Matriarchs of the Hoople Creek Loyalists
by John Sliter

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“Matriarchs of the Hoople Creek Loyalists” is a series of historical fiction stories about eighteen women and their families who helped to settle Upper Canada along a small creek in eastern Ontario. Their stories reflect their struggle to survive hunger, disease, and even war as they married and raised their children in a new, heavily forested and seeming impenetrable land. The first people to live along Hoople Creek were United Empire Loyalists forced to travel hundreds of miles under harsh conditions to escape the patriots of the United States in order to remain loyal to the United Kingdom. They began their new lives north of the Saint Lawrence River and along Hoople Creek, and somehow managed to survive. Many of their descendants remain in the area and have gone from a people fighting for mere survival, to an environmentally conscious, empathetic, and fair society striving to be inclusive while maintaining equality for all. It was refugees like the Hoople Creek matriarchs and their families who helped make Canadians who they are today.

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John Sliter was born in Cornwall, Ontario, and spent much of his childhood on his grandparents’ Beaudette farm in Pleasant Valley, north of Osnabruck Centre in Ingleside. The farm’s proximity to Hoople Creek proved irresistible to a curious young boy, drawing him outdoors in search of fish, turtles, frogs, and the wildlife that flourished along its banks. After graduating from Cornwall Collegiate and Vocational School, John attended St. Lawrence College, where he studied Business Finance. He later joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, beginning a distinguished 36-year career that started in a small town in the interior of British Columbia. Throughout his service, John was repeatedly commended in the communities he served for leadership and community engagement, including initiatives supporting First Nations peoples and his role as Chair of a local Crisis and Counselling Centre Board of Directors. A strong advocate of lifelong learning, John pursued higher education alongside his policing career, ultimately earning a Master of Business Administration degree from Simon Fraser University. He spent the majority of his professional life conducting— and later leading—complex financial crime investigations. His expertise and unwavering commitment to this field led to promotions into senior management positions within the RCMP. Upon his retirement in 2014, John was internationally recognized as a respected leader and visionary in financial crime investigation. Following his transfer to RCMP Headquarters in 1996, John returned to the Ingleside area with his young family, settling near the familiar waters of Hoople Creek. An avid angler, he developed a deep interest in the environmental protection of the creek and founded a not-for-profit organization, The Friends of Hoople Creek Society, dedicated to preserving its ecological health. This work led him to undertake extensive research into the creek’s history and the lives of those who lived along its banks over the past two centuries. During this research, the often-overlooked contributions of several women stood out—planting the seed for this work, which explores the lives of key women who struggled, persevered, and helped shape the settlement and development of Upper Canada.

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Contributors

Author

John Sliter

Illustrator

Jillian Sliter

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