keep our readers updated regarding ways to help support this important case.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl or paranormal investigation during the 2019 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on November 13: Lachine Canal

The Lachine Canal is widely considered one of Montreal’s most haunted places. Since it opened in 1825, hundreds of people have drowned in its dark waters. These included suicides, murder victims, people who drowned while swimming and those who died during industrial accidents. The polluted banks are also peppered with old buildings, many being re-purposed into condominiums, that are reputed to be haunted. Last but not least, not only are ghost ships known to ply the canal, but there are also hundreds of bodies buried along its length, mostly victims of the Irish Famine of 1847, resulting in all sorts of ghosts and paranormal activity.

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec).

With over 200 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal is dedicated to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly-researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

Our December edition examines Christmas Victorian ghost storytelling traditions in Montreal and throughout the British Empire and America. Telling tales of terror around a crackling fire was a very popular activity in the 19th Century, long before the days that radio, television and the Internet came into being and almost snuffed out this beloved and ghostly tradition.

While Haunted Montreal is in winter mode and will not offer any more public ghost tours until April, 2019, we are pleased to announce that our Haunted Pub crawl proto-type is happening in January, and we plan to offer this experience to the public starting in January or February, 2019.

For those seeking outdoor ghost walks during our off-season, Haunted Montreal is still offering private tours for groups of 15 or more people, including company outings, school groups, bachelorette parties and other gatherings of all types. Please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com to organize a private tour for your group. These ghost tours require very warm clothing during the winter months and the Haunted Mountain tour is not offered once there is snow on the ground due to dangerous and icy conditions on Mount Royal / Otsirà:ke.

Haunted Research

During the Victorian era, there was a popular tradition of telling ghost stories all across the colonial British Empire, including in the City of Montreal. The origins of the Yuletide ghost story have little to do with the kind of commercial Christmas that has been celebrated since the Victorian age. These spooky tales reflect darker, ancient, and more fundamental issues, such as the Winter Solstice, death, rebirth, and the rapt connection between a ghost storyteller and his or her audience. However, being Victorian, they are packaged in the cozy trappings of the holiday. During Christmas seasons of the 19th and early 20th Century, Montrealers celebrated the re-telling of these deranged ghost stories with a hot glass of mulled brandy or wine by a warm, crackling fire in the hearth.

The Victorian era was signified by the period of British Queen Victoria’s reign, from June 20, 1837 until her death on January 22,  1901. The era was characterized as stuffy, uptight and oppressive with the expression “Close your eyes and think of England” being offered to women to justify sexual reproduction and overly-lusty men. The Victorian era was heavily influenced by oppressive patriarchal norms, but also Romanticism and even Mysticism in regards to religion, social values, and arts.

While Victorians were often scientifically-minded, they also had a deep love of magic and paranormal spectacles. Mediums and séances were extremely popular, as were hypnotism shows and other entertainment of this genre.

During this time, Great Britain was embarking on a global campaign of imperial expansion, colonization and domination, particularly in Asia and Africa. These disturbing militaristic actions made the British Empire the largest in human history. Infamously known as “the Empire where the sun never sets”, the imperial project resulted in destruction, death and havoc for millions of people being colonized all across the world. At the same time, it spread the tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas internationally.

The tradition of telling ghost stories during the Yuletide season is much older than the Victorian era, but peaked during that time. Telling ghost stories during the winter is a hallowed folk custom that stretches back centuries, when families would pass the frosty winter nights with tales of spooks, phantoms and monsters. In Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale”, Mamillius proclaims: “A sad tale’s best for winter. I have one. Of sprites and goblins.”

According to Religious Studies professor Justin Daniels at the University of Pennsylvania: “Christmas as celebrated in Europe and the U.S. was originally connected to the ‘pagan’ Winter Solstice celebration and the festival known as Yule. The darkest day of the year was seen by many as a time when the dead would have particularly good access to the living.”

