The Ant Hill Kids: Inside the Twisted World of Roch Thériault and His Apocalyptic Canadian Cult
- dthholland
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
It’s hard to believe that a man could convince dozens of adults to leave their families, quit their jobs, and follow him into the forest to await the end of the world. But that’s exactly what happened in 1970s Canada. At the heart of it all was Roch Thériault—cult leader, sadist, and self-proclaimed prophet—whose reign of terror over the group known as the Ant Hill Kids would go down as one of the most disturbing chapters in the country’s modern history.
From his doomsday prophecies and religious delusions to the horrific acts of violence he inflicted on his followers, this is the chilling true story of a man who began as a preacher and ended as a killer.
A School Dropout with a Messiah Complex
Born in 1947 in Saguenay, Quebec, Roch Thériault grew up in a deeply religious French-Canadian Catholic household. As a boy, he dropped out of school early and became obsessed with the Old Testament, fascinated by its tales of divine wrath and righteous punishment. This fixation would form the bedrock of his worldview—a life-long belief in a coming apocalypse that only the faithful would survive.
By his twenties, Thériault had rejected Catholicism and gravitated towards the Seventh-day Adventist Church, whose emphasis on healthy living and prophetic teachings about the Second Coming resonated with him. He embraced their rules enthusiastically: no smoking, no alcohol, no caffeine, and a diet based on whole, unprocessed foods. He also began holding his own seminars, sharing his interpretations of Scripture and warning of a fast-approaching Armageddon.
Charismatic, confident, and articulate, Thériault had little trouble gathering a loyal following. By the mid-1970s, he’d persuaded a group of men and women to abandon their old lives and join him in creating a new spiritual community.
Founding the Commune: Sainte-Marie to Eternal Mountain
In 1977, Thériault formally founded his religious commune in Sainte-Marie, Quebec. He claimed he had been divinely chosen to lead the group through the end of days. His mission, he said, was to create a pure society, free of sin, materialism, and outside interference.
He dubbed the group “The Ant Hill Kids,” supposedly to reflect their hard-working nature, but in truth, it spoke volumes about how he saw his followers: nameless, tireless drones devoted to his cause.
By 1978, with the end of the world drawing near—according to Thériault’s calculations—they hiked deep into the Gaspé Peninsula and settled at a mountainside site he named “Eternal Mountain.” The isolation helped reinforce his control. Followers had no access to the outside world, were forbidden from speaking to their families, and were entirely dependent on “Moses,” as Thériault now insisted they call him.
He preached that the apocalypse would arrive in February 1979, and only those on Eternal Mountain would be spared. In preparation, his followers built cabins, tended crops, and sold baked goods to nearby towns. Thériault, meanwhile, relaxed and supervised, occasionally berating the group if their work didn’t meet his standards. Questioning his leadership, even privately, was considered an act of betrayal.
When February 1979 came and went without incident, murmurs of doubt began to surface. But Thériault swiftly explained the delay: time on Earth, he said, did not run in parallel with God’s time. It was, he claimed, a simple misalignment between worlds.
And the group believed him.
A Descent into Madness and Sadism
As the years passed, the religious commune began to resemble less a spiritual haven and more a personal fiefdom. Thériault’s drinking, once forbidden by the teachings he supposedly revered, became increasingly excessive. His behaviour grew erratic, his sermons more aggressive, and his punishments crueler.
He laid down strict rules. Followers couldn’t talk to one another without his permission. They needed his approval for any romantic or sexual interaction. Even eye contact between members was discouraged if he wasn’t present. Any disobedience, real or imagined, was met with punishment.
Those who angered Thériault were beaten with belts or hammers, suspended from ceilings, or subjected to humiliating punishments—such as being made to defecate in front of others or having him defecate on them. He shaved their heads as a form of control, plucked out body hair with tweezers, and starved them if they disobeyed his commands.
Worse still, followers were made to perform grotesque acts on one another: cutting off toes with pliers to prove loyalty, shooting each other in non-fatal areas, or eating dead animals and faeces. Children were beaten, burned, nailed to trees and stoned by other children.
The Women and Children of the Commune
Thériault’s manipulation extended to every part of his followers’ lives—including reproduction. He believed the community must grow and that he alone should father the next generation. He married every woman in the commune and fathered more than 20 children with nine different followers
The children born into the Ant Hill Kids commune faced physical abuse from infancy. One child, Eleazar Lavallée, was left outside to die in freezing temperatures by his mother, who feared he wouldn’t survive Roch’s wrath. Another died during a botched circumcision Thériault performed himself.
