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 long before anyone had heard of the Mafia. Lew Bevis...
During the American Revolution and the border conflicts that followed, Simon Girty’s name struck terror into the hearts of U.S. settlers in the Ohio Valley and the territory of Kentucky. Girty (1741-1818) had lived with the Natives most of his life. Scorned by his fellow white frontiersmen as an «Indian lover,» Girty became an Indian agent for the British. He accompanied Native raids against Americans, spied deep into enemy territory, and was influential in convincing the tribes to fight for the...
A charming tale of history, creativity, natural inspiration, and a love of gardening. In 1913, Howard Dunington-Grubb and his wife, Lorrie, bought a small plot of land near Sheridan, Ontario, for the cultivation of ornamental plants. Local farmers thought they were crazy. But Howard and Lorrie, landscape architects recently arrived from England, were visionaries who dreamed of creating magnificent gardens in the colonial wasteland. Realizing that Canada had no nurseries that produced the plants...
This book picks up where The Desperate Ones: Canada’s Forgotten Outlaws left off. Here are more remarkable true stories about Canadian crimes and criminals – most of them tales that have been buried for years. The stories begin in colonial Newfoundland, with robbery and murder committed by the notorious Power Gang. As readers travel across the country and through time, they will meet the last two men to be hanged in Prince Edward Island, smugglers who made lake Champlain a battleground, a...
Across Canada peace officers put their lives on the line every day. From John Fisk in 1804, the first known Canadian policeman killed in the line of duty, to the four RCMP officers shot to death in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, in 2005, renowned true crime writer Edward Butts takes a hard-hitting, compassionate, probing look at some of the stories involving the hundreds of Canadian law-enforcement officers who have found themselves in harm’s way. Some, like the four RCMP officers who perished in the...
In 1607 Henry Hudson was an obscure English sea captain. By 1610 he was an internationally renowned explorer. He made two voyages in search of a Northeast Passage to the Orient and had discovered the Spitzbergen Islands and their valuable whaling grounds. In the process, Hudson had sailed farther north than any other European before him. In 1609, working for the Dutch, he had explored the Hudson River and had made a Dutch colony in America possible. Sailing from England in 1610, on what would...
