'I don't know how to love': Sisters search for answers 51 years after their family's axe murder

Connie Woods and Cynthia Laliberte have a hard time getting along. 

The dark undercurrent to their relationship stems from the murder of their parents and four siblings when they were 10 and 11, respectively, in 1969.

The Pederson family of Buffalo Narrows, Sask., were killed by Frederick McCallum on a snowy January night. Donny, the sisters' youngest sibling, was the lone survivor of the axe attack. The sisters were having a sleepover at their grandmother's that night. 

Since then, Woods and Laliberte, now in their 60s, have struggled to live with their trauma.

Laliberte, the younger of the sisters, says she was given one hour of therapy after her family was murdered.

"I don't know why they bothered. It's just like they took me in for this counselling and all they did was show me pictures," she said

"And in every picture, I said to them, it was always about someone being killed. It's all blood and murder."

After a 2019 CBC Saskatchewan story on the 50th anniversary of the little-known Buffalo Narrows massacre, the women received inquiries from people who wanted to help financially. The sisters decided to create a GoFundMe page to refurbish their family's one headstone, which they did.

But they still didn't know where McCallum was, or why they were seemingly forgotten by the system.

Killer's whereabouts unknown

Laliberte is sitting with Woods at her dining room table in Buffalo Narrows. Neither have ever left the town. Woods says she's too broke and Laliberte says she wouldn't leave her children.

The McCallum family remains in Buffalo Narrows, too.

Whenever the McCallum family has a gathering or reunion, the sisters lock their doors. 

Woods has broken the locks on her windows many times, checking and re-checking them and tightening them to the point that the window ledge is scraped and broken.

We've heard stories that he has been here in town.- Jayme McCallum 

When police got to the Pedersons' home the night they were murdered, they found Tommy and Bernadette Pederson, four of their children, and a family friend bloodied in their beds. Frederick McCallum had used an axe to kill them all. Donny Pederson, then 7, was seriously injured and hospitalized, but he survived.

McCallum, 19 at the time, turned himself in to police shortly after the attack. He was deemed not criminally responsible and sent to what was then called a mental hospital in the province. Later, a doctor cleared him for trial and he was sent to the federal penitentiary in Prince Albert, a few hours south of Buffalo Narrows.

As an adult, Donny Pederson committed crimes with the goal of landing in "The Pen," as it is known in Buffalo Narrows, and meeting his family's killer face to face.

The sisters say they were never kept apprised of any court proceedings. It turns out that McCallum wasn't even in Prince Albert at the time Donny was trying to confront him. 

Newspaper reports say that McCallum was sent to a psychiatric facility in Penetanguishene, Ont., after he was again diagnosed with schizophrenia. But the women never knew for sure. They didn't have the tools or ability to access victims' services back then.

"We've heard stories that he has been here in town. We have heard a bunch of stuff that he is around," said Woods' daughter, Jayme McCallum, who has no relation to Frederick McCallum's family. "[It] is very scary to see your parents go through the things they do."

More reports out of Ontario from the 1990s say McCallum was released after 20 years in 1989 with conditions that he not return to Saskatchewan. However, his current whereabouts remain unknown.

The Ontario government doesn't have complete records from the Penetanguishene hospital, which was renamed the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in 2011. Officials wouldn't release the information to journalists, though. Only to the victims. And the sisters are too traumatized and afraid to start the process.

'I want to get to the bottom of this'

The sisters are close to their own families — they both have loving husbands, children and grandchildren. But they have a hard time sharing in the joy of a big, boisterous clan. 

Woods is so worried about losing her family she tries to keep everyone in sight. Laliberte finds it difficult to empathize with her more emotional sister.

Woods' daughters, Jayme McCallum and Rhoda Woods are fierce advocates for their mother.

"Any information that can help these girls have some closure on anything, because l want to get to the bottom of this. That's a lot to take in, like even growing up," said McCallum.

The sisters stayed with their grandmother for a short time after the mass murder.

They don't believe she was provided additional financial assistance for their care.

"She got what she got every month and that was her little welfare cheques and that's what we had to survive with," said Laliberte.

Someone may have been assigned as their caretaker after that and given financial assistance from the government, but if it happened, they were never told.

Woods and Laliberte were both briefly sent to Saskatoon to live with a white family — the sisters consider themselves part of Saskatchewan's Sixties Scoop — but were able to return to their grandmother's care soon after.

The government of Saskatchewan wouldn't release any files on Woods and Laliberte, if they even have access to them.

In a joint statement, the ministries of Health, Justice, and Social Services said "to those affected by the Sixties Scoop, there is a growing awareness of mistakes that were made in the past, and why we need to acknowledge those who may have suffered because of those mistakes."

The ministries were unable to comment on the case specifically and could not speak to the state of services at the time.

'Nothing ever panned out like the way they said it would'

Adding to the weight of their sadness is the knowledge of the 1967 Shell Lake, Sask., massacre that people are more familiar with, thanks to books, news stories throughout the years and lately, because of true crime podcasts. In a strange coincidence, the Shell Lake victims were the Peterson family.

Woods and Laliberte believe that the young survivor of the Shell Lake tragedy was treated better than they were. 

She was taken in by her older sister and raised with her sister's children as siblings. After the murders, she received an outpouring of gifts and emotional support from the community.

I still don't know how to love someone. What is love?- Cynthia Laliberte

The daughters want Woods and Laliberte to get counselling and more financial support than they've had. The older women feel shunned by some people in town. They've never understood why.

"Every time we see somebody, they say they're going to do something for us. But nothing ever panned out like the way they said it would," Laliberte said.

The only people who could help are gone.

"My mom and dad and brothers and sisters … I would give anything to have had them growing up. But that's never gonna happen," said Laliberte.

"I still don't know how to love someone. What is love? Because you never had your parents to show you," Woods said, weeping.

They are desperate for mental health treatment beyond the services offered in Buffalo Narrows. The counsellor is from the community and they don't want to air their issues to a neighbour.

More information might help. Childhood files won't change a lifetime of struggle and instability, but at least the women would know why they were forgotten.

Her daughters carry her bitterness when they talk about the past, even a generation removed from the massacre.

"I lost one side of my family, you know?" said McCallum.

"One side."

About the producer

Bridget Yard is a writer, and former CBC journalist, most recently working in Saskatoon, SK. She spent eight years as an honorary Maritimer, studying at St Thomas University in Fredericton, and working as a reporter and video journalist in Fredericton, Saint John, and Bathurst, New Brunswick. She has a love for rural reporting and feature stories. Her favourite part of being a journalist is having the privilege to meet incredible people and learn from their experiences. Follow her work at @bridgetjyard

This is Bridget's third documentary for The Doc Project. Her first was "From homeless to Homeward Bound."

This documentary was edited by Kent Hoffman with Alison Cook and Acey Rowe