PREFACE

You might say the dead talk to me. Every story in this book tells the tale of someone who has died. To me, their presence lingers, begging to be heard. Through these accounts, whether previously told or not, their stories have been left behind in death records, newspaper articles, and diaries. These beckon to me. To hear them, one must be willing to listen. And, one must be willing to dig into strange places.

These stories need telling, and I admit that I feel compelled to tell them. These are not my stories or my personal journey, but I feel that someone must share them. So, I am beginning the process that those more worthy may take up the torch and go where I cannot. These stories have often been obscured or forgotten because of their marginality. Marginality, in this book, is the term used to describe the condition of the people who live apart from the mainstream, by choice or by design. Some may have lived their lives on the margins of society because they were unable to gain access to the important things in life, but others chose an existence that defied social conventions, doing so for personal reasons or for profit.

This book introduces stories of ordinary people who lived in extraordinary circumstances — touched by disease, poverty, crime, and, arguably, even the supernatural. These are stories many communities own but may not share (at least publicly) — scandals, murder, passion, and greed. No one story sums up the total of a community’s identity, but collectively they speak to the complex tableaux of layered existence within any (and, arguably all) communities. Our history is your history.

Some of those mentioned in this book lived their lives in infamy, while others only found that at the ends of their lives. Many possessed multiple social identities, moving between the varied strata of social status and privilege. Consider, if you will, the politician whose fascination with séances was so strong that it affected not only his personal life but also his professional one. Great pains were taken to conceal his activities from the general public in order to protect his reputation and his ability to perform his job.

There is also the once-esteemed doctor who fell from grace by robbing the dead in their final repose. These were men of high social status, seemingly respectable, yet their secret actions and interests forced them to hide parts of themselves from society.

Others, many of whom were far less fortunate, nonetheless left their own marks on the history of this community. There is the story of the ex-slave who lived a long but otherwise unremarkable life in obscure poverty. In the end, disabled and elderly, he died a pauper’s death in the Waterloo County House of Industry and Refuge. That would have normally been the end of his story — but he was rescued from obscurity after his death, when local residents who respected him greatly published his obituary (not once but twice), poignantly recognizing him as someone “nearly every citizen” knew. There is another story that highlights the apparent contradiction between traditional Mennonite spiritual beliefs and the practice of occult healing. And so it goes. These stories, however fraught with emotion, outrage, or scandal, need to be told and need to be remembered. It is through their telling that we meet the people who were most affected by the arbiters of policy and law-making (either by breaking the law or by being contained by it). An encounter with the mundane and ordinary lives of the past enables us to hold up a mirror and see ourselves.

A note about “life on the margins,” marginalism, and marginalization: it is prudent to remember that the language we use does matter. A margin is defined as a boundary that demarcates one thing from another. In discussions of social status, those described as “marginal” are thought to live, act, behave, or believe in things other than those considered to be the norm for the society. The marginal whose stories are told in this book lived lives — by choice or because of social prejudice — outside the social mores commonly accepted at the time (some of these have sociocultural parallels and conventions that are still in effect today).

The types of margins that we create illuminate how we perceive what we see, and what we (think) we know or “understand.” To truly understand a society, whether one existing today or one existing in the past, it is necessary to examine the nature of the margins created — what is (or was) considered “beyond the pale.”

Stigma is attached to those deemed “different,” to those whom society has marginalized, and judgment of them precludes worthiness, as in the case of ideas surrounding “able-isms”(what people can or cannot do) and poverty — the deserving poor (worthy of “help”) and the undeserving poor (those deemed not worthy). Those deemed unworthy are most often the social pariahs, the outcasts whose stories are subsumed within a large narrative, in which their identities and the rationale for their actions are rendered invisible, having only symbolic value within the bigger social picture. It is curious, though, that at the same time such people are deprived of their individuality — they are lumped into a marginalized group — they often lose the right to privacy, too. In order for such marginalization to occur, some aspect of a person’s identity must be thrown into the spotlight. In effect, they become commodified products or “public property,” worthy of scorn, moral scrutiny, or criticism (perceived as not capable or willing to care for themselves). They are sometimes pejoratively categorized as the “burdens of society.” The perpetuation of socioeconomic and political biases that are directed toward the most vulnerable among us is often the toxic result of “othering” (looking at others as “them,” not me or us, and thinking of them as if “they” are inferior). Able-ism, age-ism, racism, and even “religious-ism:” most of these categorizations are contextual and based on circumstantial identifiers like status, race, colour, or creed. Food for thought.

The stories in this book, while filled with curious and entertaining characters, also provide an impetus for the reconsideration of social labelling as a useful tool, particularly when we encounter the real people behind their real “histories.” As you’ll discover in this book, people can move within social categories, either “up” or “down” — sometimes at will and sometimes forced by decisions and circumstances beyond their control. The way such movements are viewed is made clear in the language used to describe them: falling from grace, getting back upon one’s feet, rising above one’s station, putting one’s life back together, falling in with the wrong crowd, facing the court of public opinion, etc. In the process of discovering historical “facts,” we, too, must consider the language (and the assumptions behind the language) that we use when we analyze and process them. How well we do that will depend upon the philosophical lenses we choose to use.

Waterloo You Never Knew: Life on the Margins considers the bigger questions: where do we see ourselves in these stories, and in what ways do we in modern times understand those who did (and did not) fit the “norm” historically. And, are we really that different from those in the past?

This book offers an accessible opportunity for us to examine disparate life histories that could, in many ways, be those of any community: the forgotten, the poignant, the funny, and the downright strange. We also get the chance to see behind the curtain of polished conventionality, cleaned up for public consumption. One may call it the “real deal” — warts and all. Our history is your history.