In Alice Munro’s hometown, an exposed family secret stuns fans and friends

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Editor’s note: This story contains details of sexual abuse

WINGHAM – A bombshell family secret revealed by Nobel laureate Alice Munro’s daughter has stunned the Huron County hometown that inspired many of her short stories, with one friend saying she was “shocked” by it.

In a column in the Toronto Star, one of the late writer’s daughters, Andrea Robin Skinner, wrote that while visiting her mother in Clinton at age nine in 1976, she was sexually abused by her stepfather Gerald Fremlin – the first of several incidents of abuse until, she wrote, she became a teen and he lost interest.

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Munro learned of the abuse – Fremlin, at age 80, was convicted in Goderich court in 2005 of indecent assault – but remained married to him, siding with the abuser over her daughter.

“I was shocked when I heard the news,” said Verna Steffler of Wingham, a friend of 30 years who spearheaded the creation of Munro’s Literary Garden in Wingham. “You never know what goes on behind closed doors. I feel really bad about what happened to her daughter. She (Munro) should have supported her.”

Munro, who stayed married to Fremlin until his 2013 death, died in May at age 92.

The reading garden in Wingham, outside the Alice Munro Public Library, is among many public tributes to the literary icon in Huron County. A sign at Wingham’s town limits boasts it is Munro’s birth place. In Clinton, where she lived with Fremlin, there’s a monument in her honour outside the town library. Nearby, her former longtime home is something of a landmark.

Steffler, who has never met Skinner, said she never suspected anything amiss with Fremlin – “he seemed to be a jovial fellow” – and expressed pangs of sympathy for Munro, suggesting she may have decided to stay with her husband for financial stability.

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“She was living in his (Fremlin’s) house,” Steffler said, adding the author didn’t drive. “It must have been difficult for her to decide where she would go if she left (Clinton) and how she would get there?”

Munro, she added, only started making “significant” money after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. “Before that, she was just making money from her writing, which wasn’t much. She didn’t have any other home. I guess she was looking out for herself at that stage of the game.”

In Clinton, where the abuse occurred, Fremlin was well known. On Monday, retired insurer Marj Dobson recalled interacting with him a few times through her job and expressed shock over the crimes against Skinner.

“I know what would happen if it was me,” Dobson said. “I’d boot the person out and get counselling for me, myself, my daughter, and whoever was involved. But that’s me, and I can’t speak for her.

“I won’t burn my books because it doesn’t prove anything.”

In court in 2005, Fremlin was given a suspended sentence and two years of probation, The Toronto Star is reporting. Skinner writes that the incident remained an open secret in the Munro family for years and she was ultimately estranged from her mother, who Skinner says sided with her husband and treated the abuse as an injury to herself.

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Skinner, who never reconciled with her mother, writes in The Star that she and her three siblings spoke out to allow Canadians to have a more complete picture of Munro, who ranks among Canada’s biggest literary icons.

In Munro’s hometown of Wingham and her adopted home of Clinton, there was shock, but also support, still. Central Huron Mayor Jim Ginn told The Canadian Press he would “consider” amending the Clinton monument if there was public demand to do so, though he isn’t personally in support of such a move.

When asked if she was disappointed in her old friend, Steffler said “not really.”

She added: “They’re both dead. I don’t appreciate the fact that we’re digging all the dirt.”

bbaleeiro@postmedia.com

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