Feature Article April Fool's Issue April 3, 2002
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Tit-Luc Tessier: The Tichborne Terrorby Jack BenjaminThere were many colourful characters living in and around the Ottawa Valley in the mid 19th century, but few rivaled the giant logger and robber Luc Tit-Luc Tessier. Legend has it that Tit-Luc was born just outside of Tichborne in a log cabin, the fifth of twelve children in the logging Tessier family, sometime in the first or second decade of the 19th Century. When he was just a lad he joined his brothers in the logging camps, where his size made him one of the most productive, and feared, loggers. By the time he was 16, it is said he had reached 64 tall and weighed close to three hundred pounds. Tit-Luc is little known in Ontario but folklorists from Quebec know him well from his later years in the Outaouais region. Jean-Guy Normand of the Universite du Quebec de Louest (UQUO) in Hull says Tessier, along with Claude Bolduc and Iain OFlaherty made up a triumvirate of hard fighting giants who terrorized logging camps throughout the Outaouais and the Ottawa Valley for at least fifteen years. They would get hired on at a logging camp, and work like devils until they were made foremen. Then they would terrorize the rest of the men and make them turn over a portion of their wages as a sort of tax. Anyone who stood up to them would soon be out of a job and short a few teeth, or worse. They were particularly hard on anyone of Scottish heritage. In fact, back in his early days in Frontenac county Tit-Luc established a fierce hatred of Scottish people, although there is no existing account of what he had against the Scots. The only clue lies in a letter he wrote to his mother, Juliane Tessier, dated February 5, 1852. In the letter he says I hate the Scots, they remind me of the English. For whatever reason, it is said that Tessier established a barrier for Scottish workers at the Lanark/Frontenac county boundary. For ten years between 1835-1845 there were no loggers of Scottish heritage anywhere west of Maberly. Any who tried was treated to the famous Tessier two step. Legend has it that Tessier would come up to them and reach over as if to shake hands. When the hapless fellow stuck out his hand, Tessier would grab it, step on their right foot, whisper an insult in their ear, and then knock them down with a left hook to the eye, recounts Professor Normand. Although there are anecdotal accounts of fights between up to ten opponents and Tit-Luc, he managed to survive into middle age, when he gave up on logging in favour of a more lucrative endeavor, robbing the homes of the wealthier citizens of the Ottawa Valley. He was sort of like a Jesse James character in those days says Professor Normand, although instead of robbing the rich to give to the poor, he used to rob the rich, and rob the poor as well. Ironically Tessier, known for his hatred of everything Scottish, was one of the first senators appointed under Canadas first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, where Senator Tit-Luc Tessier died peacefully in his sleep during an emergency debate concerning some questionable financial dealings of the Prime Minister, on January 25, 1881.(Jack Benjamin is the President for Life of the Oh So Histerical Society)
