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Donald Morrison, son of Scottish immigrant Murdo Morrison, hired a lawyer in 1888 to challenge the terms of a mortgage his illiterate father took out against the family farm. The lawyer was in cahoots with the moneylender, named McAulay, and the Morrisons were bilked out of their farm. During the supposedly legal takeover, the Morrison farmhouse and barn burned down, and McAulay hired gunslinger Lucius “Jack” Warren as a “special constable” for the sole purpose of arresting Donald Morrison for arson. Warren challenged young Morrison and when they met face to face on the street that afternoon, Donald Morrison shot and killed Warren.
Detectives, police, jail guards and soldiers hunted Morrison, who held on to the hope that justice might somehow, someday prevail. Sympathetic friends harbored him for nearly a year, but Morrison was captured in an ambush and made to stand trial.
He was sentenced to 18 years hard labor. His friends and supporters were shocked. With no fight left in him, Morrison chose to succumb to starvation and died in hospital June 19, 1894 - four days after a recommendation for his release claimed that he was no longer a threat to authority. The hunt for Donald Morrison remains one of the longest and most extensive man-hunts in Canadian history.
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