Friday October 17, 1976 – Sedley, Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan Highway 33 follows the CPR track along a diagonal route from Stoughton to Regina. There aren’t many geographical impediments along the route, in fact the 90-mile stretch of railroad was once the longest continuously straight set of rails in the world. Somewhere in Siberia they built a longer one, but for many years all the towns along Highway 33 were proud of their “longest – straightest” standing in the Guinness Book of Records.
The town of Sedley is situated in the middle of that straight stretch of Highway. If you stand on the railroad tracks, where the Sedley grain elevator used to be, you can see to the vanishing point in either direction.
If you live long enough in a place you tend to take on the qualities of your surroundings. Long-term residents of Sedley are stalwart and straight, with a wide peripheral view of the world. These qualities, born of the land they inhabit, produce citizens of extraordinary character. Sedleyites know right from wrong – crooked doesn’t exist in their world, and they will defend their principals to their graves.
Unfortunately, on the night of Friday October 17, 1976, two of Sedley’s citizens did exactly that – they defended their level principals and died in the process.
The Sedley Fowl Supper of 1976 was the preeminent social gathering of the year. Turkeys and hams, potatoes and turnips, pies and pastries were prepared by residents, each in friendly competition with the others to produce a feast of unmatched quality, and quantity. The food was served on long communal tables in the church hall. Every resident of the town and surrounding area stood in a mouth-watering line-up, awaiting their turn at the tables.
Farmers and teachers, grain buyers and shopkeepers, the mayor, kids, and grannies, all showed up. They chatted about the weather, the government (or lack thereof), about the harvest and the Roughriders. The congruency of the occasion was tangible – a Saskatchewan Fowl Supper isn’t an assembly of individuals; it is a community at the peak of perfection.
Then the guns showed up.
The guns were carried by people who didn’t belong to a community. They weren’t part of something like Sedley, they weren’t on a team or involved in a church, they didn’t have close families. None of them had been a Scout, or belonged to a 4-H club, or even a basket-weaving circle. They were three individuals united by a need for drugs – which does not qualify as a community.
A young man and a woman, strung out on alcohol and drugs, entered the Sedley church and demanded the cash box. They bolted to a waiting car, a green Monte Carlo driven by another man, and raced off toward a vanishing point they would not have had the capacity to appreciate.
Imagine the reaction in the Sedley hall. Incredulity would have been the first effect, then disbelief: “This doesn’t happen here” – “There must be some mistake”. The reality of what had just transpired would have quickly passed the “incredible” stage and entered the collective conscience of the community. There might have been some anger but that “straight” quality, born of the prairie and the rails and the endless sky, would have been the prevalent emotion: “This is not right! – this needs to be fixed”.
It did get fixed, but not before two of Sedley’s leading citizens, who had pursued the culprits onto a dead-end road, died of gunshot wounds delivered by loners – people with no community.
Sunday October 19, 1976 – Arcola, Saskatchewan
Arcola is located at the end of the CPR track, 120 miles southeast of Regina. There used to be a Round House there where they turned the trains around and sent them back northwest, on the longest straight rails in the world.
Many young people from Arcola, including me, moved to Regina for employment opportunity and the glitz and glamour of the big city. We would often travel back home on weekends, always along Highway 33, always passing through Sedley.
I don’t remember what I was doing that weekend in October 1976 – probably enjoying some glitz and glam in Regina – but my buddy Brian was driving his green Monte Carlo from Arcola back to Regina Sunday night, with no premonition that his life would be hanging by a thread along the road ahead.
The outcasts with the guns, in the only other green Monte Carlo in Southern Saskatchewan, had fled down dusty back roads, under the cover of night, after ending the life of two men and injuring an entire community. They temporarily disappeared, but every RCMP officer, Regina City Cop, and Boy Scout in Saskatchewan was looking for them.
Brian’s mind was on the pretty girl in the car beside him. Wendy wasn’t his girlfriend when they left Arcola but, as they traveled that long, lonely stretch of road, the girl was becoming much friendlier. As Sedley loomed in the headlights, Brian and Wendy were both looking for a secluded spot to exercise a budding romance.
Brian turned the Monte Carlo off Highway 33, onto a rough secondary road, then an even rougher cow path and the seclusion of a poplar bluff. The windows started to steam up the instant the ignition was off.
An RCMP officer parked behind a granary across the road couldn’t believe his luck. Everybody with a badge on his sleeve, within a 250-mile radius of Sedley, was looking for this Monte Carlo and here it drives right up in front of him and parks! Officer Bentley wasn’t long getting the word out:
“Suspects in the Sedley murders sighted, hiding in a bluff, 2.5 miles southeast of Sedley – presumed armed and dangerous – send backup – lots of it!”
Brian’s old car wasn’t much to look at, and it didn’t get very far very fast, but that was on the outside. Inside the Monte Carlo the acceleration had gone from 0 to 60 in no time flat. The steam on the windows and Brian’s face-down position didn’t allow much opportunity to see what was going on outside the car. Wendy had a slightly better vantage point, facing up on the back seat. “I think somebody is out there….”
There isn’t much that can interrupt new love, but a bullhorn, flood lights and sirens did.
The next five minutes were the most terrifying of Brian and Wendy’s lives. There were guns and cops everywhere. Instructions were being blasted to: “place your hands on the dash” – “where is the other guy?” – “you are under arrest!” – “resist and we will shoot”.
Wendy was yanked through the passenger-side door. Brian went out the driver’s door under his own power, but he was slammed to the ground and handcuffed before he was completely out of the car.
A dozen screaming voices were demanding to know where “the other guy” was.
At some point one of the officers accidentally fired his weapon. Nobody was hit but it sent every other officer into a renewed frenzy. Brian was unceremoniously shoved under the car and put in a stranglehold. Brian couldn’t see Wendy from where he lay, but her screams assured him that things weren’t much better on the other side of the Monte Carlo.
It took all night and most of the next day for the police to concede that Brian and Wendy hadn’t killed anybody.
They were released late Monday afternoon; the green Monte Carlo remained incarcerated for another week, until it too was exonerated.
Prologue:
The perpetrators of the Sedley Fowl Supper Murders enjoyed a few days of freedom but were soon apprehended.
They stood trial, were found guilty, and introduced to collective living, at Prince Albert Penitentiary, their first real …
… Community.
This is one in a series of stories entitled Tales from Dead Ted’s, a chronicle of fictional events with just a kernel of truth in each. The events occurred in and around Arcola in the 1960s and 1970s. Click on the link below for more stories about growing up on the Canadian prairie.
wellwaterblog.ca – tales from dead ted’s
FOR THE RECORD: Brian and Wendy mentioned in this piece are fictional characters. They are based upon two individuals from Arcola who were friends, but not lovers. The pair was in a green Monte Carlo that drove through Sedley that night, they were stopped and questioned at gun-point by the police, but the circumstances of their capture, detainment and release were contrived by the author for dramatic effect.
Brian Crump
Great story! I remember it well . we drove past there shortly after & could hardly believe this happened at a fall supper! The slight exaggeration adds to the story! Very interesting.
Russ Paton
Thank you. It was a tragic crime. Two people died over $1300