My search for Harold Pringle began in Ottawa at the National Archives of Canada, where I placed an Access to Information Request for his military service record. A service record lists generic information, medical details and conduct reports, and each soldier who served during the war has one. My request took three months to process—the file had to be censored. When I finally got access, the archivist who handed me Pringle’s file said it was the largest he had ever seen. But the file did not tell me much about his life before the military. There was nothing of the formative years that psychologists like to muse about. It gave his date of birth, February 16, 1920, and listed his parents’ names, Mary Ellen and William Pringle. It listed his hometown as Flinton, Ontario. While factual, these figures told me nothing human about him. I requested a photocopy of the file. The woman who took the order asked me, “The entire file?” and looked askance at the seven-inch stack that sat between us on her desk. “Yes,” I replied. “The entire file.”
It was lucky I did because listed in bad handwriting on a form among the approximately one thousand pages of documentation were the names of three of Harold’s siblings. I knew I now had a shot at finding Harold’s family. I began combing through Canadian telephone books looking for Pringles, reminding myself that families back in the 1930s tended to be large and hoping that at least one Pringle sibling might still be in or around Flinton. With a sketchy list in hand, I mailed out bushels of form letters to small towns and cities such as Madoc and Belleville. The letters were brief and addressed to “Pringle Family Members.” They asked the recipient if he or she was related to Harold Pringle or had any knowledge of him. After two months and no replies, I made cross-reference searches on the Internet and collected telephone numbers. I began making cold calls. Still there were no results. One morning I made a call to a woman named Veronica and went through what was becoming a pat speech: “Hi, my name is Andrew Clark. I am a journalist researching a book on a man named Harold Joseph Pringle. I was wondering, were you related to Harold Joseph Pringle or do you have any knowledge of him?”
A woman’s voice answered, meekly, “No, never heard of him.” She politely excused herself and hung up.
More weeks went by and hope began to fade. Tracking people down by last name is difficult, especially if they don’t want to be found. It seemed likely that I might never see a photograph of Harold Pringle, never even get an accurate description of his personality. Without the words of those who knew him, the book I wanted to write would be nothing more than a collection of statistics and court records. After all, Harold Pringle was no master criminal. He was never immortalized in the newspapers, and following his execution, the Canadian government erased him as fast as it could. In fact, the Canadian military maintained that none of its soldiers were executed during the Second World War. Even the service record I had viewed had been sealed for forty years. If I could not contact a family member, I would be forced to piece Pringle’s early years together from pure conjecture.
Then, in mid-May, a woman named Teresa telephoned, saying that Veronica, the woman I had called months before, was in fact Harold Pringle’s sister and that she was willing to meet with me. There was a catch—I must come up immediately. I took down the address, walked out of my office and got on the highway. That afternoon, Veronica and Teresa, who turned out to be Harold’s younger sisters, greeted me cordially. They were very gracious, but they were both, understandably, suspicious of my motives. “I don’t know why you are doing this,” Veronica said, running her fingers across the top of her sister’s kitchen table. “It’s going to cause an awful lot of pain for so many people. Just such an awful lot of pain.”1
More than anything else, Veronica and Teresa feared publicity. After his execution Harold had become a shameful secret, and there were nephews and nieces who were unaware that he ever existed. He was mourned, but he was rarely mentioned. As the years passed, Harold’s sisters and brothers began to hope that his sad story might be left in the past. Harold was dead and no amount of literary handwringing was going to bring him back. My book would broadcast the painful details and cast the spotlight on the remaining family. Veronica and Teresa worried that their neighbours might talk behind their backs and label them a disgrace. The Pringles had suffered enough. “Mother and Father never did recover from it,” Teresa told me.2 Now, thanks to my book, that loss would be rekindled and spread across more generations.
Veronica and Teresa’s worry was based on personal experience. In 1985, Harold’s fate had been dragged into public view when the Royal Canadian Legion’s monthly, Legion Magazine, published a story entitled “Still on the Books.” The article was based on Harold’s military record and a number of interviews with veterans, none of whom knew him. It portrayed Harold as a cold-blooded killer. “The army should have straightened Harold Pringle out,” it read, “but it failed to do so.”3 Flinton’s local newspaper picked up “Still on the Books” and ran it as a novelty story. When Harold’s mother, Mary Ellen Pringle, read the article she was devastated. Prior to seeing it, she had been a healthy eighty-year-old. For the next two weeks, Veronica, Teresa and the rest of the family watched as their mother sank into depression and illness. She died broken-hearted. You would never be able to prove it in a court of law, but as far as the sisters were concerned, there was no question: the public airing of her son’s misfortune and the portrayal of him as a ruthless criminal killed Mary Ellen.
