Sue Wright’s father-in-law witnessed part of southwestern Ontario’s most infamous kidnapping.
The Wrights lived on Egremont Road in what was then Plympton Township in 1934 when two cars came down the road one night. Cars were not the norm on the Egremont so Wright took notice.
He, his family and the rest of the world learned the heir to the beer dynasty had been kidnapped just down the road and the scoundrels were demanding $150,000 for his release. In the confusion of the kidnapping, Labatt was able to find his brother at the hotel where they were to meet the kidnappers without the ransom being paid.
“We knew some of the story and did the research to find some of the details and we decided to do the reenactment,” says Wright who wrote and directed the piece.
Little did Wright know but one of the Labatt relatives, John Scatchard of Grand Bend, the great, great nephew of the kidnapped Labatt heard about it. He arrived in the rain Saturday and watched history unfold before his eyes. “My dad always told me this story,” he says. But seeing it in person was an event.
“It’s pretty wild,” says Scatchard, “I want to learn more history of the family.”
And Scatchard brought a rare piece of his family’s history, the framed copy of the note sent to Labatt’s relatives. “This is the original kidnapping letter, you see there 1934.”
