Written By Alice Gibb
The first black policeman in Canada was Lucan resident Peter Butler III, descendant of one of the early settlers at Wilberforce. Peter’s grandfather, whose slave name was Bowzer, escaped from his Maryland owner and ran away to sea as a young man. Sometime after 1829, Peter Butler I and his native American wife, Salome, joined other black settlers in the Wilberforce Colony. Butler, who had worked as a caulker in Port Stanley and St. Thomas before coming to Middlesex County, served as treasurer of the colony. When many of the settlers abandoned the colony in the late 1830s, Butler purchased or was given their farmsteads. His properties in Lucan extended “from about the Central Hotel north past the public school on both sides of the street.”
His son, who farmed as well as practiced as a herbalist from his Main Street home, had three sons who remained in the Lucan area. One son, also named Peter (born 1859), was the very popular local constable with the Middlesex County force. Then in 1913, Peter Butler III joined the Ontario Provincial Police, remaining with the OPP until he retired in the mid-1930s.
Butler was a well-like police officer. He usually only carried a night stick, arming himself with a gun only when investigating cattle rustling or transporting prisoners to London. On many Saturday nights, Butler would buy a huge bucket of beer for 25 cents and divide it among the inmates confined to the three cells behind the fire hall. He also often took inebriated men into his home to sober up, rather than throwing them in jail. A generous man, he was noted for providing a meal to any tramps found walking the rails, often hiring them to do odd jobs. His grandson recalled years later, “Grandpa would always feed them and give them a night’s rest and they would catch the train the next day.”
Although the Butler family owned much of the present-day community of Lucan at one time, at the turn-of-the-century, the policeman lost much of his property and wealth in a fraudulent land development scheme in British Columbia. To recoup his losses, Peter and his sons started a salvage and dead stock removal business. The first high school in Lucan was built on land purchased from the Butler family in the 1890s.
When the former policeman died in 1943, his funeral was attended by dignitaries from around southwestern Ontario. He was buried in the small Butler cemetery, on Sauble Hill. A scholarship program to encourage other young men to consider careers in law enforcement was established in Butler’s name by the Association of Black Law Enforcers. Members of the Butler family still live in the Lucan area today.
