Huntsville’s opening days, however, because the first recorded dispute only came several years later when Dr. F.L. Howland, Kinton’s successor as reeve, presided in a makeshift courtroom. The case involved two Chaffey Township neighbours who got into a fight over a contested line fence between their properties.
The complainant, with one blackened eye swollen shut and the other side of his face puffed up, sat in court by himself, looking dejected, seeking justice for his black eye and redress for his removed fence. The defendant, a much smaller man, recounted local historian Joe Cookson, sat beside his wife, “a very hefty and capable looking woman,” “looking equally as glum.”
As a lone justice of the peace, Reeve Howland was to review the case and, if he found the complaint justified, send it for trial in Bracebridge. Howland questioned the complainant about the reason for the dispute, asked about the location of the attack, then inquired, “How many times did this man hit you?”
“Oh! He never hit me, your honour. No siree, it was her. That woman’s a regular devil, your honour. She’s a menace to the countryside.”
“You’re sure the defendant himself never struck you?”
“Quite sure, your honour. He’s a kindly sort of man. But her, I sure could tell you plenty.”
“Never mind,” coughed Dr. Howland, as he cleared his throat, looked down, and shuffled some papers on his desk. He then looked up again to pronounce: “I’m going to dismiss this case and bind all three of you over to keep the peace. In regards to the fence, next time I see the reeve of Chaffey I’ll get him to send his ‘fence viewers’ over to look the situation over. We’ll abide by their decision. Case dismissed.”
Whether as a medical man, or head of a council, or the newspaper editor he also was, Dr. Howland as an ex officio justice of the peace had clearly acquired practical ways to resolve contentious matters.
A small town’s watchful eyes and active tongues usually meant that culprits and perpetrators were promptly arraigned.
One day some men were brought up for tossing attention-getting candies at girls during a Salvation Army church service. Then next, a sly trapper appeared after getting caught with 176 muskrat pelts out of season. Plenty of heavier action was served up, too: men fighting in the woods with axes, men fighting along the roads with shovels and buggy whips, a husband threatening to slit his wife’s throat from ear to ear with his straight razor.
A constant flow of assault and battery cases moved through Magistrate’s Court in 1890s Bracebridge, too, as men settled scores and the town danced to its steady rhythm of street brawls.
The slosh of alcohol showed up everywhere, from harmless drunks sitting in the street to instruct enthralled school children, to spiteful ones slipping insinuations about a man’s wife into barroom talk and provoking a bare-knuckled, knockdown fistfight. Life was raw in many ways. Shooting a neighbour’s dog did not go unpunished. Those who destroyed other men’s fences, whether through burning, stealing, or vandalizing, were brought to justice.
The town was a theatre that never closed, and the justice of the peace was always standing by, ready to perform his leading role with the ever-shifting cast of characters.
A variety of conflicts to be adjudicated were spawned by disagreements over money and commerce, such as financial struggles over unpaid wages and broken contracts. Logs, because they were valuable, were often the object of money-based conflicts, as men struggled to acquire these assets through illegal cutting, outright theft, bushlot battles over the location of property lines and the logs within them, and skirmishes over unmarked logs allegedly found in the public domain along the roadside.
Captains charged for operating boats without a licence for commercial purposes, for transporting more paying passengers across Muskoka’s lakes than their boats were authorized to carry, or for selling fresh garden produce to summer cottagers (including a judge) at the end of their docks without being licensed to do so, presented another face of Muskoka’s ongoing conflicts: local officials sought to regulate commerce by challenging enterprising individuals who, for their part, helpfully sought to provide important services in a district dependant on tourism. It was a defining conflict for “the rule of law.”
Joining this steady parade of criminal and financial cases, another procession through the Magistrate’s Courtroom emanated from the community’s social and cultural impulses. On this stage the magistrate’s performance was to enforce laws that satisfied community norms when lack of respect, absence of courtesy, cutting corners, dodging blame, creating mischief, making mistakes, expressing rude resentments, or indulging in escapades went beyond accepted standards of propriety. In this, James Boyer had to contend with the double standards of humans who celebrate virtue but look to find it in others more than in themselves.
Brothels, whether operating in town or at a discreet buggy ride’s distance into the countryside, generated courtroom sensations, and in doing so, epitomized the conflicts created by the community’s double standard. Less serious but in like vein was a honeymoon charivari in Bracebridge that amused many townsfolk who chuckled to think that the groom was not the only young man to have fun on his wedding night, but which predictably offended a few. The event became a cause of mild consternation after its youthful perpetrators were dragged by the town’s stern chief constable, “Old Man Dodd,” before a bemused magistrate as the community sought to find its markers for moral probity.
Other cases, whether arising from misbehaviour at church meetings and theatrical performances, or other unmannerly outbreaks, seem petty by almost any standard. Yet, they do serve to underscore how some law or other against public mischief is always handy and awaiting invocation by public authorities wanting to constrain unruly or high-spirited humans.
Whether a case was grave or trivial, the Bracebridge Magistrate’s Court in the 1890s generally served as a fast, convenient, and reliable arena of justice.
A prosecution begun on March 11, 1895, by Chief Constable Robert Armstrong against Elizabeth Weston for running a brothel was adjourned by Justice of the Peace Boyer so the chief could procure evidence, and when court resumed just two days later, the charge against her was “dismissed for want of evidence.” Constable Armstrong, having learned his lesson in court, subsequently stepped forward much better prepared to bring charges against “Queenie” Dufresne, calling a parade of witnesses who described the late-night comings and goings at her house of ill-fame, and got her convicted.
Muskoka Magistrate’s Court was the ever-ready venue to resolve conflicts between private parties and to enforce public laws. The former included fighting spouses, employees suing for unpaid wages, and owners seeking the recovery of stolen dogs and chickens. The latter ranged from municipal bylaw infractions detected by the town constable or the local hygiene inspector, to breaches of the statutes of the Province of Ontario and the Dominion of Canada dealing with licensing of vessels, prostitution, firearms, hunting, trapping, fishing, distilling liquor, and gambling.
The court was generally convened in the town hall on Dominion Street in Bracebridge. Prominent in the centre of the community, it sat adjacent to the Muskoka Herald building, whose stone-walled basement was rented out as a convenient lock-up for accused persons awaiting their appearance in court until the number of attempted breakouts did such damage to the structure that the newspaper proprietors cancelled the arrangement.
Bracebridge Town Hall on Dominion Street, where James Boyer was municipal clerk, also conveniently housed Magistrate’s Court, over which he presided. The Muskoka Herald building is to the left; its cellar was used as the town jail for a period until many attempted breakouts by prisoners did such damage
