This Side of Heaven: Determining the Donnelly Murders, 1880

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Even since the acquittal of the accused killers of the Donnelly family
in London, Ontario, there has been much interest in the facts
surrounding the murders. The case has been the subject of a number of
academic studies, as well as three plays by James Reaney, an English
professor at the University of Western Ontario. It was through
Reaney’s plays that Norman Feltes, an English professor himself,
formerly at York University and now emeritus, got interested in the
Donnelly story.

What he has given us in this splendid book is a perspective on the
murders that does not focus on the immediate tragedy, but rather places
it in a much larger context. Drawing largely on secondary sources, and
writing from a Marxist perspective, Feltes argues that the Donnelly
murders and the acquittal of the accused killers were the historical
product of the diverse sociopolitical and ideological conditions that
underlay Biddulph Township, scene of the murders, during the late 19th
century. Factors such as the way in which the region was settled, the
emerging canals and railways in competition with the United States, the
distinctive wheat trade, and patriarchal gender relations all converged
in a unique set of circumstances that “overdetermined” both the
murders and the trials in which the vigilantes were acquitted. Here’s
one example: the merchants in the township who had come to rely on wheat
for their livelihood saw their livelihoods jeopardized as the trade
shifted elsewhere and grew angry, potentially violent, in response.

This Side of Heaven will probably find a wide academic audience, not
only among those interested in the murders but also among those studying
historiography. More generally, the book stands as a challenge to anyone
who feels that the character of individuals is far more important as an
explanation of their actions than the circumstances in which they find
themselves.