Bay d'Espoir residents ponder arsonist's possible return, a year after devastating fires

A white school with boarded windows and charred siding greets you when you drive over a hill and enter Milltown.

For the residents here, it's a daily reminder of the damage caused by a man bent on extracting his price from society.

The one-year anniversary of the fires came and went quietly last month, but the blackened school still feels like an insult.

"He caused so much destruction here," said local resident Jennifer Strickland. "And, you know, where is he going to go after? Will he be back here?"

On a bitter winter's day, Strickland brings her two-year-old boy to the Lions Club to play with other kids. It's a weekly play date for children not old enough to attend school yet.

The mothers sit off to one side and chat among themselves. It would be a normal scene in any community, except for the fact they are talking about the man who burned their town.

On Jan. 17, 2017, Donald Craig MacHaight walked from Morrisville to Milltown. Locals say he did it with sneakers on his feet — nine kilometres over steep hills and through snow.

He torched the school, the town hall, fire department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police building.

People here still talk about the crime, and they scoff at the punishment of a four-year prison sentence, but you won't hear anybody speak his name. They aren't ready for that yet.

"For the parents who have kids going to the school, or the teachers who lost everything, it feels like a slap in the face," Strickland said of the prison term handed down one day after the one-year anniversary.

Just down the road, Mayor Jerry Kearley is still getting used to the new town hall.

The building smells like fresh lumber and new laminate flooring. It's three floors, with each room designed for a specific purpose. Council chambers, a meeting room, a garage for the fire trucks. In the basement, however, there is one empty room.

Kearley hopes it will house the town's museum someday — if they can find enough historical materials not destroyed when the last town hall burned to the ground.

"When I activate things with the heritage society again, to get things moving, I know people are going to be reluctant to let us have anything to put here if we can't guarantee that it's safe," Kearley said.

One of the biggest differences with the new building will be a security system. The mayor says there would have been no way to know about the fire or identify MacHaight as a suspect, if it weren't for a person driving by in the early hours of the morning and seeing him.

The new town hall is being equipped with a security system that will alert the mayor and town clerk if anything is triggered.

"We never expected this to happen in our town," Kearley said. "All of a sudden it hits here. It gets you to thinking, what do we need to do to prevent this again? So hopefully we've done some of that."

Sentence matches timeline for new school

MacHaight detailed his life and motives in a 25-page handwritten letter, complete with chapter titles, submitted to the court before his sentencing.

He claims to suffer from schizoid personality disorder, and says he was ostracized by society. He moved to Morrisville when his mother grew ill, and moved into her house.

After she died, the house was damaged by the flooding in the wake of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016.

MacHaight says he was denied compensation, so he set out to "extract a payment for my life unlived."

Is he going to be allowed to come back? And I don't know how we could stop him.- Mayor Jerry Kearley

The biggest part of that payment is the school. The town hall has been rebuilt, and Kearley says the RCMP will have a new building as well.

But it will be at least four years until the Bay d'Espoir region sees a new school — if they get one at all.

"Our kids are out a school and we won't see another school for four years," Kearley said. "This guy is going to be out walking around again before these kids get a school."

Shawn Fowlow is the former principal of Bay d'Espoir Academy. He works for the school board now, based out of the temporary school set up in the St. Alban's Community Centre.

He says the board has made it their priority to get a new school in Bay d'Espoir, but it is pending approval by the provincial government. In the meantime, they will continue using the temporary building.

How do you move on?

MacHaight was granted time-and-a-half credit for his year spent in jail awaiting sentencing. That means he has two-and-a-half years remaining on his sentence.

Strickland is worried about how soon MacHaight could be out of jail, if he could be given credit for good behaviour and released back into the community.

She isn't the only one worried.

"That's the fear people are expressing to me," the mayor said. "Is he going to be allowed to come back? And I don't know how we could stop him."

So that raises the question — if he does come back, is there a way the town can forgive the man who set fire to so many treasured assets?

"Wow, that's a tough question," Fowlow said with a grin. "I think so. This has been a very emotional event, but there's good people in Bay d'Espoir. I like to see the good in people.

"I certainly hope that people will deal with that individually, but collectively as a community we can work together and move on."

Kearley is willing to consider it, but isn't making any promises.

"Hopefully he's getting some help inside. Maybe … Maybe he's not the same person he was when he went in. But when you read the 25-page letter … it tells us he knew exactly what he was doing."

Strickland lets out a long sigh when asked the question. She looks at her son playing on the floor and knows he won't have an actual school to attend when he starts kindergarten.

One year hasn't been enough time to heal the wounds of a town gone up in flames. But like many people here, she's open to letting go of any anger she felt towards Donald Craig MacHaight.

Even if she doesn't speak his name.

"I guess everyone deserves a second chance," she said. "Forgiveness would be the ideal thing to happen.

"Will it happen in a small town like this? I don't know. Like I said, he caused so much destruction, it's hard to forget about it."