IT was only after the death of one of his sons in an Ontario prison in Canada two years ago that the bizarre double life of Sam Armstrong was revealed.
The Fermanagh ‘family man’ had been living a secret life with another wife, and had a total of nine children in Northern Ireland and Canada.
The sensational saga is detailed in a London Free Press newspaper article called ‘The Boy With Two Names’ by Canadian investigative journalist Randy Richmond, which has engrossed readers in London (a city in Ontario, Canada) recently.
Born in Maguiresbridge in 1913, Sam Armstrong married his wife Beatrice and moved to Newcastle, Co Down in the mid-1940s.
They had three children but after falling into debt, Sam left for Ontario in 1955, where two of his cousins lived, only to return to Newcastle six years later to relocate the family back to Canada.
However, by then he had another wife and another set of children to look after. He conveniently left out the fact that while living in Ontario, he’d married Mary Ellen Bissonnette, who was 23 years his junior and had fathered children with her.
It was only when their son, Danny Armstrong (later known as Clayton Bissonette after the couple separated), died aged 62 from a suspected drug overdose in a Canadian jail in March 2021, and was buried beside his beloved late father Sam, that the truth finally came out.
Only then did the deceased’s other Ontario-born siblings learn that the grave site was owned by a completely different family, a family originally from Newcastle, Co Down, that they never knew existed.
What makes the story all the more shocking and intriguing is that three of the late Danny Armstrong’s siblings have just filed a million-dollar lawsuit against Ontario province since his tragic death in prison.
They allege that the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Centre where he died was riddled with drugs, had insufficient supervision for addicts like him, and that it failed in its legal obligations to protect him, despite being aware of his history of drug abuse.
Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General confirmed it has received the solicitor’s statement and is currently reviewing it.
“I want answers. I want to know why this happened to my brother,” his sister Adrienne said in the London Free Press article.
“He was terrified of going into jail and dying there.
“But the deaths keep coming [he was the 18th prisoner to die there unexpectedly since 2009] and the institution stays open.”
Read more on ‘The Boy With Two Names’ at https://lfpress.com/feature/the-boy-with-two-names-a-scattered-family-a-nations-shame-a-death-in-jail.
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