When: December 10th 2025 @ 7 PM

Where: Schnitzel's Restaurant

Who: John Sliter

“The Matriarchs of the Hoople Creek Loyalists” is a series of historical fiction stories about seventeen women and their families who helped to settle Upper Canada along a small creek in eastern Ontario. Their stories reflect their struggle to survive hunger, disease, and even war as they married and raised their children in a new, heavily forested and seeming impenetrable land. The first people to live along Hoople Creek were United Empire Loyalists forced to travel hundreds of miles under harsh conditions to escape the patriots of the United States in order to remain loyal to the United Kingdom. They began their new lives north of the Saint Lawrence River and along Hoople Creek, and somehow managed to survive. Many of their descendants remain in the area and have gone from a people fighting for mere survival, to an environmentally conscious, empathetic, and fair society striving to be inclusive while maintaining equality for all. It was refugees like the Hoople Creek matriarchs and their families who helped make Canadians who they are today. The identified Matriarchs were German Palatines - United Empire Loyalists and their Descendants who soon mingled and intertwined with people of Scottish, Irish and English descent.

John Sliter will explain how his 36-year career in the RCMP helped him in his research of these particular women. He will also tell us what motivated him to write about these women and how his book intertwines historical evidence with compelling narratives of exceptional women, allowing their voices to resonate with readers directly from ‘beyond-the-grave’. By presenting their individual stories in the first person, he tried to bridge the gap between past and present, enabling these remarkable women to speak to us – their triumphs, struggles, and dreams unfolding as if they were with us today.