The Victorian Era saw an explosion in ghost storytelling across the British Empire and U.S.A., triggered by the 1843 invention of the industrial steam-powered rotary printing press. This impressive machine could produce millions of copies in a single day, making books much cheaper and more widely available. Ghost stories had traditionally been an oral form, but with the rotary printing press, publishers suddenly needed a mass of content. Ghost stories were seen as ideal because they were typically short, thematic and popular, plus they could be edited quite easily to the required length.

That same year, Charles Dickens wrote the most famous Christmas ghost story of all time, “A Christmas Carol.” First published in London by Chapman & Hall and illustrated by John Leech, “A Christmas Carol” recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and other spirits. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come terrify Scrooge, who, following an epiphany, is ultimately transformed into a kinder, gentler and more altruistic man. Published on December 19, 1843, the first edition sold out by Christmas Eve. Acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece, by the end of 1844, thirteen editions had been released.

“A Christmas Carol” would go on to become the quintessential Christmas ghost story, giving us new idioms like “Dead as a door-nail” and “You are walking like Tiny Tim”, all the while popularizing the expression “God bless us, every one!”

Following its publication, Christmas ghost stories multiplied and became one of the most popular genres in print media during the Yuletide Season. Indeed, Dickens decided to discontinue writing Christmas publications in 1868, complaining to his dear friend Charles Fechter that he felt “as if I had murdered Christmas a number of years ago (perhaps I did!) and its ghost perpetually haunted me.” By that time, Christmas ghost stories had taken on a Frankenstein-like afterlife of their own, and many other writers rushed to fill the void that Dickens had left wide open.

Meanwhile, in Victorian Montreal, there was no shortage of ghost storytelling during the Yuletide season. Indeed, Montrealers embraced the winter with fantastic carnivals that featured giant ice castles, mock battles involving hundreds of participants, skating parties at the opulent Victoria Rink and magnificent fireworks displays.

When revelers arrived home after a day at the Winter Carnival, the hearth was stoked, mulled wine and brandy were prepared, and Victorian Montrealers gathered around to listen to and tell ghost stories as the flames crackled, casting eerie shadows across so many a parlor throughout the city.

There were plenty of popular ghost stories to be read from books throughout the British Empire, such as Casting the Runes (M. R. James), The Haunted Ceiling and The Red Room (H. G. Wells), Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson, The Three Imposters (Arthur Machen) and Uncle Silas, subtitled “A Tale of Bartram-Haugh“, by Irish ghost story master Sheridan Le Fanu.

In many cases, including in Montreal, local ghost stories were also told.

The most popular ghost story in Montreal in the 19th Century was the deranged legend of Simon McTavish, the spirit of a Scottish fur trader who was said to toboggan down Mount Royal in his own coffin, terrifying local residents!

A Scottish immigrant to Montreal on the heels of the British Conquest, Simon McTavish had taken over the fur trade from the French with his highly profitable Nor’ West Company. At the age of 46, he selected a beautiful 18 year old French bride named Marie-Marguerite Chaboillez. He moved with her to London, England, and hoped to live out the rest of his days in luxurious bliss.

However, she became seriously depressed and wanted to return to Montreal. McTavish complied, and when they arrived he ordered the construction of a lavish castle on the slopes of Mount Royal. If he could not enjoy the luxuries of London, he would create them for himself.

Using the finest materials available, such as hand-cut limestone blocks, the McTavish Castle was built in the style of the baronial estates in the highlands of Scotland. It was to be a striking and luxurious building that could be seen from the city below, a glorious reminder to the richest and most famous person of all: Simon McTavish.

By 1804 the castle was almost finished – the foundations, walls, and roof were in place, and work was about to start installing windows and doors.

McTavish, who was supervising work from a small cottage a few hundred yards to the west of the castle, stayed out in the rain one afternoon. He caught a cold. His doctor advised him to take some rest, but never one to listen to anybody but himself, McTavish continued overseeing the work in the damp weather. His cold quickly developed into pleurisy and pneumonia, and he died suddenly on July 6^th, 1804.

The city was in shock and an elaborate funeral was held on the grounds of the unfinished castle. A magnificent vault was built in the back of the garden, where McTavish liked to read, and it was here that he was interred. His grateful nephews erected a tall stone column in his memory, in honour of his “manly virtues”.

