Review of The Haweaters
“TEHKUMMAH – The historical novel The Haweaters, that hit bookstores last week, brings to life a real-life double murder that rocked the burgeoning community of Tehkummah in the summer of 1877.
Hot on the heels of the re-release of Murders and Mysteries of Manitoulin Island this summer, a chapter of which features the tragic tale of a deadly dispute between neighbours the Bryans and the Amers, comes The Haweaters by Vanessa Farnsworth, a BC-based journalist. Ms. Farnsworth is also a direct descendent of William Bryan, one of two members of the Bryan family who were murdered almost a century and a half ago.
“I don’t know what I was expecting to find when I started researching this story,” Ms. Farnsworth says. “I knew my ancestors had been murdered on Manitoulin Island and I had a general idea of the circumstances surrounding those murders. I guess I was surprised to discover that my family weren’t innocent victims of what happened to them. They played a large role in bringing about their own fate.”
The inspiration for the novel came from the 112th edition of the ‘Through the Years’ series published by Jack McQuarrie’s Manitoulin Printing in February of 1993 in which the murder was featured. That edition was given to Ms. Farnsworth by her grandmother who had been asked to review an early draft of the story by the story’s author, the late George Skippen of Sheguiandah, to ensure that nothing in it caused any offence. It didn’t.
“My grandmother was a very pragmatic person,” the author continues. “She wouldn’t have seen her great-grandfather’s murder as something that should be hidden in the shadows. Of course, it probably helped that the version of the story that appeared in ‘Through the Years’ left out many of the more salacious details.”
Mr. Skippen, as it happens, was Ms. Farnsworth’s grandmother’s cousin and it wasn’t until that edition of ‘Through the Years’ was given to the family that the author learned of the untimely death of her ancestors.
About five years ago Ms. Farnsworth’s work began in earnest. As the murder occurred two years before The Manitoulin Expositor was first published in 1879, historical data was harder to come by. With the help of a grant, Ms. Farnsworth tracked down trial records and the subsequent appeals, pored through the Michael’s Bay Historical Society, Little Schoolhouse and Museum archives and books by Tehkummah author Derek Russell and eventually was able to imagine a picture of these families in that time on Manitoulin Island.
She also saw the survey maps of that era and located the Bryan and Amer properties.
“It was an eerie, strange experience to stand at the place your family was murdered,” she admits.
As there were a number of “blank spots” in the historical data, Ms. Farnsworth said she decided to make the work a piece of historical fiction and give life to the personalities.
The trial records paint a particularly interesting picture of the people involved. “It’s fairly clear that everyone was lying to some degree,” Ms. Farnsworth notes. And while there were definite pro and anti-George Amer camps, who with his son Laban was tried for the murder of William and Charles Bryan. There was nobody there to say one thing—good, bad or otherwise—to the character of Ms. Farnsworth’s ancestor William Bryan.
“There were a lot of scores to settle during this trial,” she adds.
Each of the 10 chapters is told from a different side of the story spanning the course of roughly 24 hours, Ms. Farnsworth explains.
The Haweaters is published by Winnipeg’s Signature Editions and is available at The Expositor’s bookstore, Print Shop Books.”
Read the full review at Manitoulin Expositor
More Reviews of this title
“Gossip, innuendo, murder
Having written a memoir about being the first confirmed case of a B.C. resident with Lyme’s Disease, Vanessa Farnsworth has produced two more titles, including the recently released The Haweaters (Signature Editions $18.95) about the real-life double-murder of Charles and William Bryan by two members of the Amer family on Manitoulin Island, Ontario in 1877. The incident pitted a wealthy landowner against his impoverished neighbour and involved gossip, innuendo and scandal.”
Read the full review at BC BookWorld.
“Novel breathes life into the murders of former Erin residents
ERIN – When the historical novel The Haweaters was released earlier this month, Canadians were introduced to a tale of murder that has circulated on Manitoulin Island for many generations.
“It seems like every islander knows a version of this story,” said the book’s author, British Columbia-based journalist Vanessa Farnsworth.
“And although the versions vary somewhat in the details, the one area where they all agree is that on one bright moonlit night in 1877, William and Charles Bryan were brutally murdered by their neighbours.”
The killing of the father and son, who had relocated to Manitoulin Island from the Erin area just a few years before their untimely deaths, and the many reasons why those murders occurred is the focus of the book.
“The more I dug into it, the better the story got,” said Farnsworth, who has spent years researching both the murders and the role that the hardships those early European settlers to Manitoulin Island had to endure in an effort to get into the mindset of the people involved.
“It wouldn’t have been easy to live on the island way back then,” she said.
“Some of the difficulties those early settlers had to endure would have driven a saint to misbehave. And these people definitely weren’t saints.”
The Haweaters is Farnsworth’s first foray into historical fiction. Learn more visit http://www.vanessafarnsworth.com.”
