Ant Hill Kids
Born in Saguenay, Quebec, Canada, Roch Thériault would drop out of school just aged 12 to teach himself the Old Testament of the Bible and with this fire and brimstone education, the young French-Canadian would be convinced that the end of the world would soon arrive. With this knowledge, he would converted from Catholicism to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
By the mid-1970s, charismatic and charming, Thériault would amass a significant following in the church by organizing detox seminars for people trying to quit smoking or drinking. It’s unclear what the reason was, perhaps because he was gaining too much influence, but he was soon kicked out of the church. Despite being thrown out, he managed to convince the group of followers he had gathered around him to not only leave with him and move to the wilderness but leave their jobs and families behind as well.
In 1977, Thériault would form a religious movement of his own in Sainte-Marie, Quebec, a commune where people could live in unity and equality while listening to his motivational speeches, and most importantly, he promised his followers they would be free of sin. Unfortunately, for those who followed Thériault, it would be a decade before they would be free of him and his brutality and growing insanity.
