Richard Nixon secrets and County visits to be part of new book

A gift of maple syrup for Richard Nixon. – Pat Hodgson photo in Alan R. Capon’s book ‘Everybody Called Him Harvey: The Life of Harvey J. McFarland’ who was the longest serving mayor of Prince Edward County.

By Sharon Harrison
County resident Thomas Harrison shared a preview of his research on Richard Nixon’s secret weekend in the County, noting the former US president is one of his favourite topics – so much so that his interest has produced a book (yet to be published, but hopefully by year-end).

In his role as vice-president of the Prince Edward Historical Society, Harrison gave a free presentation at the Wellington branch library, where he shared some of the interesting tales and facts he has gleaned during his research. Harrison, Ph.D., now lives in Athol following various careers including paralegal, child and youth worker, teacher, lawyer and now author, artist and educator.

Tom Harrison during his presentation on Nixon. – Sharon Harrison photo

About 20 people were in attendance to hear Harrison share his Nixon knowledge, where he also read several excerpts from his upcoming book about the man, where he explores the County’s connection to one of the most notorious political figures of the 20th century.

Harrison’s story began in 2016 when he found himself at a loose end, decided to take a break, then went to see the Carters (not for the first time as that was in 2010), where he indicated how they got to talking about famous politician connections to eastern Ontario such as Canada’s first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald and former United States president Richard Nixon.

“There were a lot of people who hadn’t heard about it and didn’t know about it. I had already been in touch with the Richard Nixon Foundation and they didn’t really know about this either,” explained Harrison. “For there to be an undocumented episode of presidential history that nobody really knows about, and there are all these little anecdotal stories about what Nixon did when he was in Picton, and all the connections he had, it’s not really been compiled anywhere.”

That’s when Harrison decided to write a story about it.

“The story snowballed and became a bunch of stories, and my personal story got wrapped into it, and we fortunately got to meet President Carter – he says call me Jimmy, Mr. Jimmy.”

There is a story about Nixon coming over on a boat and he went drinking in a bar in Picton, said Harrison.

“Can you imagine the VP now coming here and drinking in a bar in Picton? In 1957, the liquor laws were also a lot more restrictive and it was very difficult to get service at odd hours. People were a little more concerned about liquor laws and to think someone so high profile would come and go drinking in what were probably only a few bars on Main Street, Picton.”

Harrison notes how it was a little unusual, and wondered if it actually really happened, or whether or not it was just a story being told, so he set himself a task.

“My main goal was to find out when did it happen, how did it happen and what were the circumstances,” he continued. “Who was on the trip with him (because he surely didn’t come on his own), where did they go, what did they do and does anyone here remember meeting him, what details might there be of the trip, and how could there be still a largely undocumented episode of the presidential local history?”

As the story snowballed, Harrison said he thought it might be a page or two, may be a footnote, but it ended up being a 250-page book which he completed in 2023 and involves three threads.

It’s framed by the story of Richard Nixon’s trip, the non-historical part.

“There’s also a bit of personal story with the investigation of my story of Richard Nixon, and Prince Edward County features as a character in the tales too there, so there’s a lot of support for stories of different things that are connected to Nixon.”

Main Duck Island features prominently in the book.

“What was he doing, was it possible that he was visiting his friend, then secretary of state John Foster Dulles at his cottage on Main Duck Island?”

Harrison said, in many ways, Nixon was a protégé of Dulles, a sort of mentor/mentee relationship.

“One of the things I found out in my research is Dulles regularly took a float plane to Main Duck Island, and he had a little sailboat he would take, 17 kilometres off the point, so it’s a long way to the lake,” he explained. “He would sail up to Prinyer’s Cove and the people that lived up there would sometimes see him fishing and wave to him as a regular sight, so not unusual to see the secretary of state floating around PEC.”

“He loved Main Duck because he could swim in the nude, and the only way he connected was through the radio. He could chop wood, go for walks, a very simple life apart from the politics of Washington.”

Harrison also noted that Nixon, a decorated war veteran having served in the Navy during the Second World War, suffered from life-long sea sickness.

“One of the secrets he may have wanted to keep hidden, and why he may have been a little concerned, was when as he stepped onto that dock in Rochester, he didn’t really know where he was, he was a little geographically challenged,” described Harrison. “I would imagine, having served in the South Pacific, he thought he was going to a little lake, and he looked out across and couldn’t see the other side.”

Following in the footsteps of President Nixon, Harrison went out to Main Duck Island by boat to see for himself (also admitting to getting a little seasick himself), seeing the remnants of Dulles’ cabin (the floor remains), which Harrison said had burned to the ground a few years ago.

“The floor is still there, and I stood and I tried to imagine. I stood on the rim and I looked and I thought, in what corner did the Secretary of State of the United States try to stop the Suez crisis and prevent World War three?”

