The Real Story Behind Canada's Murder For Lobster. On the morning of June 1, 2. Venard Samson motored across the mouth of Petit- de- Grat Harbour in a small fishing boat. The narrow harbor, off the southeastern coast of Nova Scotia, is wedged between Petit- de- Grat Island, where he lives, and the wooded tail end of a larger island known as Isle Madame. By 6: 3. 0 a. m., he’d pulled one line of lobster traps and glided past a green navigational buoy. Page 1 of 2 Copyright Fast Fence Inc. 2015 Temporary Construction Fencing Take a look at any construction site, and you’ll probably be looking. The North Atlantic, known for its rough winds and heavy swell, stretched out before him, so flat he could have passed a straight razor over its surface. It was floating along an uninhabited stretch of shoreline the fishermen all knew as Mackerel Cove. At first, Venard thought little of it; he had seen dead deer there before. But as Venard pulled closer, he discovered a banged- up fiberglass skiff, a small oceangoing vessel. It was waterlogged, its sideboards cracked and its bow barely a foot above the water line. No one was on board. Venard circled the damaged boat three times, and discovered a floating gas tank and some green rope tangled around an anchor. The skiff’s outboard motor was missing, and its bowline, the rope that ties to the front of a boat, was apparently cut. Venard, a short man with a laborer’s physique who often speaks in an excitable squawk, picked up his radio and called the Canadian Coast Guard in Halifax, some 1. No, his GPS plotter wasn’t working. He’d have to drop a lobster trap to mark the spot. Around 6: 5. 5 a.
VHF radio cackled with a universal distress call: Pan- pan, pan- pan, pan- pan. All mariners were requested to be on the lookout and report any sightings of a man overboard. Venard towed the skiff back toward the wharf and handed it off to another lobsterman. In some 5. 0 years of fishing, neither man had encountered a situation like this. But both immediately wondered what had happened to Philip “Bowser,” who often roared around in the beat- up skiff, which he christened the Midnight Slider. The missing man’s full name was Philip Joseph Boudreau, but no one called him that because another local fisherman had the same name. A bull- necked man, 4. Philip didn’t have a license to go lobster fishing. Islanders caught glimpses of him and Brodie, his blonde Labrador, cruising around under the light of the moon. Later that morning, a ball cap washed ashore and a pair of boots were found floating in the harbor. It seemed Philip Boudreau was gone. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police got involved and determined there had been an “altercation.” Five days later, Mounties arrested the three- man crew of a boat called the Twin Maggies. One deckhand confessed to shooting at the skiff; another later claimed the crew intentionally drowned Philip and dumped his body overboard. Crown prosecutors moved swiftly to charge the three men for a crime the press dubbed “murder for lobster.” Stories described a tranquil fishing village, a place that had not had a murder in over 2. The insular, tight- knit community was the kind of place where spats erupted over fishing territory, many of which inevitably arose each season over missing traps, and yet somehow, people had managed to settle their own disputes. At first, the CBC portrayed Philip as a missing fisherman. Radio reports also claimed he had a lengthy criminal record. A swirl of rumors divided islanders: One camp claimed Philip was not a fisherman at all. We have created these easy to follow patterns. They can be made into a prayer shawl or a lap blanket. The unique feature of all of the knit patterns is that the.He was nothing more than a notorious, lifelong bully and a petty thief (they pronounce it teef) who had a reputation for stealing lobster.“Who cares if this man has a criminal history,” another woman wrote in the comments of a local news report. And people who care about him. There is a human being missing or possibly dead.” Even if Philip had been a vandal and a saboteur, he didn’t act alone: Fishermen allegedly paid him, in cash and marijuana, to steal lobster and destroy traps. Upon receiving a distress signal, crews are obligated to “proceed with all speed to render assistance.” Yet, on June 1, 2. Philip went missing, few fishermen stopped to search for him. It’s believed his body drifted away. The so- called murder for lobster was an anomaly, but its reverberations contained a familiar ring: This was what happened when the ties that bind any close- knit community together become a gag order. It’s a story about how things can unravel anywhere — not just on a remote island off another island off the coast of Canada. But the Acadians are survivors — as one islander put it to me, “suspicious and a little superstitious.” In the first hectic days after Philip went missing, some remembered thinking it was all a big joke. He didn’t want his name used at all. