Crime and Punishment: The Saga of Morrill Magoon

By Zachary Bombardier

Counterfeiting, forgery, repeated imprisonments, and a commuted death sentence took Morrill Magoon away from the Eastern Townships and all the way to Bermuda. On November 19^th, his fascinating life will be the topic of a Robin Burns lecture hosted at Bishop’s University and presented by the Eastern Townships Resource Centre (ETRC). For this lecture, historian Dr. Jack Little will examine what Magoon’s life reveals about the judicial system of Lower Canada, the role of counterfeiting within the Townships and across the border with New England, and the links between the former colony and the British Empire in the early nineteenth century.  

Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, Dr. Little’s research leading up to this lecture on Magoon’s life reflects a longstanding interest in the history of Quebec. This interest was first kindled at Bishop’s University, where an Honours seminar on Quebec history taught by Dr. Claude Thibault, then Chair of the History department, changed his perspective of the discipline. “It was the first seminar I had actually been able to take and suddenly I realized history could be interesting,” he recalled.   

After being encouraged by Dr. Thibault to pursue his M.A. studies in the Maritimes, Dr. Little realized how much meaningful historical research could be done on small geographic regions. He was particularly struck by the almost complete neglect of the Eastern Townships by scholars. His doctoral dissertation research at the University of Ottawa sought to address this gap by examining French Canadian colonization of the region. The topic was particularly interesting to him because he had been born in Inverness, a township near Thetford Mines that became almost entirely Francophone over the years. Dr. Little was “interested in the roots” of this change throughout the region, curious to know when it started and how it took place.   

It was over the course of his research for his PhD thesis during the early 1970s that he first stumbled across Morrill Magoon. Patricia Kennedy, the pre-Confederation archivist at what was then the Public Archives of Canada, had brought him to Dr. Little’s attention. “He was always stuck in the back of my mind,” Dr. Little said, and finally he decided to take a closer look.   

Following the threads of Magoon’s turbulent life meant drawing on the work of others, including research by John Scott on Georgeville’s history, and judicial records published online by Dr. Donald Fyson, a legal historian at Université Laval. In addition to digitized newspapers from the period, Dr. Little was able to follow Magoon’s life and trace “his very complicated history” of arrests, imprisonments, and releases, eventually culminating in his conviction and transportation to Bermuda.   

With this lecture, Dr. Little is not so much interested in drawing a lesson or moral from Magoon’s life as he is in “studying the past for its own sake.” He hopes that the audience will be drawn to Magoon’s story as an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the legal and social realities of nineteenth century Lower Canada and, in his words, “appreciate that it was a very different world.”  

Dr. Little’s lecture, “Crime and Punishment: The Saga of Morrill Magoon, Borderland Counterfeiter and Forger, 1814-34″ will take place in the Cleghorn Room (McGreer building), at Bishop’s University on Thursday, November 19, at 7 p.m.