Due to legal issues related to McTavish’s estate and last will, construction of the castle was immediately abandoned. His wife quickly married another man, a certain young British soldier named Lieutenant-Colonel William Smith Plenderleath. She moved happily back to England to raise another family, leaving McTavish to moulder and decompose all alone in the vault.

Over time, the castle took on a look of dilapidation, as it slowly decayed and crumbled. Cattle wandered inside the ruin during the summer, and in the winter it took on an eerie appearance, as snow drifted through it. It was grey, gloomy, and almost skull-like, its empty windows staring down at the city below.

McGill University was founded in 1821 and it is said that McGill students would go to the vault in the winter, wearing snowshoes, and shout and holler to try and raise the ghost of McTavish. In 1827 the students went too far – the locks of the vault were smashed, and the interior of the tomb was violated. An indignant article appeared in The Gazette condemning the vandalism. The locksmith later reported that he felt a frightening presence in the vault and noticed McTavish’s coffin had fallen on the floor, spilling its contents. Without venturing inside, he quickly repaired the lock and fled.

It didn’t take long before the castle was said to be haunted. Some people reported spirits flitting in and out of the doors and windows and horrible groaning noises coming from within the unfinished building, whereas others said that a ghost could be seen dancing on the roof. Even more strangely, it was said that McTavish could be seen on certain nights tobogganing down Mount Royal – not on a sled, but rather in his own coffin!

In a publication called Once a Week, printed by Bradbury & Evans in London, England, the Montreal ghost story of Simon McTavish was released in Volume 6 (December 1861 – June 1862). Titled “Nips Daimon”, the deranged tale is clearly inspired by the Simon McTavish ghost story that was being vividly told all around Victorian Montreal and, indeed, ever since the fur baron’s untimely death in 1804. To read “Nips Daimon“, please see pages 602 – 608.

While the City of Montreal figuratively buried the McTavish ghost story by demolishing his crumbling castle in 1861 and using the rubble to literally bury his mausoleum, it never totally faded from the imaginations of Montrealers. Indeed, it has been making a comeback since Haunted Montreal started resurrecting the story by doing in-depth research and offering ghost tours to his gravesite in 2011.

Haunted Montreal is not the only organization reviving old ghost story telling traditions, which faded considerably with the invention of radio, television and the Internet. Indeed, the world-famous Smithsonian Museum recently made a serious Call to Action to revive the Christmas ghost storytelling tradition, as reported by Irish Central.

More locally, a Windsor, Ontario illustrator named Seth has been republishing Christmas ghost stories with a publishing company called Biblioasis. According to their website:

“Reading a ghost story on Christmas Eve was once as much a part of traditional Christmas celebrations as turkey, eggnog, and Santa Claus. Biblioasis is thrilled to offer this series of beautifully illustrated, collectible books that share these classic Christmas ghost stories with readers across North America. Seth, our world-famous and beloved cartoonist, designs and illustrates each book in his own inimitable way. Trimmed to fit the coziest stocking, they’re perfect gifts for those who want a bit of extra Christmas chill.”

There are also cultural remnants and reinterpretations of the old Christmas ghost storytelling tradition in Montreal.

For example, Centaur Theatre’s Urban Tales series is vaguely based on the Christmas tradition of telling horrible ghost stories. Always set in early December, Urban Tales features bizarre, comedic, disturbing and deranged monologues delivered by local actors.

The website describes the 2018 edition, running December 7 – 15, as such:

“Come share an eggnog with us at Centaur Theatre’s annual antidote to the excess of candy cane-coated, warm-and-fuzzy feelings typical of the holiday season. For five shows only, this seasonal tongue-in-cheek event features some of Montreal’s best actors telling stories – ranging from side-splittingly hilarious to downright bizarre. Accomplished playwright and actor, Harry Standjofski, directs and provides live music between each irreverent tale.”

Incidentally, Standjofski describes Urban Tales as “Christmas stories for those who don’t particularly like Christmas” in this video, which also features some tales.