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me. He’d known me for the lesser part of an hour. The problem was that he knew everyone — he knew many families going back at least two generations — and everybody knew him. I don’t want to get in shit with them,” he said. The villages there remain Acadian strongholds, some 3,0. Many families still speak a beautiful French dialect that dates to the 1. European presence in North America. An 1. 87. 5 guidebook describes them as “pious Catholics and daring seamen,” who, for several centuries, lived on cod fishing. Near Petit- de- Grat Island, there’s a black granite monument in the middle of the cemetery that depicts a lone fisherman pulling up a single fish. It lists dozens of the men lost at sea. Philip Boudreau’s name isn’t there. Philip was the youngest of the four Boudreau siblings. His grandfather had built a square saltbox house out on the windswept tip of Petit- de- Grat Island, and Philip’s father earned the family’s “Bowser” nickname for his unrelenting wiliness. Philip’s big brother Gerard said, “Bowsers were always in mischief. They poach year- round to get what they want to live to eat, and we grew up still doing the same thing.”The Bowser brothers definitely got into mischief: Gerard remembered one summer when they were kids when he’d shot Philip in the head. The two brothers were out hunting. Gerard, a jovial man who now weighs at least 3. It dinged a metal pipe and the bullet ricocheted straight into Philip’s temple; he then flipped into the pond. After that, their father destroyed his gun, but it was just harmless slapstick, just brothers being brothers, Gerard said. In the ensuing years, Philip was charged with at least 8. Flaunting authorities must have resonated with some residents, who hid him, putting him up in old farmsteads or unused sheds. One time, a Mountie arrived, lights flashing, drew her gun, and assumed a shooting stance. A neighbor remembered Philip running off and up a hillside. He turned, grabbed his crotch, and yelled back, “Tell the Queen to suck on this.”To some, he was a kind of modern folk hero, perpetually on the run from the law. There were stories about an official who chased him straight off the end of the wharf into the frigid harbor. Philip hid under some seaweed and emerged, his middle finger held aloft. That’s the thing.” A neighbor once saw Philip riding down the road on an ATV with so many marijuana plants, presumably stolen, it looked as if he were wearing a mask of leaves that revealed only his eyes. And in each one of these stories, his arrival was like a punch line. He would show up at a community dance in a village called Little Anse, islanders said, and someone would say, “Philip, you can’t be dancing alone.” “Are you fucking crazy?” he said. As Andre Le. Blanc, a local resident, told me, “Every time he was released from prison, there’d be break- ins that week. Was it Philip or was it people taking advantage of when Philip was released?”“Unfortunately, he also got the blame for what he didn’t do and kind of enjoyed the notoriety,” he said. Crews are up at 4 a. The lobster fishing area, formally known as LFA 2. Nova Scotia and makes up about $6 million of Canada’s $1. Lobster catches climbed in the last decade as cod stocks, the island’s founding fishery, were decimated as a result of overfishing or, depending on who you talk to, the federally sanctioned exploitation. Crews work seven days a week during lobster season, which lasts from late April through late June. During the 2. 01. Mackerel Cove — the place where Venard Samson found Philip Boudreau’s damaged skiff. Most mornings, the Twin Maggies, a large boat by island standards, motored around the cape. Dwayne Samson, 4. Carla, 3. 7. The couple, who had twin daughters, were known as a sweet and hardworking. Carla inherited the lobster fishing license from her father, James Landry, and James worked as Dwayne’s deckhand along with one of James’ cousins, Craig Landry. Those two months probably represented the most substantial, if not the sole, portion of the family’s income. A lobsterman with bloodshot eyes and a leather jacket, who declined to give me his name and later threatened to shoot me if I did use it, said the Twin Maggies crew moved into Mackerel Cove after having depleted their own territory in another small harbor near Petit- de- Grat. Traditionally, the lobsterman told me, you’d set traps only in the little cove where you lived or risk losing your gear. We were never getting into no racket. We play tricks.” Supposedly, Philip was playing these so- called tricks — poaching lobsters and sabotaging traps. On the afternoon of Philip’s disappearance, several eyewitnesses who were questioned by the Mounties implied the Twin Maggies crashed into Boudreau’s skiff in retaliation for stealing and sinking their lobster traps. Others claimed the Twin Maggies crew went out in deep waters that morning, deeper than anyone would be setting traps, with something dragging in its wake. A truck driver saw the crew pass around a rifle on the dock. Another lobster buyer claimed the Twin Maggies crew arrived an hour later than usual with scuff marks on her normally pristine bow, though lobster boats get banged up all the time hauling traps.
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