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16 Slingshot Justice

In l928, when Al Capone was shooting up Chicago with machine guns, a gang of twelve-year-old boys roamed our neighbouring town of Hespeler, shooting out streetlights with slingshots. The slingshot (ask Goliath) is a lethal weapon, and today boys would be forced to register them.

One sunny day Odele Gehiere, his brother, Arsiene, Cecil Proud, Billy Black, Ernie Lee, and Archie Scott armed at the gravel pit behind Hillcrest School and swaggered down Queen Street with pockets full of stones as round and smooth as robins’ eggs. They were sly enough not to shoot at anything in broad daylight, but Arsiene Gehiere, testing the feel of a stone in his sling, lost his grip and accidentally fired the round through the front window of a house owned by a man notorious for his hatred of little boys.

The man charged into the street in a frothing rage, ordered the boys to stand where they were, and ran back into his house to call the police. The police at that time consisted of Chief Tom Wilson. The chief had a jail but no patrol car and had to call George Woods’s taxi service to deliver him to the sites of crime. Failing to get a coherent explanation for the broken window at the site, the chief made the boys march ahead of the taxi the few blocks to the police station in the town hall.

There he drew a confession from Arsiene Gehiere and demanded to know how such an “accident” could happen. Gehiere loaded his slingshot with a choice stone and stretched the rubber. “It just slipped from my fingers,” he said, “like this.” And the stone shot across the room straight through the frosted glass on the door that said Chief of Police. The chief, adjusting his face, marched the six boys into a jail cell and held them there for one hour.

Archie Scott said the boys’ parents had to pay for both windows but couldn’t remember how much they cost. The brief jail term seemed to straighten out the boys. Archie told me this story just a few years back, and he was still law-abiding. Indeed none of the boys involved embarked on a life of crime except Ernie Lee who, I am told, joined the Tory Party.

George Woods, the taxi driver, told me he drove Chief Wilson to crime sites, usually the local beer parlours, and to the jail for years, even helping him carry drunks to the cells, and never once billed the town for his services. That was the way things were done then. After George served as deputy for nearly two years, the chief said to him, “George, some day when you can spare the time it wouldn’t be a bad idea to drive down to Galt and get your driver’s licence.”