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with you,” Veronica told me. “But we were all talking, and we have been thinking, and I suppose if we don’t have anything to do with you.…” Here she let out a tired breath. “Well, where will that leave Harold?”
“Somebody has to speak for him,” added Teresa. “Somebody has to tell the good things about him. That’s why we called you. We saw that they were thinking of pardoning some soldiers who had been executed in the First World War. We thought maybe something could be done for Harold.”
While I was pursuing Harold Pringle’s story, the notion of courage would pop up again and again. But I never expected to find it in two ladies who served me tea and salmon sandwiches. I couldn’t help marvelling at their guts. I met with Harold’s sisters twice more after that. On the second visit they allowed me to copy the letters Harold had sent back to Canada while he was overseas.
Veronica and Teresa had been too young when Harold had left to have any adult understanding of his relationship with their parents. Veronica was seven and Teresa three when he went away to war. Teresa’s only real memory was a domestic one. Harold was ironing his uniform and, as toddlers do, she was crawling beneath the ironing board, playing with the laundry. Harold stopped ironing, looked down at her and smiled.
Veronica and Teresa, however, knew someone who had been a contemporary of their brother’s. It was their cousin, Betti Michael, who was the Pringle family’s unofficial historian. Betti was the daughter of Harold’s father’s sister, and she had grown up in Flinton. She eventually left, had a family of her own and earned her living working for the post office. She was blessed with a quick mind and had an affection for the past. In her spare time she wrote books on local history. Betti was proud of her heritage; she had traced the Pringle family line and collected a scrapbook of photos and memorabilia. Betti had been only ten years old when Harold left for war, but by then she had enough memories to last her a lifetime. “You’ll have a great time talking to her,” Veronica told me. “She’s got stories about everybody.”
Betti, who was seven years Harold’s junior, lived in Port Robinson, Ontario. Her memories were those of a young farm girl who looked up to Harold as a dashing older figure, and she kept that affection right into her adult life. She recalled that Harold was a very handsome young man, a superb singer and a champion yodeller. At night, on the way back from a friend’s farm or from his grandmother’s house, Harold would sing and yodel to let his mother know he was on his way home. Betti recalled being mesmerized by the haunting sound of Harold’s songs, which echoed through the dark stillness of the countryside. To her young eyes, Harold was from another world. He had a power and charisma that promised great deeds in the future. She was not the only female in Flinton to sense this potential. “Women loved him. He had a lot of girlfriends. They were crazy for him. He had kind of laughing eyes, as I remember,” Betti said. “He was extremely handsome, a very good-looking fellow.”4
Harold in Flinton before the war.
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Harold came by his looks honestly. His mother, Mary Ellen Lessard, and his father, William Aubrey Pringle, were both good-looking. Both had been born and bred in Flinton. Betti remembered Harold’s mother as a dark-haired, fair-featured woman who was an accomplished cook and homemaker. Mary Ellen prepared succulent jams and preserves; she could sew, clean, tend to farm animals and give medical aid when necessary. Life during the Great Depression was hard. “She had a big family during a tough time,” Betti said, “but she always seemed ageless.” Money was tight, but like so many of the generation raised on Canadian farms between the wars, the Pringle children “never knew we were poor.”5 According to Veronica, “We always had enough to eat and clothes to wear. There was a lot of love.”6 Harold, it seems, was his mother’s favourite and a favourite of the extended family as well.
Harold’s father, William Pringle, was born on December 30, 1896. At age nineteen, in 1915, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. William’s military record describes him as 5 feet 6 inches with light brown hair and grey eyes. He listed his profession as “farmer,” and an army doctor described him as an “excellent” specimen.7 Yet Billy, as he was known in Flinton, was a gentle, good-hearted fellow, and most of those who knew him found it hard to think of him as a soldier. The transformation began on December 1, 1916, when he joined the 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles at the front. The Mounted Rifles were stationed in a series of trenches called the Labyrinth along the Vimy Front in France, looking out toward an entrenched position that the Germans considered invulnerable. The Labyrinth had been a killing field for the French, who had held the trenches during 1915. When the Canadians worked to rebuild the dugouts, they often unearthed bits of the grey and blue uniforms of the French army.
