As the sons and daughters of oil patch workers, they came to be scared at the haunted house in the woods. They did not reckon that others might be scared too. When the trucks roared back for a second fright, shots rang out. One bullet found Willis and killed her. The government of Alberta failed to conduct a public inquiry.

Jailhouse lessons on Hell

After being charged with a number of offences related to the four-year-long war in the bush, Ludwig spent 18 months in prison where the inmates all agreed that he looked much taller on television. He held religious discussions with fellow convicts and even studied an old Dutch treatise on Hell.

In recent years Ludwig held his Shakespearean rage in check and even mellowed. He concentrated on building a low-energy Christian community largely run by his highly competent sons and daughters.

In 2008 his family again became the focus of another multi-million dollar police investigation when a group of anonymous bombers targeted EnCana's aggressive shale gas plays in British Columbia just a half hour away from Ludwig's home.

It was North America's first war against hydraulic fracturing and it started with a warning letter addressed to EnCana that read, "You simply can't win this fight because you are on the wrong side of the argument."

Attacks on pipelines, a well head and a facility shack prompted a massive investigation led by Canada's anti-terrorist Integrated Security Enforcement Team (INSET).

Despite 250 investigators combing several provinces (many landowners near Dawson Creek and Tom's Lake were treated like Taliban suspects) and EnCana's offer of a $500,000 reward, no bomber was ever found.

In 2009 Ludwig wrote a public letter to the bombers hinting that he knew them intimately: "I want to encourage you not to let anger about such stupidity get the best of you and to realize that these conflicts can ultimately be settled by the use of force but by way of informed and patient persuasion."

During the second investigation the RCMP suggested at one point that they found Ludwig's DNA on a letter threatening EnCana, but no real evidence ever surfaced.

After a team of 200 well-armed officers swarmed his home for a fifth search in 2010, Ludwig invited some senior constables back in for dinner. They accepted.

Christianity and violence

Before he died Ludwig and his family read and discussed a book by Jacques Ellul, the French philosopher. The book was titled Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective. Wrote Ellul: "The better we understand that violence is necessary, indispensable, inevitable, the better shall we be able to reject and oppose it."

Ludwig, who died at the age of 70, will be remembered as a complicated and often angry man who raised unsettling questions about individual rights, corporate power, police methods and government accountability in a petro state.

David York, a Toronto filmmaker who made a documentary on the Ludwig's battles for the National Film Board described the preacher as "a flawed and very powerful, articulate, conflicted campaigner." Most industry folk called Ludwig a terrorist.

Ludwig often reminded Albertans in the rudest and most uncomfortable way possible that oil and gas development is not a win-win situation. It remains a poorly regulated affair that routinely sacrifices the livelihoods, livestock and water of rural citizens for corporate greed, government revenue and careless urban consumption.

Joshua Ludwig released a letter saying the family would not comment on the man's passing. However the letter observed and "appreciated a more balanced coverage by the media of a difficult struggle against the insidious effects of mankind's assault on our environment, a struggle which is shared by men and women everywhere."