Freeland made the front page of the Charlottetown Guardian on this date in 1949 with the sad news that the body of Augustine “Gus” Gain had been found in the woods.
Elderly Man Perishes In Woods At Freeland
The body of Augustine Gain, 81, was found about ten o’clock on the morning of December 24th in the woods about a mile from his home. He had been missing since the previous day and an all-night search had been carried on.
An investigation was conducted by members of Summerside Detachment R.C.M.P., and the Coroner, Dr. Austine Delaney and it was decided that death was due to natural causes and exposure and that an inquest would not be necessary. The body was frozen when found.
A considerable sum of money was found in various pockets of the clothing. The elderly man had lived alone for a number of years and was last seen alive about noon the day previous when he left the store of A. Philips after procuring supplies and started for his home a mile and a half away.
The day was warm and the walking was heavy. That evening it was noticed by his nephew, James Gain, who lives nearby that there was no light in his uncle’s house and on investigation he found that he was missing. – S
I asked my mother if she remembered someone called Augustine Gain and she said, “Oh yes, Gus Gain. He used to come to our store.” Clinton Morrison’s history of Lot 11, Along the North Shore, says Gus lived in the community of Murray Road, so I asked my mother where Gain’s house was and she replied, “There by the water, you know, by Gain’s Creek.” Of course. There are no more Murrays or Gains in our area, but their names live on.
So there is a typo in the article, as the store mentioned in the article did not belong to A. Philips, but to my father H. Phillips, or rather, H.E. Phillips. Harold Edmund. He used both initials in business, and I have no idea why, except that it probably made him sound more prominent when in fact, in 1949, they were barely scraping by.
It was probably my mother who served Gus that Thursday two days before Christmas, and she could have been the last person to see him alive. The drive from our old store to where Gus lived is only about five minutes by car, but that’s a round about route if you are on foot, so he would have walked a well-worn path through the forest as a short cut. We sometimes used that same path for snowmobiling when I was a child in the 1970s, and I can still pick it out when I look at recent aerial photos. It’s swampy in places back there, would be terrible walking if the ground wasn’t completely frozen.
This blog now memorializes two PEI men named Gus who died in 1949.