“I looked and I thought, wow, this is so amazing as it wasn’t that long ago. There is no plaque or anything out there, nobody commemorates this.”

While Harrison said he didn’t have the itinerary for the 1957 visit of Nixon to the County, the trip started on July 5, a Friday night.

He sailed across the lake, and he ended up at the Picton Yacht Club, he ended up on a 70-foot boat, owned by Rochester newspaper conglomerate Gannett Corporation.

“I think what happened is, Nixon got seasick, it was late on Friday night, it was dark, they actually parked at Prinyer’s Cove or somewhere offshore, and they anchored and stayed the night on the boat.”

“They arrive here and Nixon gets off the boat, and one of the things that occurred to me was, it wasn’t entirely a boys’ weekend, and there was some reason they came. Nixon had this reputation for black channel communications. He would go off on secret trips and engage in all kinds of diplomatic negotiations and information gathering, and so I thought, is it possible that something like that was going on in 1957?”

Harrison also spoke briefly to mysterious, supernatural things, going to Main Duck Island, and what he referred to as “secret technology PEC”.

“Whether or not there were UFOs or secret technology down in Point Petre in 1957, they were testing the engine for the Avro Arrow.”

When Nixon came in 1957, it hadn’t yet been announced, but it was “in fact secret technology, whether it was UFO or something else, and it was also a turning point in the Cold War.”

While Nixon arrived in the County on the Friday, Harrison said he has been able to find records that Nixon flew back to Rochester on the following Monday.

“So he sailed over, and Paul Miller was left to sail the boat back alone, clearly, he wasn’t having any more seasickness, but again, it’s not clear what the initial plan was.”

The trip where Nixon talks about his Picton visit occurs in 1972, where Harrison adds, this is before the famous Watergate scandal, so none of the bad stuff is broken yet.

He said, Nixon is about to start his re-election campaign and comes up to Ottawa for his only state visit and he meets with prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

Harrison’s talk also touched on interesting tales of Nixon’s friendship with then Picton mayor Harvey James McFarland (known as “Harvey”), and somewhat surprisingly Nixon’s personal qualities, also marvellously noting the “weird synchronicities that kept happening as I was doing this research and writing this book”.

Harrison noted how Nixon would make things up and get details wrong, where he read an excerpt by Nixon (or a speechwriter) where Harrison pointed out numerous inaccuracies. “He would just make up whole stories, and this goes back a long time. He was a notorious confabulate.”

Harrison read (while imitatating Nixon’s voice) this except about his visit to Prince Edward County which comes from the public papers of the presidents of the United States, and contains some factual errors:

“There was one particular occasion that stays in my mind more than all the others. I have been to Picton. Now, most Americans will not know what Picton is. Canadians will know, or maybe you don’t, but in the year 1957, the secretary of state and I, I was then vice-president, and he was attorney general of the United States, we were invited by the publisher of the Rochester paper to sail across Lake Erie [Erie should be Ontario, multiple occurrences, per Harrison] and to go over to the Canadian side to see the beauties of Canada. It was a wonderful trip. I didn’t realize even then that on Lake Erie one could get seasick, but finally when I saw Canadian soil, believe me, it was the most welcome soil I’ve ever stepped on, but the incident which I would like to leave on this occasion with our friends of Canada was what happened in Picton that day (it was a Saturday night).

The excerpt continues:

“We had played golf earlier in the day, we were still in our sports clothes, in sports jackets, and we decided to go to one of the local pubs just as we were. We went in and sat down, we had no secret service at the time with us, and the waiter looked us all over and in some way he seemed to think he recognized me, but he wasn’t sure. We noted, or secretary Rogers at least noted [Harrison confirms Rogers wasn’t even present], then attorney general, and is supposed to know such things, that the waiter was talking to the bartender after serving us. The bartender was looking over and saying, ‘Oh no, it can’t be, it can’t be’.

After we had finished and were ready to leave, the waiter came up and said, ‘Sir, if you don’t mind, I have a bet with the bartender and you can help me win it or I might just lose it’. I said, ‘What’s the bet?’ He said, ‘I bet him five dollars that you are vice-president Nixon. I said, ‘Well, call him over and we’ll confirm it’. So, the bartender came over and said, ‘Is it true?’ I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘I would never have believed it’. He gave them the five dollars and as we started to move on, I heard him mumble to the waiter, ‘You know, he doesn’t look near as bad in person as he does in pictures’.

“That little story tells us something about why this trip is so important, and why it is necessary. That’s his story and it’s not recorded anywhere, it’s in his written papers,” Harrison confirmed.

“My question is, did the story in the bar really happen? Some version of it happened, but not the way he said, so you’ll have to read the book.”