CSI: Chelsea
A tale of bogs, bullets and DIY forensics
On a quiet July afternoon in 1961, an unlikely collection of a cottager, a truck driver and two mechanics helped a stranger in a scene more fit for television than a garage in a rural village.
The mechanics in the story were Harold Yuill, the owner of a garage in Chelsea, Quebec, and his employee Harky — my father. The truck driver was Harky’s brother Bob, who had stopped at the garage for a visit.
“Can you drive me to a hospital? I’ve been shot. And get me a bottle of Coke?”
It was an uneventful mid-summer day until Mrs. Christie Cuzner — the cottager in this story — arrived with her sons Guy and Gordon accompanied by a stranger. The man had driven from inside the Gatineau Park to Boland’s Store in Old Chelsea where he had approached her — “Can you drive me to a hospital? I’ve been shot”, adding “…and get me a bottle of Coke?”
With his cola in hand, he slid over to the passenger seat and Mrs. Cuzner drove his 1956 sedan to Yuill’s Garage in search of help.
Bob volunteered to take over and drive the man to Sacred-Heart hospital in Hull, where he was admitted for emergency surgery to repair the two bullet wounds above his heart.
Upon returning to the garage with the car, the men took it upon themselves to do some forensic work and dig a bullet slug out of the left rear door, as if starring in the popular CSI TV franchise. Bob later posed for photos to accompany the story which would be front page news in the Ottawa Citizen.
In recounting the events for the Ottawa Journal, Bob said that the stranger spoke very little, and kept a brown “official looking” briefcase with him. At no time did he make mention of how he came to be shot, where the incident occurred or why he was soaked from head to toe.
Only later would they learn that the victim was an off-duty RCMP Sergeant attached to the force’s legal division. The Quebec Provincial Police (QPP) had been called by the hospital, who in turn called the RCMP.
Inspector J.O. Gorman stated that there was no reason to suspect foul play, and confirmed that the officer had been shot twice in the chest with a .38 caliber revolver like those issued to officers. Inspector C.W. Speers confirmed that the shooting was not accidental, adding that the victim had been working under terrific pressures recently. Despite an extensive search, the weapon was never recovered and the location of the incident — believed to be a boggy area near Meech Lake or Kingsmere — was never determined.
Few details were made public, but the headlines the following day confirmed that the wounds were self inflicted, diffusing the notion that it was something more sinister such as an undercover operation or a Cold War rendez-vous gone bad.
Somewhat surprisingly, this was a story I had never heard and discovered while doing unrelated research. My father’s response offered little help when asked about the incident— “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That was weird.”
The story, like the handgun, was lost somewhere in a Gatineau Park bog.
