When I began spending time in and around Bear River, starting about 1920, I heard many stories about Michael Finnegan, or “Buster” Finnegan as he was known to most people. He was the bad man about town, with a reputation for violence carried out on a background of senseless jokes and malarkey.

   Michael lived alone on an abandoned farm at the edge of Morganville. The house had weathered away on the outside and was collapsing on the inside, and the forest was advancing into the fields that once had been the sustenance of a settler family. From this home base, Michael sold illegal booze, generated famous drunken parties, and in various other ways built up a reputation for his place as a haven for hellions.

   The first time I heard of Michael Finnegan was when I learned that my friend Harlan Louis was found dead down Michael’s well, and Michael was suspected of his murder. Harlan was a good-natured, easy-going, roly-poly man from the Mi’kmaq community, with an impressive walrus moustache. He built canoes in his living room and guided sport fishermen and hunters.

   The news of Harlan's death was an ugly shock to many people, including me, and different accounts to explain what had happened, and who was to blame, quickly sprang up in the community. The one given widest credibility at the time was that, at a drinking party at Michael’s house, Michael had become enraged at Harlan for drinking more than he could pay for. He had beaten Harlan unconscious with a club and then stuffed him head-first down the well. There were no witnesses willing to talk.

   An alternate explanation, and the final official view, was that Harlan had gone to the well for a drink of water and had fallen in.

A story about Michael Finnegan that became a legend in Bear River began with Michael returning from a trip somewhere and falling off the train and onto the Bear River Station platform in a drunken stupor.

   The station was some four miles from the village. As soon as the taxi driver, who customarily met the trains, perceived Michael's condition, he loaded the other passengers into his vehicle and took off, leaving those at the station to figure out what to do with the drunk.

The only means of transportation remaining was a flat-bed truck used for freight, and it appeared certain that, if Michael were placed on that, he would roll off during the journey and be maimed or killed. There were those who thought that such an opportunity should not have been missed, but an empty crate was spotted on the station platform. It was quickly re-built, with Michael inside it, and hoisted onto the truck. In this cage, he was driven, up, down, through and around Bear River.

   Micheal appeared to enjoy the notoriety, reaching out through the bars with a bottle, offering drinks, yelling, singing, and making obscene gestures.

   As a result of Harlan’s death and stories like this, I formed an impression of Michael Finnegan as a massive man of great violence. According to local gossip, he had beaten up many people, including his father and his brother.

   The father, Trumpington Finnegan, lived in a hut under a huge, crooked white pine at a bend in the Tom Wallace Road, not far from where the trail began for the Loud Lake Deadwater. He seemed very lonely and aged, and glad of some company when I would drop in for a visit during my summer with the beavers on Loud Lake. On the subject of Michael, however, he was silent.

   Carl Miller told me Trumpington was deathly afraid of his son, who had it in for him for mistreating his mother. Other people said that none of the rest of the family except his brother, Tom, would have anything to do with Michael.

   I met Michael Finnegan in person at Loud Lake in the summer of 1931, when, unexpectedly, he walked into my camp for the first of what would be several visits. I was astonished at how different he appeared from what I had imagined. He was short, thin, and frail- looking. During one visit, he told me he was the runt of the family litter.

   If all the assault stories were true, he must have been capable of turning himself into a screaming fury, swarming up on top of people like a weasel, pounding their heads, gouging their eyes, and kicking every soft part he could reach.

   As I saw him around Loud Lake, he always carried a gun. It was only a .22, but still, deadly enough. I imagine he kept it handy for any small game he might chance to see. I wondered if he also carried it as a stage prop to enhance the label of violence which his community, and perhaps he himself, had attached to him.

   Bill Harris told me that the only person in the world Michael Finnegan cared about was his mother. Even this was impulsive rather than steady. He would give her money when he happened to have some, or show up one day and do all the wash for her, or scrub the kitchen floor.

   He was also said to be generous to some of the children in the family, giving them cash presents. I once saw him hold out an American quarter to a little boy, while telling him, “Watch out the eagle don't shit in yer pocket ”

   On his visits to my camp on Loud Lake, Michael’s manner was quiet and the expression on his thin, sharp-chinned face was solemn, his mouth with down-drawn corners even when he was making his frequent vulgar jokes. At those times, he had a powerful aura of melancholy, but not of violence.

   There is a legend in the folklore of the Ukraine about a young man, Ivan Mazepa, whose crime of passion is punished severely by the cuckold Count. He is stripped naked and lashed to the back of a horse, which then is tormented into madness and released to run wild. Mazepa goes through what seems like a lifetime of misery, torture and near-death experiences, and can exert no control over his circumstances.

   As I think back to my encounters with Michael Finnegan, I wonder if his life, like that of young Ivan Mazepa, was compelled forward by something he had been fastened to that was not of his own choosing. I can imagine that Michael’s wild horse might have been some mix of childhood traumas, mental illness, poverty and social ostracism except when he would perform as an unsavoury clown.