The solidarity and stubborn independence of the Scots was dramatically illustrated by the famous "Megantic Outlaw" incident of 1888-89. It began when Donald Morrison, who had recently returned from the American West, persisted in harassing the French-Canadian family who had come to live on his father's expropriated farm. Even after the farm was burned, the authorities refused to arrest him, but a local American smuggler volunteered to do the job. Morrison killed him in a shoot out on the main street of Lake Megantic, then refused to flee the area, leading the QuΘbec Police on a humiliating cat-and-mouse chase for over one year. This was possible only because his fellow Scots protected him in spite of a $3,000 reward offer; in fact, several of them were jailed for aiding him.
This photograph of Morrison's aging father and the rocky homestead where he had to start over again as a colonist helps to explain the resentment the young man felt at the expropriation. Number 1 is where Morrison's two captors were hiding on the day he emerged from the cabin, ostensibly to parley with a judge during a truce. In spite of gunshot wounds, he reached number 2 before falling over the fence and being captured. He died in prison a few years later but to the local Scots he remained a symbol of defiance in the face of a hostile world.
Courtesy: La SociΘtΘ d'Histoire des Cantons de l'Est, Sherbrooke
