When Ezra Chipman brought fellow Canadian George Sternaman to board at his Buffalo home, he set in motion a nightmarish chain of events. Within months, Ezra was dead of a mysterious ailment. Then, shortly after marrying Ezra's widow Olive, George developed similar symptoms. Impoverished by George's long illness, the family moved to his mother's farm in Haldimand County, Ontario. There, in August 1896, 24-year-old George Sternaman ...
In 1754 Eleanor Powers was hung for a murder committed during a botched robbery. She was the first woman condemned to die in Canada, but would not be the last. In Uncertain Justice , Beverley Boissery and Murray Greenwood portray a cast of women characters almost as often wronged by the law as they have wronged society. Starting with the Powers trial and continuing to the not-too-distant past, the authors expose the patriarchal values that lie ...
In 1934, fifty-three-year-old beer tycoon John Sackville Labatt was kidnapped from his Lake Huron summer home and held ransom for three days. His captors, a group of ex-rumrunners, desperate in the days following prohibition and the Great Depression, were hoping for a big payday. This bizarre true crime story traces the abduction through to the trials of the abductors. From a heavily populated hideout to a case of mistaken identity, follow the s ...
Each murder trial brings its own tangle of evidence, legal parameters, medical factors, social circumstances, and personalities. The tangle gets trickier when we must keep in mind that: «A person shall not be criminally responsible for an act or omission if they suffer from a mental disorder such that they were not able to appreciate the nature and quality of their act or to know that it was wrong.» Forensic Psychiatrist Stanley Semrau takes us ...
Flim Flam explores the world of Canadian white-collar crime, a place inhabited by hustlers, wild gamblers, and crazy dreamers. It takes the reader to the Vancouver Stock Exchange, where dream salesmen have peddled wild stories of easy money, through the «moose pasture» scams of northern Canada, to the con artists who have been drawn to Toronto's financial district. Along the way, you'll meet crooked politicians, a young con man who c ...
In 1898, Spanish spies based in Montreal, Halifax, and Victoria monitored the United States war effort against their homeland, while U.S. counter-intelligence officials watched the Spaniards. Neither the Americans nor the Spaniards sought Canadian permission for these activities. Britain's enemies (and often America's enemies) have also been Canada's enemies. Without the heroic counter-intelligence of the mysterious Agent X, Iris ...
Short-listed for the 2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction They were among Canada’s most desperate criminals, yet their names have been all but forgotten in the annals of history – until now! In their day these lawless men made headline news. Author Ed Butts has rescued their stories from dusty newspaper pages and polished them up for today’s readers in this fascinating volume. The Markham Gang introduced Canada West to organized crime ...
Former bank manager Ronald Dalton never got to watch his three young children grow up. In 1989 he was convicted for a crime that never happened. His wife, Brenda, was later ruled to have choked to death on breakfast cereal not strangled as a pathologist had initially claimed. Dalton’s daughter, Alison, was in kindergarten when he was charged with second-degree murder in 1988. He attended her high school graduation on June 26, 2000, two days afte ...
With the advent of Conrad Black’s new appeal, Steven Skurka is back to deliver a thorough, in-depth account of the controversial businessman’s legal difficulties. It was the trial that captivated observers on both sides of the Atlantic. Media titan Conrad Black, by turns respected and reviled for decades in Canada and around the world, faced off with U.S. prosecutors on charges of criminal fraud stemming from his activities with Hollinger Intern ...
