Kerouac’s Characters: E. Gaston Campbell

By Kurt Phaneuf

Edward Gaston Campbell (1891-1952) was already a citizen of note by the time he began appearing in the hometown novels of Lowell native Jack Kerouac.  Born in Montreal, QC, Gaston arrived in America in 1893 and became a U.S. citizen in 1919.  Educated at the Varnum School and Lowell High School, Campbell followed in his father Charles’s footsteps, pursuing a lucrative career in real estate.  Through his myriad personal and business connections, Gaston eventually crossed paths with Jack Kerouac’s father Leo; the two men would become business associates, friends, and drinking buddies during the 1920s and 1930s.

E Gaston Campbell portrait

Though the specific details of how Gaston met and befriended Leo Kerouac are unclear, the two were neighbors for a time when the Campbell family lived at 15 Fred Street at its intersection with Lupine Road, a mere thirty-meters from Jack’s birth home.

The former E Gaston Campbell home at 15 Fred St, Centralville

Additionally, Campbell formerly owned the cottage at 35 Burnaby Street in which the Kerouacs lived in 1925; this home figures prominently in one of the most poignant scenes in Visions of Gerard.  Gaston and Leo also shared insurance business interests; though better known as a printer, linotypist and the proprietor of Spotlight Print, Leo Kerouac worked for C.B. Redway at a Metropolitan Life Insurance Company franchise in the Lowell Sun building just a block from Campbell’s downtown offices.

Though alluded to in Jack’s first novel, Campbell makes a single, memorable named appearance in one of the author’s personal favorite works, Visions of Gerard (1963).  Now considered a seminal document of Franco-American life in New England during the early 20th century, the book reconstructs the short, tragic, beatific life of Kerouac’s older brother Gerard in Centralville’s St. Louis de France Parish.

“Visions of Gerard,” 1st Edition Cover (Farrar, Strauss and Company, 1963)

In the following scene from that book, Campbell–renamed Gaston MacDonald–meets his buddy Emil Duluoz (Leo Kerouac) for a drink on Christmas Eve 1925 at a neighborhood watering hole, likely the Centralville Social Club at 364 West Sixth Street.  Gaston tries to console Emil, whose oldest son Gerard Duluoz is once again stricken with the lingering effects of the rheumatic fever that will end his life in June 1926:

“My father, en route home, stops for a quick one himself in the company of his old friend Gaston MacDonald who has a spanking 1922 Stutz parked outside…

“Drink, Emil, amuse yourself, dammit it’s Christmas!”

“Not for me, Gaston—with my little Gerard in bed it’s not a hell of a pretty Christmas.”

“Ah, he was sick before.”

“Yes but it always tears my heart out.”

“Ah well, poor Emil, you might as well go throw yourself on the rocks in the river off the cliff in Little Canada . . . to crack . . . your spirit like that—look here, nothin you can do. Down the hatch!””

An entrepreneur of diverse interests, Gaston worked as a draftsman, insurance agent, real estate salesman & developer, auctioneer, and builder. In the early decades of the 20th century, Gaston maintained second-floor offices in the Hildreth Building at 45 Merrimack Street in downtown Lowell.

E Gaston Campbell’s1926 Lowell Directory Ad, the year of Gerard Kerouac’s death

Though not referred to by name, Campbell clearly served as one of the inspirations for the following passage from Jack’s first novel, The Town and The City (1950):

“Wait around for the morning, for the time when the Real Estate offices come to life, when lawyers raise the windowshades and the sun floods into dusty offices.  See these men standing at windows, on which their names are written in gold letters, nodding down at the street when other townsmen walk by.” 

Gold lettering adorning the windows of the Hildreth Building at 45 Merrimack Street still advertises professional services in the heart of Kearney Square.  Interestingly, Campbell’s signage was just a few feet from a large poster atop the former Chin Lee, Co. building at 65 Merrimack Street announcing Leo Kerouac’s entertainment tabloid The Lowell Spotlight (Spotlite).  In the autumn of 1930, Gaston opened a novel business venture called Golfland–one of the first miniature golf courses in Lowell–at 122 Market Street, just a block from the Hildreth building.

The Grand Opening of Campbell’s Golfland – “The Lowell Sun” (Oct 24, 1930)

On March 14, 1950, a book signing event for The Town and The City was held at the former Bon Marché Department Store at 151 Merrimack Street, less than .1 mile from the gold lettering Jack so vividly describes in the opening pages of his inaugural book.

A former president of United Lumber Company, Economy Rug Works, and the Old Dominion Title and Conveyancing Company, Gaston Campbell was also one of the organizers of the Merrimack Valley National Farm Loan Association.

A member and officer of multiple Franco-American fraternal and civic organizations (including Club Lafayette, the C.M.A.C. and the aforementioned Centralville Social Club), Campbell was so popular that he was once recommended for a senatorial nomination, a distinction he politely declined.  As described in Rebecca Duda’s wonderful book Legendary Locals of Dracut, Gaston was part of the development process for both Long Pond Park and Peters Pond, the latter for which streets were named in honor of Campbell’s family members.

Long-time residents of Centralville, Gaston and wife Idola Dube–an accomplished vocalist and soloist at St. Michael Church–raised five children.  Gaston died after a brief illness in 1952; Idola passed away in December 1969, less than two months after the death of Jack Kerouac.

The couple is laid to rest in St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Chelmsford.

E Gaston Campbell’s modest grave at St. Joseph Cemetery, Chelmsford.

For those interested in learning more about key figures in Jack Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend, please consider attending the free walking tours and guest lectures at the 2025 Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival.  The novel Visions of Gerard and references to figures like E. Gaston Campbell figure prominently in the “Mystic Jack” tour on Sunday, October 10th at 10:00 A.M.  For more details, please visit the official festival schedule at

https://lowellcelebrateskerouac.org/events/lowell-celebrates-kerouac-2025-fall-festival-oct-9-13/

EDITOR’S NOTE: Before I retired as register of deeds I worked with academic researchers from MIT who used powerful computers and artificial intelligence to identify race-based restrictions in previously recorded deeds. On September 24, 2025, I traveled to MIT to discuss their findings which included a cluster of these restrictions in deeds from a 1946 development called Long Pond Grove in Dracut, Massachusetts. The developer was E. Gaston Campbell, and the restriction was “No part of the land hereby conveyed shall ever be conveyed, leased, traded, rented or donated to anyone who is not a member of the caucasian race.” Although clauses like this remain embedded in the historical record, they have long been deemed illegal by court decision. Still, they represent an important piece of evidence about our not-too-distant past. With this as background, when Kurt sent me this article to post, I told him about the MIT discovery. He and I agreed that we would address it for now through this note but will revisit it sometime in the future.