Chronicles Mailbag Adds Footnote to Tale of Notorious Outlaws

One of the joys of publishing what really amounts to an online magazine is that it often draws a response from a reader, either as a brief comment or as something much more ambitious.

In my previous life as a weekly columnist in the Cowichan Valley Citizen, I condensed a chapter from my book, Outlaws of the Canadian West, which is a compilation of new chapters and ones originally published in 1974 as Outlaws of the Canadian Frontier then, again, in 1977, as Outlaws of Western Canada. (Don’t tell me I don’t recycle.)

Fast-forward to 2019 and Outlaws’ third incarnation as explained above. It was my weekly Chronicles column in the Citizen that drew a wonderful email from John McNab.

I’d been inspired, if that isn’t too strong a word, to run the story, “Intensive Manhunt Isn’t B.C.’s First,” by the fact that for two weeks the news media had been reporting a murder spree by two Vancouver Island teenagers who at first were thought to be among the victims, then identified as the killers.

It reminded me of another manhunt that dated back to 1911—the one I’d written about in Outlaws. The story of Moses Paul and Paul Spintlum is right out of a Louis L’Amour novel, when the British Columbia frontier was almost as wild as the American Wild West. The big difference was that we on the north side of the 49th parallel had British justice, the RCMP and the Provincial Police vs. the Hollywood-style anarchy that prevailed in many American states.

But we did have our outlaws, too, and Paul and Spintlum as they were known were as rootin’-tootin’ as anybody below the line. John McNab spotted a connection between these desperadoes and his family and generously shares it next week with Chronicles readers.

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Photo caption: What did Lucie (Bones) Truran do that made Paul and Spintlum, wanted for three murders and on the run for over a year, want to kill her?