Before the war, Billy Pringle, who was an expert marksman, made an extra living as a hunter and guide. This skill made him ideally suited for a job as a sniper. Snipers were responsible for preventing the enemy from making observations. This meant hiding out beyond the Canadian trenches with an observer. When an enemy head popped up, it was the sniper’s job to put it down. The job, wrote sniper Corporal R. N. Siddle in Maclean’s magazine in 1917, required “a very cool nerve and unusual powers of endurance.” William Pringle would creep out into no man’s land before sunrise and spend days there, surrounded by decomposing bodies, rats and stranded wounded soldiers. He lived on tinned beef, methodically picking off German soldiers with his rifle. Sniping was exceedingly dangerous work: “A hand exposed, hasty movement would bring a bullet.” If snipers were detected, the Germans would also drop mortar fire on them. A soldier could quickly be blown to pieces. Since snipers worked in pairs, those who were killed were seldom found. “He is recorded missing,” wrote Siddle, “and another man sallies forth.”8
William Pringle survived the winter of 1917 and fought in the taking of Vimy Ridge, at which 10,602 Canadians were killed or wounded. In early September, the 4th Mounted Rifles were stationed in trenches near the village of Vimy. Shortly after midnight on September 5, the Germans subjected the unit to heavy artillery bombardment. The Canadians could hear what sounded like duds dropped amid the explosions. These duds turned out to be canisters of mustard gas. The effects of the gas were not immediately felt: it had settled during the night in deep craters. When morning arrived, however, the noxious fumes vaporized and rose up to the Canadian trenches. The gas killed ten men and wounded one hundred.9 William Pringle was among those struck down. He suffered burns to his hands, face, lips and lungs. Blisters blew up and his chest ached. William, however, managed to hold the line. He was admitted to hospital four days later, and on his medical record, under the heading “Conduct Afterward,” the doctor wrote simply, “Carried on.”10
After forty-five days recovering in an English hospital, he returned to his unit. He served throughout 1918 in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Then on September 9, he was shot through the hand while attacking the German defences near the French town of Arras. This wound finished William Pringle’s war. He was sent to England, where he recuperated in a hospital in the southern town of Witley. In 1919, he returned to Canada. During the conflict’s four years, 59,544 Canadians had died and 154,361 soldiers had been reported wounded (quite often more than once). William Pringle tried to leave that behind. He came home, married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Ellen Lessard, and looked to the future.
William and Mary Ellen settled in Flinton. Harold was born in the southern Ontario town of Port Colborne where his grandfather worked in a cement factory. He was the first son and the second eldest of what would be eight children.
TODAY, FLINTON HOLDS NO more than three hundred inhabitants. It is the only incorporated village north of the Trans-Canada Highway (in Lennox and Addington County, just north of Kaladar) that is surveyed on a gridded street system. In 1936, the Ontario government opened a large one-storey school in Flinton, in anticipation of the multitudes of children it expected to grow up in the area. Flinton Elementary was the first Art Deco building in rural central Ontario, and it remains the village’s largest structure. But the school has been closed for decades and is boarded up, with graffiti marking its exterior. It is a melancholy reminder of a more bustling period in the hamlet’s history. Many of Flinton’s earliest buildings are still in use, though, including the post office, which sits in the same white house where it has operated for the last one hundred years. It also serves as a general store.
Flinton is like every rural community. On the surface there does not appear to be much history, just a peaceful and time-worn way of life. But closer inspection shows that Flinton’s history is, in fact, a masterpiece of Gothic Canadiana. It was founded by Senator Billa Flint in 1855. Perched by the banks of the Skootamatta River, it was originally named Flint Mills, after his saw and gristmill business. Today it goes by the nickname the “Village by the Skoot.” Flint dominated life in the hamlet much like a feudal lord, and many of Flinton’s streets still bear Flint family names. Billa Flint was appointed to the first Canadian Senate in 1867. It was an ironic appointment, since Flint had voted against Confederation and believed that senators should be elected, not appointed.
Senator Flint would not tolerate booze in his town and he worked hard to keep Flinton a dry jurisdiction. Villagers who craved a drop of the devil’s brew had to make their way to the Yanch Hotel, a public house that opened in 1870 just outside the hamlet’s boundaries. Billa Flint’s reign over Flinton did not last, however; his mill burned down in 1886, and he subsequently moved north to the town of York Mills, which he renamed Bancroft after his mother-in-law. He died in 1894 in Ottawa and is buried near the early Canadian writer Susannah Moodie.
By then, Flinton’s course had changed dramatically. A Danish pioneer named Laurence Roluff, who was out deer hunting, discovered a white stone streaked with a bright yellow mineral. Roluff thought it would make a pretty ornament and brought the rock back to his cabin, where he set it on the front windowsill. A Welshman named Elias Lloyd noticed the stone one week later while visiting a neighbour of Roluff’s. Lloyd persuaded the old Dane to lend him the stone and sent the rock to England for examination. Two months later, Lloyd’s suspicions were confirmed: the bright yellow mineral was gold. He brought Roluff the good news and suggested the two form a partnership and begin mining. Roluff, however, was not enamoured with Lloyd, who he thought was “possessed with supernatural powers.” Instead, he chose to hand over any claim to the property, free of charge.
