The Matchcover Storyteller

“Politics” is a great matchcover category that can be as broad or as finite as one wishes.  From prime ministers to MP’s and MPP’s / MLAs who served, to those who simply ran for office, there are sorting opportunities galore.

Maitland Edgar falls into the last category, one who ran unsuccessfully.   But, as the big voiced TV announcer famously said,  “But wait  —  there’s more!”  And in his story’s chronology, the lead is buried, so keep reading.

Maitland Emerson Edgar was born in March, 1929 and made his life in Huron County along southern Ontario’s Lake Huron shore.  Edgar was a teacher in Huron County until moving to Petrolia in Lambton County where he was a teacher and principal until his retirement in 1983.

For the purpose of this matchcover (because a bigger story is still ahead), “Mait” Edgar is not considered in any searches to have been involved in politics —but he was.

He was the Liberal candidate in Huron riding in 1965 when Liberal Lester B. Pearson was re-elected.   Edgar was not.   Then in the spring of 1968, Trudeaumania swept the nation as Pierre Elliot Trudeau took the reins and led his party to re-election in the fall of 1968.   Again, Edgar was the failed Liberal nominee and moved out of Huron County the following year.  This 30-strike, front strike matchcover from Strike Rite in London, Ontario is from that failed 1968 campaign.   I wonder, looking at the colour, whether there are others that would make a set.  

(By the way, the Conservative Robert McKinley won in 1965 and 4 more times after that, leaving politics before the 1980 vote.)

So Edgar could almost disappear into history’s mists except for one more notable aspect of his life:

In 1959, “Mait” Edgar was a teacher at the military school at the Clinton, Ontario Air Force Base (there are matchcovers), when one of his students, 12-year old Lynne Harper was found brutally murdered, and another of his students, 14-year old Stephen Truscott, was accused, tried,  convicted of rape & murder and sentenced to hang

For the rest of his life, “Mait” Edgar would tell everyone he didnot believe Truscott did it, and he expressed anger at the way the investigation was handled.  Truscott spent 4 months waiting to be hanged before the sentence was commuted to “Life”.  He was paroled in 1969 and disappeared from the public eye.   Decades later, he was exonerated of the charge  —  he didn’t do it.

Edgar and Truscott eventually became friends, meeting a few times a year along with other supporters.

Edgar retired from teaching at age 53 and had a 2nd career in investments.   He was active in community and sporting organizations for the rest of his life; a newspaper story said “He put the ‘V’ in ‘Volunteer’”

Stephen Truscott is 80 now.  

Maitland Edgar died in June 2013