IN THE LINE OF DUTY: OPP officer shot dead in 1928
Const. Norman Maker was known to always get his man
The other police knew he was fearless and so did the local criminals who often saw him at the scene of county issues,usually at the same homes repeatedly.
(This is the first of three exclusive excerpts which will appear in The Examiner from Ed Arnold’s latest book Inside Peterborough; Three Murder Stories. This is from the first story about Constable Norman Maker who was murdered in a hotel on Simcoe Street in 1928.)
Constable Maker could only shake his head at all the local police issues, while earning the respect of, not only the chief, but the community and surrounding area.
Known as a courteous and humble gentleman, Maker did his duties with the strength and courage needed in those times.
He was often requested to attend problems in the “back country” of the county where people didn’t seem to have as much money or education as city folk. He would go into their homes and be dismayed at the conditions children were living in, starving, with little clothing, food or warmth. He tried to comfort them with laughter and, of course, his delightful chocolate bars that helped these poor back-country children grow fonder of him.
He was called out one night to the Dwyer home where he found little Johnny in the attic corner, curled up, shivering, with very little clothing nor bed or blankets in the bitter cold of the winter in an unheated house, built with boards that didn’t stop the wind from getting in. He took off his own overcoat to cover the boy trying to help a hopeless situation but the child later died.
The other police knew he was fearless and so did the local criminals who often saw him at the scene of county issues, usually at the same homes repeatedly. When they learned it was Maker dealing with the case they knew it meant trouble for them because he usually got his man.
“His reputation for getting his man was common talk among them,” states one biographical sketch, “and he travelled the well known ninth line of Dummer at any hour of the day or night, despite threats that they would “get him.”
“Many of his calls were in the early hours of the morning, when a man could have been excused for waiting until daylight. But Constable Maker was always loyal to his force; his periods of duty recognized no set hours and often involved loss of one or two hours sleep before he would arrive back in Peterborough with the man he had set out to catch.”
“On one occasion a call came from Dummer from a crowd that had given him a lot of trouble, daring him to go out. Never hesitating for a moment, and despite the early hour, Constable Maker got into his car and departed for the house. Upon arriving he opened the front door, stepped into the kitchen and announced in casual tones,““Well, here I am. What do you want?”
“He had called their bluff and had once again proved himself their master. He had been threatened with a reporter standing beside him, but his only reply was a smile, as he disdainfully turned on his heels and resumed his conversation as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.”
Many of the locals knew about Maker being called one day to get to Young’s Point (more than an hour for the 15-mile trip in those days, 20-30 minutes from Peterborough today) where a man died while working on a construction site.
The roads were deemed “impassable” because of major flooding to the narrow dirt road. It took an unimaginable five hours for him to get there and investigate the death. He persevered, although the water was getting into his car, arriving soaked, investigating and returning home taking the same route to get back to Peterborough to do any other work he might be needed for.
Actions like this may have impressed some people, but Constable Maker had spent four years in World War 1, seeing and doing what many never would or could. This type of work was easy in comparison. Facing bad guys when he had faced the battles of war, seeing what it did to fellow humans, seemed, not easier, but tamer. It was always the plight of the poor child that broke his heart and made his job so much tougher.
There was also a story passed down to the family that he would tip off his favourite bootlegger before coming out to raid his property.
In 1927 police work got more difficult when the Ontario Temperance Act was replaced with the Liquor Control Act in May. It basically allowed people to sell alcohol in supervised government stores and hotels with meals. The province also created the Liquor Control Board of Ontario.
This caused a major reorganization of the OPP because the province’s new booze laws came under its jurisdiction. The Temperance officers, making more money than the OPP constables, were redesignated to the OPP.
And while enforcing these laws became a new headache for Maker, who now had to make sure liquor laws in city hotels and restaurants were being obeyed, the year was also going to see him honoured in a very special way.
The Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, an international connection between there and Buffalo, New York, about 20 miles from Niagara Falls, was opening on August 7, 1927, with a big celebration.
The border had a different, longer entrance in those days with high columns, which no longer exist, greeting drivers onto the Canadian side of the bridge.
The opening was so significant that Britain’s Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII, was attending along with the Duke of Kent; Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and the United States’ Vice President Charles Dawes, with plenty of other dig- nitaries.
There would need to be an OPP presence.
OPP commissioner Major General Victor Williams, a military man who had joined the Northwest Mounted Police as an Inspector and later appointed OPP commissioner in 1922, chose Constable Norman Maker as one of two special provincial constables to be there for the Prince of Wales.
More than 100,000 people attended as Maker helped protect the man who would be king of his native country. There was no prouder career moment for Maker.
It was a good year for the constable receiving this honour and the birth of another daughter. But those damn looser liquor laws he faced were creating more belligerence, drunkedness and false bravado.