Meanwhile, news of the gold discovery drifted down to the United States, where, in Cripple Creek, Colorado, an Irish prospector named John Guina heard of the find. Guina had spent time in the Flinton area, and when he learned that Lloyd was applying for possession of the land he decided to foil the attempt. Guina returned to Flinton and quickly found out that Lloyd was making his application for ownership by mail. He rode all night to Toronto, a distance of 350 kilometres, to beat the post and applied in person for the title. Not surprisingly, Lloyd was enraged. Calling upon the same supernatural forces that had so frightened Roluff, Lloyd vowed that he would use a “psychic power within him to lay a curse on the gold mine so that only disappointment and woe would come to those who owned it.” Needless to say, the threat had little effect on Guina, who immediately began prospecting. He formed the Golden Fleece Mining Syndicate with Flinton’s more prominent citizens, among them a doctor, a lawyer, the school inspector and a Catholic priest. The syndicate drilled two holes, one fifty and one thirty feet deep, but found no gold. Years of mining turned up nothing, and in 1885 Guina left Flinton an utterly defeated man. He was never heard from again.
For the rest of the nineteenth century, Flinton’s Golden Fleece Mine was run by a series of hapless investors. A South African named Von Skimpfer, an agent with an overseas mining firm, purchased the mine in 1887. He hired a large crew and made many exploratory digs, but they too proved fruitless. Von Skimpfer’s money began to run out. He laid off his crew but stayed on in Flinton, certain that the Golden Fleece would eventually produce gold. Teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, Von Skimpfer rented a small room in a local boarding house. He spent days at the mine alone, searching. One morning, Von Skimpfer had breakfast and left for another day’s work. He was never seen again and his body was never discovered.
In the 1890s, the Toronto mining company of Taylor and Son leased the property from the Golden Fleece syndicate. Taylor and Son succeeded in drawing gold out of the mine. In total, $10,000 worth of bullion was raised and Flinton was poised to become a boom town. Its city grid system would finally be filled in with new homes. Miners were making the rich salary of ten cents an hour. But the bubble burst. The syndicate refused to renew Taylor and Son’s lease, for reasons that were never explained. The only profitable year in the mine’s history would not be repeated. Though it changed hands many times over the next forty years, the Golden Fleece never again produced any significant gold deposits. It finally closed down in 1932. In the 1970s, there was talk of reopening the mine. The Sands Minerals Corporation gave elaborate presentations and drilled for diamonds. Nothing ever came of it.11
GROWING UP IN FLINTON during the Depression was a mixture of equal parts geography and imagination, and to a large degree that still holds true today. “When you go there it’s almost like stepping back in time,” Harold Pringle’s cousin Betti Michael told me. “It’s like going back to a time when values were important and there was a strong sense of family. You treasured your grandparents and aunts and uncles.”12 There were endless fields and woods to explore, and in the summer kids swam in the Skootamatta. There was a shallow area for the beginners and a deep end for the older children. A single teacher taught all grades, from one to eight, in a one-room schoolhouse. During the winter months, the teacher would boil a large pot of water on the wood stove that heated the classroom. Each student would bring a bit of food—some carrots, meat or beans—and place it in the pot in the morning. By lunchtime, a delicious pot of communal soup was ready. The swimming hole became an outdoor rink in winter. Most children wore skates fashioned out of old boots. Torches were lit in the evening, allowing for nighttime skating and dances by torchlight.
Harold Pringle’s family lived in a small two-room farmhouse on a few acres of land within walking distance of the centre of Flinton. Harold’s father had a favourite rocking chair, where he would sing old tunes such as Molly Malone and Johnny’s So Long at the Fair. The Pringles were poor, hard-working people who cherished the land and found meaning and fulfillment in their modest homes and pastoral pursuits. But they were also fiercely independent. Most of the Pringle men worked as trappers, hunters and fishermen. These pursuits were typical of Flinton’s local economy, which was driven by subsistence farming, lumber, digging in mines that produced very little precious metal, and roadwork. During the summer, William worked on road crews and fished. He got about by bicycle, which he referred to as his “wheel.” During the winter, he spent time at hunting camps out in the bush. The family ate what he caught, plenty of venison and rabbit.