Another Montreal Victorian Christmas option is to pay a visit to the Sir George-Étienne Cartier National Historic Site, where an annual event called “A Victorian Christmas at the Cartier’s” is held. The historic site invites guests to “Discover how styles dating back to 1867 are still in vogue 150 years later! Be charmed by the elegant Victorian decor featuring miniature fir trees, handmade cards and of course, champagne!”

On its website, the Sir George-Étienne Cartier National Historic Site sets the scene:

“It’s Christmas, 1867; the Confederation has just been formed, and festivities are in full swing at the Cartier home! All the latest trends in decoration, cooking and fashion are sought out to delight the guests. During your visit to the house, discover the history and unexpected origins of some of our still-current holiday traditions. If you’re looking to go out with friends or need a break from December’s hustle and bustle, come visit the Cartier house with its festive decorations. You can enjoy a hot drink by the fireplace, take a souvenir photo with charming period accessories, or make your own personalized holiday card.”

Guests can also “Fill the next year with love and happiness by kissing your good company beneath the traditional mistletoe” and enjoy hot drinks by the fireplace.

Indeed, the website instructs visitors to: “Take a break from the December frenzy and enjoy a hot, old-fashioned drink next to the fireplace. Taste wassail (a hot mulled English drink) and the new Victorian Christmas tea, specially created for the historic site. All of this with ambient music.”

Unfortunately, while clients can sit by a roaring Victorian fire with mulled wassail, it appears that Christmas ghost stories are not yet told at the Sir George-Étienne Cartier National Historic Site. This in an unfortunate fact, given that they certainly would have been told in 1867, when ghost stories were one of the most popular genres throughout the British empire.

To correct this unfortunate cultural gap, Haunted Montreal plans to heed the Call to Action by the Smithsonian Museum and resurrect the spooky Christmas tradition.

As such, Haunted Montreal promises to create a proper Victorian Ghost Storytelling event, set beside by a roaring fire with mulled brandy or wine in hand, for the December Christmas Season in 2019!

COMPANY NEWS

The Hallowe’en Season is now past us, but fans need not worry!

Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce that we will be launching a prototype of our new Haunted Pub Crawl in the month of January and it should be available to the public in January or February, 2019 at the latest.

Haunted Montreal also offers private tours for groups of 15 or more people, including company outings, school groups, bachelorette parties and all types of gatherings. Please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com to organize a private tour.

Haunted Montreal in the News:

Haunted Montreal had a strange experience lately when we contacted Les amis de la montagne (The Friends of the Mountain in English) to ask them about the traditional name of Mount Royal in the local indigenous language of Kanien’keha to improve our visitor experience on Mount Royal.

We were surprised when informed that “There is no known name used by natives for Mount Royal prior to the contact period. In addition, the stories of the discoverers do not mention the name given to the mountain by the natives.”

Thinking this strange, Haunted Montreal contacted the good people in Kahnawake and they told us that the Indigenous name for the mountain is Otsirà:ke in the Kanien’kéha language, and was called that long before Jacques Cartier “re-named” it Mount Royal in 1535, after kindly First Nations guides from Hochelaga led him to the top of Otsirà:ke.

You can see various media reports about the scandal here.

Because Haunted Montreal operates on the un-ceded traditional indigenous territory of Tio’tia:ke, part of the traditional domain of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, the custodian of these lands and waters, we are lobbying  Les amis de la montange to acknowledge the fact that that the original name of the mountain is Otsirà:ke. We are asking them to include this Indigenous information on their website and signs around the mountain park. We are also recommending that they offer a territorial recognition on their website and before all official meetings.

If you agree with Haunted Montreal, we invite you to contact  Les amis de la montange at info@lemontroyal.qc.ca to make your opinion known. Please note that 2.0 tourists are thirsting for Indigenous experiences and information within major cities they visit. In order to avoid losing tourists to other cities,  Les amis de la montange should be inclusive and add Otsirà:ke to it website, materials and signs and start doing proper territorial recognition, otherwise tour operators like Haunted Montreal will lose business to other cities.

We are also pleased to recommend a new book called Macabre Montreal, which could make an excellent Christmas gift.

