James Williscroft of Frog Lake

Turning the pages of Bruce County's history, it is amazing the number of residents who, during the last decades of the 19th century, headed west. James Williscroft was one of them. One of the Williscroft family of Elderslie Township, he heard the siren call in 1885. His wife and children stayed behind, waiting for James to get settled.

Williscroft made his way to Frog Lake, Alberta where he found work as a carpenter. For some reason, history records his name as John Williscraft of Southampton. It doesn't matter. James Williscroft of Elderslie Township was about to die at the hands of a Cree named Wandering Spirit.

Big Bear and his band of 500 Plains Cree had spent the winter at Frog Lake. South at Batoche, Louis Reil and the Metis were preparing to fight the Canadian government. Big Bear's young men were eager to join the coming battle. On April 2nd, 1885, violence finally erupted into the Northwest Rebellion.

When the unpopular Indian agent, Thomas Quinn, refused to issue food rations, the Cree attacked the Frog Lake settlement and, in a fury of bloodletting, murdered nine white men including two priests. James Williscroft, a farmer from Bruce County, was among the dead that day.