During the Depression, William earned one dollar a day working for a childhood friend, Archie Meese, who was also a veteran and had served as an officer. Meese had been blinded in Belgium during the Battle of Passchendaele. He was a very large man, with broad shoulders and an imposing frame, but his blindness made this formidable figure seem like that of a gentle, vulnerable child. He was married, with three children and a sizeable income. William filled the unique position of “Archie’s eyes.” Meese would place his hands on William’s shoulders and William would lead him around Flinton. Aside from the obvious—helping him cross the street and negotiate stairs—Billy would describe the scenery, read to him and point out unique sights. He took Archie hunting and fishing; the pair caught one of the biggest fish in the village’s history, which hung in the Northbrook Hotel with a sign that read “Caught by Archie Meese. Assisted by Billy Pringle.” “He never saw his children,” Veronica said of Archie Meese. “No, he never saw them.”13
Most families in Flinton kept a few head of cattle, a team of horses, chickens and a couple of pigs. Each farm had its own garden. Mothers worked hard making rolls of homemade butter, salt pork, sauerkraut and pickles. Eggs cost 10 cents per dozen, flour $2.50 per CWt. Flinton is berry country, and in June wild strawberries covered the fields and woods. In August blueberries grew in abundance; during the Depression, they were sold for 58 cents for an eight-quart pail. Manufactured goods were purchased at one of Flinton’s two general stores. The largest, R. W. Kimberly General Store, was run by Joe Demore. Hawley Stone ran a flour, feed and dry goods store from the back of his house. Stone also served as Flinton’s undertaker. The children craved his wife’s cookies, which he sold at inexpensive prices. The most costly sweet on offer was a chocolate-covered marshmallow with a raspberry jam centre. Men who wanted a professional haircut went to Flinton’s barber, Mister Lowry, a black deaf-mute who operated a store not far from the post office. As a courtesy, a customer would wait outside in front of Lowry’s window until Lowry spied him. This way, the barber would not be startled. Flinton’s men could find cold beer at the Stewart House, which was run by the Yanch family. This bar was distinguished by its very high steps and was known as a place of action by all the village’s residents. The Canadian Pacific Railroad connected Flinton to big cities such as Belleville, Ottawa and Toronto. Two trains stopped each day in nearby Kaladar, one at dawn and the other after midnight. Night passengers stopped the train by lighting a lantern that hung at the outdoor platform. “You’d have to wave it back and forth so that the conductor could see you,” recalled Betti. “Then the train would stop and you’d put out the lantern and hang it back up and get on the train and be on your way. I remember waiting for that train at night—you got quite a lonely feeling.”14
Dr. Thomas John Clayton Tindle looked after Flinton’s medical concerns. The doctor was a dedicated man who made house calls in a horse-drawn carriage. Tindle bought the first car in Flinton, a 1933 Ford V8, and was often seen speeding along the hamlet’s roads. Health problems outside Tindle’s area of expertise were attended to by a number of what we would now call alternative practitioners. Harold’s grandmother Maggie Pringle, for instance, acted as both midwife and veterinarian. If a horse caught cold, Maggie was brought in to fix things. D. H. “Cat Skin” Fletcher, the brother of the manager of the Golden Fleece Mine, cured pneumonia. Fletcher would skin a cat and then apply the fresh skin, flesh side down, onto the chest of someone suffering from the deadly respiratory disease. When the skin turned green, it was exchanged for another one. The cat-skin remedy was also used for infections and blood poisoning. Doctor Tindle was philosophical about the use of folk medicine. Once he visited a mother who had been giving her son’s infected foot the cat-skin cure. Worried that the doctor would not approve, she removed the feline bandage before he arrived. Tindle came in, took one look at the ailing foot, told her, “Well, the cat skins are fetching it” and left her to finish off the cure.
Harold attended school until Grade 6, typical for a rural kid growing up in the 1930s. Harold and his father were close; they spent plenty of time together hunting and fishing. When Harold was growing up, the kids would often walk down along the Skootamatta River and into the heart of Flinton. They would visit the war memorial and read the names. There were about a dozen, quite a high number for a town of two hundred; William Pringle’s name was there plain and proud for everyone to see.
Harold left school at fourteen and went to work in a lumber camp. At age fifteen, he worked on highway road crews. He worked on farms and at the local hydroelectric plant. In the winter he acted as a chauffeur for the local police force. Harold gave almost all his money to his family. His sister recalls how he would hand over his earnings, keeping twenty-five cents for himself.
Like most young men in the Depression, Harold found himself without any real trade or career to pursue. He lived on a system of temporary solutions. He found short-term work and hoped that one day he would have a permanent job. But the Depression wound into the late 1930s, and Canadians watched nervously as matters in Europe worsened. By 1939, war seemed inevitable. On September 3, 1939, England declared war on Germany, and Canada followed suit one week later.