The following letter is in response to the issue #4, 2022 article entitled “Bruce County Memories Rattlers and the Law” by Robin Hillborn.
I read Robin’s story with interest and felt compelled to offer my spin on alleged 19th century events said to have occurred at the mouth of “Rattlesnake Creek”.
Most specifically, author Hillborn believes that Dr. Fox appeared to have “invented the whole rattler story”. In defence of the dead, I believe that the only thing that Sherwood Fox is guilty of was in not thoroughly researching the facts when he recorded the account. I believe that Dr. Fox is telling the story, more or less, the way he heard it.
It has been my experience that “oral history” in rural Ontario, often distorts and changes events to improve the story. One common oral history theme often has clever and enterprising local characters confounding and besting bureaucrats and authorities in their attempts to control or stop alleged unlawful activities. I know, first hand, that oral history can perpetuate cruel untruths.
At any rate, I suspect that there may be some truth in the allegation that Steve Bradley once engaged in the manufacture of un-taxed whiskey on an isolated part of the Lake Huron shoreline. Other indicators that un-bonded booze flowed locally at one time survive in local place names like “Bootlegger’s Cave” or “Whiskey Still Marsh”.
I once had the privilege of knowing and befriending, Meg Bradley’s grandson, who well remembered her, and who was a combat veteran of World War II. From him I acquired an old deer rifle that had been in the family for many years. The serial number on this relic placed its manufacture in the middle of the last decade of the 19th Century. Did it have any connection to Steve Bradley and long ago events at Middle Boat Cove? Probably not, but that did not cause me to value it less as a tangible piece of local history.
Continue reporting on your historical research Robin. I hope my spin on your story sounds plausible.
Regards:
Douglas SWEIGER