Authorities intervened in 1987 and removed 17 children, but the adults remained, still devoted to their messianic leader.
Thériault’s “Surgical” Obsessions
By the mid-1980s, Thériault fancied himself a healer, gifted with divine medical knowledge. When followers were ill—or simply when he declared them so—he would perform so-called surgeries using kitchen utensils and rudimentary tools.
He carried out procedures with no anaesthesia, often on conscious victims, assisted by other cult members. These procedures ranged from minor lacerations to amputations. Many lost limbs, teeth, or digits during these sadistic “operations.” He once injected pure ethanol into someone’s stomach and called it a cure.
In one especially horrific case, a woman named Solange Boilard complained of abdominal pain. Thériault responded by laying her naked on a kitchen table, punching her repeatedly in the stomach, and forcing a molasses-and-olive-oil enema through a plastic tube inserted into her rectum. Then, using a kitchen knife, he opened her abdomen and pulled out a section of her intestines with his bare hands.
Another follower, Gabrielle Lavallée, was forced to stitch Boilard up using needle and thread. Still not done, Thériault inserted a tube into her throat and demanded the other women blow air into her body, believing this would bring her back to life.
She died the next day.
Thériault claimed he could resurrect her. His method? Sawing off the top of her skull and ejaculating onto her brain. The act was as grotesque as it was nonsensical. When Boilard did not revive, her body was buried nearby.
Gabrielle Lavallée: The Woman Who Survived
Perhaps the most haunting figure to emerge from the Ant Hill Kids was Gabrielle Lavallée. Once one of Thériault’s most loyal followers, she had been subjected to unspeakable abuse. She was burned on her genitals with a welding torch, had eight teeth forcibly removed, and had a hypodermic needle broken off inside her spine.
She tried to escape once but returned—traumatised and unable to live without the cult. Thériault took her return as betrayal and mutilated her as punishment. He used pliers to remove one of her fingers, nailed her hand to a table, and chopped off her arm with a hunting knife.
He (Theriault) was going berserk again. He was in one of his crazy moods and he wanted to check my hand… He thrust a knife into the back of my hand… I couldn’t move. The blade went quite deep, I couldn’t move because of the knife being stuck in the table. … A long time passes, nothing was said. I can’t move. I say nothing for what he might do next. I was there 30 to 45 minutes, helpless… He said the arm must come (off). (He used) a small kitchen knife, it was dull and he couldn’t finish. It took so long, so long… I never lose consciousness… I feared that if I fainted then would think I was dead and do something terrible to me.
Still, she didn’t flee—until he attacked her with an axe, cutting part of her breast and striking her in the head.
That time, she ran. And this time, she went to the police.
Arrest, Conviction, and Death
In 1989, Roch Thériault was finally arrested. The Ant Hill Kids commune was shut down, and the remaining followers dispersed. He was initially charged with assault for his treatment of Lavallée and received 12 years in prison. Further investigations uncovered the full extent of his crimes—including the murder of Solange Boilard.
In 1993, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Yet even in prison, Thériault continued manipulating those around him. He fathered four more children during conjugal visits and attempted to sell his drawings and poems online through a true-crime auction site.
The Final Chapter
On 26 February 2011, Roch Thériault’s story came to a bloody end. His cellmate at Dorchester Penitentiary, Matthew Gerrard MacDonald—also a convicted murderer—stabbed him in the neck with a handmade weapon.
MacDonald calmly walked to the prison guard station, handed over the weapon, and reportedly said,
“That piece of shit is down on the range. Here’s the knife. I’ve sliced him up.”
Thériault was 63.
A Legacy of Horror
The story of Roch Thériault and the Ant Hill Kids is a disturbing reminder of how easily people can fall under the spell of a manipulative leader. What began as a spiritual quest turned into a nightmare of psychological and physical control, ending only when one woman found the strength to escape and speak the truth.
Even now, the case continues to haunt Canadians and researchers alike. It raises questions about religious extremism, institutional failings, and the terrifying power of charisma.
For those studying cults, Thériault’s story is not just a cautionary tale—it’s a case study in how control, fear, and distorted belief can give rise to unspeakable violence.