Who Was Roch Theriault?
Roch Theriault, born in 1947 to Hyacinthe and Pierrette Theriault, was the infamous leader or messiah of the Ant Hill Kids also known as the Doomsday Cult. Before focusing on the cult, one must analyze its leader—his nature, ambitions, and beliefs.
Roch was, as most deviant personalities are, a praised academic. His teachers were in awe of his intellect and talent. The praise raised his self-esteem to unfathomable heights.
Belonging to Quebec, Canada, his entire family and neighborhood spoke Canadian French. To prove himself superior to them, he learned English by himself. At that time, the town he was from, “Sangunay,” did not have institutions for higher learning, therefore his education came to a staggering stop after the 7th grade. Instead of moving abroad to continue his studies, Roch stayed behind and started to pick up odd jobs but was unable to find any sort of satisfaction in them. Life moved on and eventually, in 1967, he took the next step in a traditional life and got married. His first wife was Francine Grenier, a 19-year-old, only a year younger than him.
They got on splendidly and became parents to two boys within the first four years of the marriage. However, misfortune struck when Roch came down with a bad case of stomach ulcers and had to get surgery.
The 70s were not a decade well-known for medical prowess which meant Theriault suffered many complications afterward—chronic pain and tumultuous health led to the downward spiral that started the cult. He became obsessed with gathering like-minded people and creating a nudist colony—to strip oneself down to skin and bones was, in his mind, the most honest version of people.
The Delusion of the Ant-Hill Kids
The role that religion played in his life had a direct impact on the principles he set for his cult. Roch’s father, Hyacinthe Theriault, was part of the local White Berets—a catholic sect that arose after the Great Depression and claimed that social profits should be redistributed in the working class. Roch was vehemently against the White Berets and their door-to-door visits as they made him and his family a laughing stock in the town. This trauma manifested in his adulthood when he decided to become a Seventh-Day Adventist—those who mainly uphold protestant Christian beliefs, value the Bible as the ultimate authority and believe that God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th.
After becoming “a Man of God” Roch decided to use his newfound power and religious legitimacy to exploit and control people. He would preach and give sermons on both, matters of the church and individual health, centering on organic eating and leaving behind smoking and alcoholism. His broad approach raked in many followers. He also claimed that the world would come to an end on the 17th of February in 1979—Doomsday. But when the date passed by without the apocalypse happening, he said that it was simply a mix-up between the time humans follow and the time that God follows—surprisingly enough, his followers swallowed that derision-filled statement with ease.
Over time, his ideology, and beliefs kept getting more twisted—once the parents of some recruits tried to intervene and save their children from following his maniacal teachings, he decided to gather his commune and shift them deep into the woods to isolate them from society and have them be totally dependent on him. They moved multiple times and eventually ended up near Burnt River in Ontario, Canada.
His followers were made to work day and night, chopping wood, setting up camp in the forests, cooking food, stealing rations from nearby towns, etc. They were so productive that he lovingly named them the “Ant-Hill Kids” owing to their diligent work ethic. They were constantly exhausted while Roch remained fresh and clear-minded. His tactic was to make them bone-tired and fully reliant on him.
Roch Theriault was a cruel man with an unforgiving nature—he would brutalize his followers on random whims then fall to his knees sobbing and wailing to the heavens, asking God to not make him enact such violence on his followers. Seeing this performance would lead the cult members to forgive him instantly and comfort him.
He married his second wife, Gisele Lavallee, in 1978 but it remained a marriage only in name as he kept multiple concubines and fathered over 20 children. It is said by the time he died he had over 8 wives.
Theriault came up with multiple ways to isolate the ant-hill kids from their surroundings and make them completely forget about their previous lives. When he shifted them to the deep forests of Ontario, he was the only one who could speak in English and interact with the outside world as the rest were from Quebec and only spoke French. He placed strict restrictions on them, so much so, that they were not allowed to converse with one another without Theriault being present. To reshape their identities, he took away the first marker of identity that everyone is graced with at birth—their names. He started to rename them after personalities from the Bible and he himself became “Moses.”
The punishments that his followers went through were barbaric. Roch was especially interested in mutilation, torture, and games of dominance. He would beat them with wooden bats, whip them, and then make them apologize to him with handwritten letters. He would burn their skin, cut off genitalia, and much more. He ripped out eight of Gabrielle’s (devout follower) teeth to “cure” her toothache and on another occasion he sawed her arm off, mutilating her for life. She ran away after that.
Much of his record details the harm he did to the children and infants in the commune—hanging them by their feet, rolling babies naked in the snow, and holding infants above a fire to make his followers beg and plead for mercy.
The Murder of Solange Boilard
Roch Theriault had no humanity left in him by the time he was arrested for the murder of Solange Boilard. It was perhaps one of the most demented acts of cult violence in history. As Solange complained of pain in the right side of her abdomen—seemingly acute appendicitis, he fancied himself a doctor as he had read and memorized a few medical texts and moved to operate on her in the middle of the wilderness. Too afraid to counter the decision of their madman leader, the followers stood by silent and watched as Theriault cut open Solange’s stomach and ripped out her internal organs by hand. She did not survive the makeshift operation and succumbed to the wounds soon after.
Roch Theriault was arrested after Gabrielle finally went to the police and gave them enough information for them to make a solid case against him. He was jailed in 1993 and sentenced to a decade in prison. However, he did not get to live that out as he was stabbed in the neck 8 years later by his cellmate.
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Hafsa Ammar is a graduate of the National Defence University, Islamabad. Her areas of expertise are narrative building and propaganda warfare, centered around the Soviet Union and modern-day Russia.