My First Road Block
By STEVE SMITH
Aug. 5, 2007
I don't remember anything in particular about that baseball game 43 years ago on a vacant lot on Harvey Street, but I do remember how it ended. Somebody's mom stuck her head out the window and told us all to go home. At first we resisted. Why was she so crabby? We hadn't fouled a ball off her house for at least two innings.
"No, no. I'm not mad at you," she explained. "There's some nut going around town shooting kids."
We all thought that was a grand joke. Nobody gets shot in Halifax. That stuff happens on TV. We were in the process of expressing our disbelief when Michael's dad turned up at the game and he wasn't kidding. "Get home, all of you. Now!" And for some reason - youthful male chauvinism, perhaps - we didn't question him.
My friend Graham and I walked up to my house on Church Street to see if we could find out what was going on from my mother. She hadn't heard anything but she said we could listen to the radio in the car if we wanted to.
So we hopped in the red Volvo in the driveway, and pretended we were driving to New York City. A cool fog had rolled into our yard as we pretended to pass Boston on our way to the Big Apple. Every now and then I'd push the turning signal up or down, pretending it was a gearshift. Graham, who was getting bored with me having all the action, suggested we use a push button transmission, meaning that he would get to push the buttons on the radio.
The radio, oh yeah, that's what we were out there for. We turned it on, and almost immediately came upon an announcer warning everyone to stay inside. There was indeed some nut going around shooting kids. My memory of the details is pretty sketchy, but I remember the killer seemed to be following the railroad cut through Halifax. The first victim was shot near the railroad bridge on Jubilee Road, the second in front of Stairs' Drug Store on Tower Road, and the third while picking blueberries with his mom further along beside the railroad tracks.
As kids, of course, we didn't have a real concept of the horror of all this. We felt little empathy with the families of the victims, just amazement that this kind of thing was happening so close to home. It seemed unreal to us,but strangely exciting and then, as a thick fog rolled in with the gathering darkness, a bit scary.
Early the next morning, my family was leaving for our annual vacation in Ingonish Beach. Over the years, my parents had developed the habit of leaving in the early hours of the morning so as to arrive at a decent time. So, at 2 a.m., I was bundled up in the back seat, sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired and we crept through the fog on our way out of the city.
The fog was now so thick it must have been created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The streets we drove through as we headed out of town were never so empty, like a movie set after the day's filming is done and the lights are dim. I stared up through the car window as the street lights skipped by, mere balls of hazy brightness in the night, floating unsupported.
But Halifax was in manhunt mode. Even as we were leaving, police scoured the south end. Pictures in Monday's paper showed them in their fedoras, carrying kerosene lanterns. One was even packing a machine gun.
Not seeing any of this, I had pretty much forgotten about any rifle-toting maniacs. Just as we started to move along the highway, the matter was brought back into focus. A roadblock, just like the kind Broderick Crawford used to set up on TV's Highway Patrol.
My gosh, we must have looked suspicious, creeping out of town at that ungodly hour. Even more so when the officer saw a young boy bundled up in the back seat. He flashed his light on me for a couple of seconds and asked Dad a few questions. I obviously didn't fit the bill because he let us pass, but it was a most eerie feeling and for the rest of the trip I was wide awake.
The police announcements said they were looking for a red-headed, 15-year-old boy who was about five-foot-five. Two days later, they picked up the suspect near the Halifax International Airport where he turned himself in. He was 18 years old, five-foot-ten, without red hair.
His name was Edward Thomas Boutilier. Two of the boys he shot died, but the one shot near Jubilee Road survived. Boutilier, as I remember it, ended up in the Nova Scotia Hospital, escaped, was recaptured and, sometime later, killed himself.
Now, as adults, when we read about violence in our city, we often reassure ourselves by smugly telling each other, "Yeah, but what was he doing out that late anyway?" or "Why was he hanging around that neighbourhood?" as if the victims played a role in their own difficulties.
That wasn't the case in this instance. The victims were completely blameless. Were we to tell a young boy he can't stand on the corner outside a store waiting for his sister to get a popsicle? Was there any reason picking blueberries with your mother should be a life-threatening experience?
All of us have moments in our lives where we can recall exactly where we were and what we were doing when a significant event happened. Some events, such as the assassination of JFK, are international. Others may be just a family event, important to only a few. There are not many kids who lived in south end Halifax on Aug. 8, 1964 who will forget what they were doing on that frightening, foggy Saturday night when Thomas Edward Boutilier brought horror to Halifax.