Webster family tragedy

   Montreal's famous Webster family suffered a terrible moment in the early hours of Nov. 17, 1943 when George Webster, 14, killed his mother Wilhelmina Dawson McCreary-Webster with a baseball bat at their home at 18 Grenville Ave., a posh home in Westmount just up from Murray Park

Victim Wilhelmina 

   George attacked his mother, brother, sister and Sylvia Cust, 18, a family friend from Australia who had been staying with the family in the maid's room downstairs for five weeks. (Cust, who later moved to India, likely described the incident a self-published 1990 autobiography)
   He hit them with a baseball bat.

   His brother, Andrew, (aka Drew) 8, survived, as did his sister Mina, 12, although both apparently required surgery.
   George craftily told the Australian Cust, "come quick my mother is hurt" and then proceeded to slug her behind the head with a bat. She was dazed but called police.
  Perhaps it's worth noting that George's little brother got his father's name, not him.
   George had been acting unusually according to his friends at Westmount High School, which was then located where Selwyn House now stands. He had once been a piano champion but had taken to skipping school and acting strangely, according to friends.
   His father Andrew visited him in jail after the attack, which must have been an interesting conversation.
   Wilhelmina parents had come to Montreal from Ireland.
   A coroner's jury deemed the teenager criminally responsible on Dec. 3 and young George was charged with murder but on Feb 28, 1944 was declared unfit to stand trial and transferred to the Verdun mental hospital.
   The family likely had a baseball bat for jaunts at the nearby King George Park, also known as Murray Park.
***
   The Webster family is considered one of Montreal's most successful business families and has donated quite a bit of cash to the city in various forms.
   Drew, who survived the attack, is closely associated with the Montreal Rotary Club and appears to still be going strong.
   The family accomplishments began when Andrew Webster arrived in Quebec City in 1850 from Scotland. His son Lorne Campbell Webster grew his coal yard and expanded it to over 200 companies. He died wealthy in 1941. He had a son named Colin who then had another son named Lorne.

Current residents appear to be untraumatized

   That Lorne Webster (1928-2004) was well known as a guy instrumental in bringing the Montreal Expos to town. Lorne liked to conduct his meetings in French even though he couldn't speak it much. He liked the sport of rackets, which I have gently mocked somewhere else on this site. I knew a guy who knew him and said that Lorne liked to get a little hammered occasionally every day.
   Lorne had an accomplished cousin named Norman and his uncle Howard was majority owner of the Globe and Mail from 1955 to 1980. He had a brother Ben who was an early investor in Velcro and was deemed a genius investor.