Written by Mark Leslie and Shayna Krishnasamy, it is a “collection of ghost stories, eerie encounters, and gruesome and ghastly true stories from the second most populous city in Canada.”

The authors write:

“Montreal is a city steeped in history and culture, but just beneath the pristine surface of this world-class city lie unsettling stories. Tales shared mostly in whispered tones about eerie phenomena, dark deeds, and disturbing legends that take place in haunted buildings, forgotten graveyards, and haunted pubs. The dark of night reveals a very different city behind its beautiful European-style architecture and cobblestone streets. A city with buried secrets, alleyways that echo with the footsteps of ghostly spectres, memories of ghastly events, and unspeakable criminal acts.”

With the introduction written by Haunted Montreal, Macabre Montreal is a must-read for anyone interested in Montreal’s dark side.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk during the 2018 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list on the top right of this page.

Coming up on January 13: Montreal’s Haunted Pubs and Drinking Establishments

With over 40 haunted pubs and drinking establishments, Montreal has perhaps the most haunted watering holes of any city on the planet. While Dublin City, Ireland has around 15 haunted pubs and Savannah, Georgia, “America’s most haunted city”, has around 25 paranormal bars, Montreal is clearly the best metropolis to enjoy a glass of spirits with some spirits! Our January blog explores not only haunted pubs, but also other paranormal drinking establishments, from hotel bars and theatre lobbies to private clubs and discotheques. There is even an old brewery, Canadian Legion, train station and McGill University Frat House where suds are imbibed! We also introduce our new Haunted Pub Crawl, being offered for the first time to the public!

Donovan King is a historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbot College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec).

Haunted Research 

Perched at the very top of McTavish Street is Duggan House, a creepy, Gothic mansion. Nestled into Mount Royal, the shadowy estate is currently owned by McGill University. It is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Built in 1861, using grey, hand-cut limestone that was recycled from Simon McTavish’s haunted castle, Duggan House brings a whole new meaning to the expression “school spirit”.

The building is currently used by the Department of Education. At some point during the 1990s, a female Graduate student had a terrifying encounter in Duggan House. She was scheduled to have an important academic meeting her professor in the large foyer of the building. When she entered, she found him in a plush chair, awaiting her. The student sat down opposite him, put her purse on the ground to the right of her, and flipped open her notebook. She was in the process of explaining some new avenues of research, when suddenly she froze and stopped speaking. Her mouth agape, she stared at the shadowy, spiral staircase to the left behind the professor. The student appeared to be in a state of panic and started pointing at the staircase and screaming.

She witnessed the ghostly specter of a woman, clad in a 19th Century petticoat, who materialized on top the spiral staircase and then begin descending into the foyer. The girl was now shrieking hysterically, causing the professor to panic. He immediately spun his chair around to see the imminent danger that was terrorizing his student. There was nothing there.

All of a sudden, they both heard a rattling noise at the window, as though someone had thrown something at the Venetian blinds. The blinds shifted about violently, causing both student and professor to jump up from their chairs. At that moment the student realized that her purse was missing; she began to hyperventilate. As the blinds slowly stopped swinging, the noises stopped. As the professor tried to calm down his distraught student, he looked up towards the window. Her purse was dangling in the Venetian blinds, all tangled up in knots. Other strange phenomena also occur in the Duggan House, such as the sounds mysterious footsteps or the fact that objects are often displaced or go missing.

While nobody is certain exactly who or what is haunting Duggan House, there is a lot of speculation. Some journalists have suggested that perhaps the building is haunted by the infamous ghost of Simon McTavish. Others believe that a worker, who fell three stories to his death while demolishing the castle in 1861, haunts the site. Duggan House was also built from the recycled stones of McTavish’s haunted castle, on the same cursed land, lending credence to a theory that Duggan House is haunted because of its location and building materials.

Built originally for Orrin S. Wood of the Montreal Telegraphy Company, Duggan House was based on blueprints drafted by architect Andrew B. Taft. The Gothic mansion was originally named Braehead, and it passed through the hands of many prominent families. Orrin S. Wood, Charles D. Proctor, Matthew Hamilton Gault, and George Herrick Duggan all raised families in the house. It was also used as a home for convalescing soldiers from 1911 to 1929. In 1944, George Herrick Duggan gifted the property to McGill University on condition that he could stay until his death, which occurred inside the mansion in 1946.

