True-crime junkies are invited to go back in the past and delve into the story of a local murder that dates back more than 100 years.
It's part of a storytelling event hosted by the Bradford West Gwillimbury Local History Association (BWGLHA). It will take place Saturday, Feb. 11 beginning at 2 p.m. at the Bradford Public Library. There’s no cost for admission and refreshments will be served.
Speaking will be Mary Fletcher Harris as she tells the story of a murder that took place in the area more than a century ago. The event is titled An 1896 True Crime Story.
Harris, whose Remember This column appears every Saturday in BarrieToday, is uniquely equipped to tell these types of stories, and first connected with the BWGLHA prior to the pandemic.
Without giving away too much of the story she’ll be telling, Harris says it’s local to Bradford.
“The murder was high profile because the person that was killed was quite well known around town," she says. "It’s a case of upper-class and working-class. The person who did it was a carpenter that was born in West Gwillimbury and through a series of misfortunes he ended up where he ended up."
Although Harris grew up in Bradford West Gwillimbury and calls Barrie home now, she was born in the Highlands of Scotland and as part of Celtic tradition her father was an old-fashioned storyteller.
“It was a thing in the family to tell stories, it always has been,” she explains. “I grew up with that sort of thing, but I wasn’t interested in history when I was younger. I got interested when I learned history as it relates to me; I feel anybody would be interested in history if it wasn’t presented in a dry kind of way.
"When it’s about your community and things that happen around you, it becomes more interesting.”
That led Harris to begin volunteering with the Barrie Historical Archive and deepened her interest even further.
“It’s like an online free museum with photographs, videos, newspapers, all kinds of things,” she says. “Through volunteering there, I ended up writing a weekly post for BarrieToday, which I’ve been doing for about five years.”
Penning her weekly column helped Harris hone her storytelling skills.
“With doing that I thought I could do some things on my own,” she says. “I knew I could do something with this so I created Fire & Mist Stories. The reason for the name is because I’m going back to Scotland in my mind and these are the kinds of stories that would be told around a fire at the bottom of a misty mountain in the Highlands of Scotland.”
Through Fire & Mist Stories, Harris also creates family stories for people by helping to put their genealogies together through story.
“It’s not with charts and documents, it’s the story of their family,” she says. “Where’d they come from? Why’d they come? What did they do? I also do public speaking like I’ll be doing in Bradford, and I do walking tours. The walks are history related with a true crime one, a haunted walk, or custom walks.”
Learn more about Harris and Fire & Mist Stories by clicking here.