Read the full review at The Wellington Advertiser.
“A Creston-based author and journalist recently had her third book published in August, which is a historical fiction novel that explores and fictionalizes certain events surrounding the real-life murder of her great, great, great grandfather.
The Haweaters author, Vanessa Farnsworth, is the descendant of William Bryan, a homesteader who was brutally murdered alongside his son Charles by father-and-son duo George and Laban Amer on Ontario’s Manitoulin Island in 1877.
“It came to me as family lore. I got it from my mother who got it from her mother,” said Farnsworth. “There’s a lot of exaggeration, so you’re not sure what’s true and what’s not. The journalist in me decided to go back to source documents: the trial documents. No one seems to be consulting them.”
While the murders are fact, what Farnsworth fictionalized and examines is the motivations behind the killings.
“We don’t really know what happened that night. I can’t say 100 per cent what happened that night,” she said.
The novel revolves around 10 different points of view that all come from the trial testimony, resulting in 10 different versions of the story.
“There are 10 chapters and each chapter is told by a different person’s point of view, and it covers 24 hours leading up to the murders and then immediately following the murders,” she said.
She added that one of the reasons why she decided to fictionalize certain aspects of the story was because of all of the lying that had gone on after the murders had taken place.
“Even during the appeals process, a lot of people were misrepresenting the truth. Here I am almost 150 years later, trying to figure out what really happened on that night,” she said. “The answer is that you can’t tell 150 years later. We got 10 different versions of what happened, and the question was who’s telling the truth? Because they’re not all telling the same story.”
She was first introduced to a modern interpretation of the story in 1993, through a booklet series published in Manitoulin Island called Through The Years. The version of the story featured in the booklet was written by Farnsworth’s grandma’s cousin.
“My grandmother died in 2011, and I decided to take another look at this story. That’s when the research process started,” she said. “There wasn’t one repository of all this information. I didn’t even know if this was a real event. It seemed like a real event.”
Farnsworth, who moved to Creston from southern Ontario 15 years ago, began to seriously research the story in 2013, which primarily revolved around tracking down trial documents.
“It took about five years of research to track it all down. Some of it was done in libraries in Toronto. Some of it was done in Ottawa at the Library and Archives Canada,” she said. “Other research was done at the Archives of Ontario in Toronto. Of course, on Manitoulin Island, there’s a whole bunch of museums there, so a lot of information I got from museums.”
While she completed her detective work on the story in 2018, the writing process for the novel began in 2016 and was finished in 2019.
“Having done my research, my family does not come off real well. They maybe weren’t the nicest people on the planet. They did a lot of terrible things,” she said.
Despite the nature of the story, she described the novel — which was published on Aug. 1 — as a fun read.
“Forget about the part that it’s about real people — it is fun and interesting, the trouble they caused for each other,” she said. “It’s unfortunate that it ended in murder, but so much of it was just petty. People setting fires and burning down peoples’ fences.”
Now that the book is published, Farnsworth said that she plans on returning to the world of science journalism for the next while.
“I hope readers have a good time,” she said.”
Read the full review at Creston Valley Advance.
“A British Columbia-based author and science journalist, formerly based in Penticton, has released a new historical novel.
The Haweaters is based on a story of murder that has circulated on Northern Ontario’s Manitoulin Island for many generations.
“I first heard the story from my mother who got it from her mother. And my grandmother learned it from her cousin,” said Vanessa Farnsworth.
“It seems like everyone on the island has a slightly different take on the murders, but the version I heard is the one that has grown in popularity with island residents and those fascinated by the early history of European settlement on Manitoulin Island.”
The tale revolves around the brutal killings of William and Charles Bryan by their neighbours George and Laban Amer in the burgeoning community of Tehkummah 1877.
The killings resulted in a sensational murder trial filled with accusations of wrongdoing that ran the gamut from arson, vandalism, and drunkenness to horse rustling, beatings, sexual impropriety and more.
“It may have been an isolated community, but you could hardly call it a sleepy one,” says Farnsworth, who is the great-great-great-granddaughter of murder victim William Bryan.
“The fact that it was my own family members who were murdered was definitely part of the appeal of this story for me. But beyond that, it’s just such a compelling tale. There’s a reason why people are still talking about what happened almost 150 years later.”
The Haweathers is published by Winnipeg’s Signature Editions and is Farnsworth's first foray into historical fiction.
Farnsworth lived in Penticton from 2003-06 and was a Summerland-based master gardener. She still returns to the valley on a frequent basis.”
Read the full review at Penticton Herald.
“This novel is based on the real-life double murder of Charles and William Bryan by two members of the Amer family on Manitoulin Island in 1877 – a murder that pitted a wealthy landowner against his impoverished neighbour.”
Read the full review at Prairie Books NOW.
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