Hector

[M David Steel]

There is definately a lot to think on about Hector, like, how he came to live in the village, or what might have happened in-between. We know he always did like hot air baloons and mexican food. Also, when the baudelaires tell him their backstory (everything from that time at the beach to when they decided to come to the village) he doesn't say anything about Monty himself. There is a lot to think about actually.

[Dante]

I suspect that, had the Baudelaires gone with Hector in the self-sustaining hot air mobile home at the end of TVV, he might well have told them everything. As a volunteer, his first rule has to be secrecy, and his skittishness around the Elders would probably make him wary of betraying his history with V.F.D. if he wasn't absolutely assured of his own safety. TVV definitely tells us that Hector is a man who can and does keep secrets but who will reveal them to anyone he thinks is trustworthy, so I think that's a pretty safe assessment. ATWQ makes Hector retrospectively a much more tragic character; just think what must've been going through his head when he saw the Elders had captured Jacques under Olaf's name. And yet Jacques didn't betray Hector's secret, either.

[Hermes]

I had always argues that Hector was not a volunteer, and was quite shocked to find he was. But yes, as to the explanation of his silence I agree with Dante. In general volunteers do preserve secrecy; and the fact that the Baudelaires had lived with Olaf would be a reason not to trust them immediately, given that the dark side does sometimes recruit children.

As for how he came to live in the village, it seems likely that that's where he started out; he does say that his father was handyman before him. There may well be an old connection between VFDevotees and VFDepartment, so that the initials are not just a coincidence; perhaps carrier crows for the volunteers were recruited from there. The connection may well have been broken at the schism.

[Dante]

Perhaps - we more or less have to read this retrospectively - one of the reasons Hector's so looked down upon in the village is not just because he's a handyman, but that his father "sent him away to school" for several years at one point, which doubtless comes close to breaking some rule or another. I agree with Hermes that he must have come from the village originally and returned there; monitoring the V.F.D. crows, from which the V.F.D. crows are doubtless recruited, is perhaps an unofficial hereditary role simply because it'd be too difficult for a volunteer outsider to be accepted into the village. Though regardless, Hector clearly had had quite enough, which perhaps we can connect to the slow collapse of V.F.D. around the time the series takes place, particularly in regards to communication between volunteers.

[Hermes]

One notable thing, whose significance hasn't been clear until now, is that Hector says the sound of the crows reminds him of the sea, showing that he has lived away from the village at some point. In ATWQ we find that his ballooning expeditions have indeed taken him out to sea.

[Seymour Glass]

I think he was born in the village.