Sisters in the Wilderness - Charlotte Gray [130]
John’s enemies smelled blood. Although the appointment of a deputy sheriff was legal, the “farming of offices” was against the law. Judge Allan Ramsey Dougall, an Orangeman and another old adversary of John’s, watched Ockerman’s conduct with eagle-eyed attention. As soon as he had enough evidence to prove Ockerman was acting with far too much independence to be described as a mere “deputy,” Dougall pounced. In October 1859, four months after Thomas Traill’s death, Dougall brought a formal court action against John for “the purpose of bringing before the Court of Queen’s Bench the legality or otherwise of the proceedings of Mr. Sheriff Moodie in reference to his office.” John was summoned to appear before the assizes in Belleville in December to answer the charges.
Susanna was convinced that the charges against her beloved husband would be dismissed, but she was wrong. The presiding magistrate at the Belleville Assizes ruled against John. In the spring of 1860, the case went to the Court of Queen’s Bench in Toronto, which ruled that Moodie was technically guilty of infringing the statute regarding the farming of offices. But the whole issue of John’s future as sheriff was left in a dreadful limbo. On the one hand, the Reformers who dominated the United Provinces government were reluctant to terminate John’s appointment as sheriff. He had been a loyal, hard-working, honest sheriff, and Belleville’s Orangemen were notorious for their vicious partisanship. On the other hand, the government was not prepared to come to his aid: they didn’t want to offend Belleville’s cabal of Tory lawyers. So the case was left hanging in a crossfire of appeals and petitions.
Susanna was stunned by this turn of events. She insisted to Catharine that John had the “sympathy of the whole county” against the “malignity of the men who have done this….So do not grieve for me, my sister, my dear tried friend.” She also realized that the case could drag on for months: “I wish it were over…. Uncertainty is always worse to bear than the pressures of sorrows known. When we know what we have to expect, the mind rises to meet the emergencies of the case, and we can mature plans for the future.” The behaviour of their Belleville neighbours both enraged and scared her. Anger made her insist that she and John would turn their backs on Belleville as fast as possible if they lost the case: “I have no ties to bind me to Belleville, beyond the dear home that has sheltered us for so many years, and the trees I have with my own hands planted, and last, not least the graves of my dear boys.” But this anger was a defence mechanism against a much more deep-seated emotion: fear. Susanna was worried about John: “The blow fell very severely, and I never saw him look so pale and worn.” Susanna had just watched her strong, stalwart sister Catharine accommodate herself to widowhood, and she was terrified of facing the same prospect. By now, she knew that Catharine had an emotional stamina that she lacked.
John Moodie was not the only person to fall victim to the obstinate determination of members of the Orange Order in British North America. At the Order’s annual parade on July 12, there were always Orange-Green brawls between Protestants and Catholics on Belleville’s Front Street. “It appears a useless aggravation of an old national grievance to perpetuate the memory of the battle of the Boyne,” Susanna had written indignantly in Life in the Clearings. Orangemen had also been central in the election rioting in Toronto in 1841 that left one man dead. Small wonder that Susanna insisted that the activities of the