Another theory relates to a mysterious tunnel connecting Duggan House and Purvis Hall to the West. During the 1940s, McGill’s Faculty of Commerce was using both buildings for classes and wanted to ensure ease of movement so they constructed the tunnel in 1946. The problem is that Purvis Hall is also rumoured to be haunted, in this case by aviator Arthur B. Purvis, who died tragically in a plane crash in 1941. Some students whisper about ghosts using the tunnel, traversing between the mysterious estates, for reasons unknown.

Indeed, apparently the Faculty of Commerce moved out in 1977 partly because the business students were unhappy with the haunted facilities. Duggan House was passed to the Faculty of Education, who have occupied the creepy mansion ever since.

While many of the theories suggest the place is haunted by the ghost of a man, none of them explain why a ghostly woman might appear on the spiral staircase.

Perhaps a more feasible explanation might be centered around Elizabeth Joanna Bourne, the wife of politician Matthew Hamilton Gault. She raised 16 children in the home, starting in 1868. Mothering so many children during the era was a very difficult task, even with the help of servants. Five of the Gault children died in infancy, no doubt traumatizing their mother. The first four were all male and they all perished as infants. However, the last child to die was a little 8 year old girl named Beatrice Frederika Baldwin Gault. When Beatrice died in 1880, her mother, Elizabeth, was said to have become unhinged, unable to deal with the tragedy. Could the ghost who appears on the stairs be the spectre of Elizabeth Joanna Bourne, who died in 1908, still tending to her lost children in a paranormal afterlife?

Nowadays, it is not future business leaders being terrified by ghosts, but rather aspiring teachers. McGill Education students are usually known for their enthusiasm, however those studying in Duggan House quickly learn an opposite meaning for the term “school spirit” – one that doesn’t bring about a sense of warmth and solidarity, but rather feelings of fear and panic.

Company News 

Firstly, Haunted Montreal is very pleased to announce that we now have a Tripadvisor page! As a company that strives for excellence, we welcome positive feedback from our clients and invite them to write a review of one of our ghost tours!

Secondly, Haunted Montreal’s public season is in full swing offers and ghost tours are available to private groups!

Private tours can be arranged for groups of 15 or more people and are subject to availability. For more information, please contact us at info@hauntedmontreal.com.

The public season is listed here:

Haunted Mountain Saturday, June 20 at 8 pm (Montreal Infringement Festival)

Haunted Downtown Friday, June 26 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, July 3 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Saturday, July 11 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, July 17 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Friday, July 24 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, August 7 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Saturday, August 15 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, August 21 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Saturday, August 29 at 8 pm

We may add more tour dates in case of high demand.

Please note that the Haunted Mountain ghost tour on Saturday, June 20 is included as part of the 12th annual Montreal Infringement Festival. This festival celebrates a do-it-yourself culture in the arts and opposes corporate manipulation. The festival was created after the trademarking of the word “Fringe” by business interests and subsequently re-naming the once grassroots festival after corporate sponsors. The bilingual festival features dozens of artists. Details here: www.infringemontreal.com

Haunted Montreal supports authenticity in the arts and rejects corporate models that exploit artists and audiences. As such, Haunted Montreal is proud to be a part of the Infringement Festival and we encourage our readers to check out some of the other performances during the fest, running June 17 – 21 in Montreal!

Thank you for reading the Haunted Montreal Blog! Don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list if you want to receive the blog on the 13th of every month!

Coming up on July 13th: Hauntings in the Point Saint Charles Legion. This inconspicuous branch of the Canadian Royal Legion, located at 543 rue Sainte-Madeleine, is known by employees and locals to be haunted. Groups such as “Ghosts and Stories of Point St Charles” (Facebook) discuss the hauntings feverishly and Legion employees, such as the bartender, sometimes regale visitors with tales of their paranormal experiences.

Donovan King is a historian, teacher and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbot College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill) and MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary).