National Network for Equitable Library Service

Ten gripping tales of murder and missing persons show how skulls and skeletons reveal their secrets to forensic investigators. A skull is found on a scree slope high above the mirror-calm waters of Spray Lakes. Bones rumoured for years to be buried in a Medicine Hat backyard are finally dug up. The trussed and tortured skeletal remains of an unknown man are found in a septic tank near Tofield. These baffling Alberta cases show how dogged, old-fashioned detective work combines with modern forensic techniques in the search for the truth.

From the days of the fur trade, one constant thread weaves its way through the tumultuous history of frontier British Columbia, Washington and Oregon—the war over liquor. Between 1840 and 1917, the whisky wars of the west coast were fought by historical heavyweights, including Matthew Baillie Begbie (the “Hanging Judge”) and Wyatt Earp, and a contentious assortment of murderous whisky traders, angry Natives, corrupt policemen, patronage-loving politicians and trigger-happy drunks.Liquor was a serious and life-threatening issue in 19th-century west coast settlements.

Slumach’s Gold chronicles what is possibly Canada’s greatest lost-mine story. It searches out the truth behind a Salish man’s hanging for murder in 1891 and tracks the intriguing legend about him that grew after his death.

In October 1935, three prairie farm boys embarked on a deadly trail of robbery and murder that stretched across three western Canadian provinces and made newspaper headlines from coast to coast and as far away as Los Angeles. By the end of the spree, seven people were dead, including the fugitives themselves and four law-enforcement officers. For the next 70 years, these Depression-era “farm-boy killers” held the distinction of being the RCMP’s deadliest adversaries.

In early-1980s Vancouver, Ivan Henry was an ex-convict still adjusting to civilian life when he was detained on a break-and-enter charge. A short time later he found himself on trial for ten charges of sexual assault—crimes he vehemently denied committing. Henry spent twenty-seven years in prison before a 2010 DNA test proved his innocence and secured his release. To this day, however, he has not been compensated or publicly exonerated.This is a powerful, heartbreaking, frustrating story of justice miscarried and an innocent man who fell through the cracks.

Since 1873, the Mounties have brought the law to the furthest reaches of the Canadian frontier. Sam Steele, the "Lion of the North," was involved in almost every significant event in the Canadian West; James Macleod and James Walsh negotiated peace with the First Nations peoples. Less famous, unsung heroes risked their lives enforcing justice in the Canadian wilds. From stopping the whisky trade to policing the chaotic gold rush and patrolling the lonely North, these true tales of the early days of the Force are sure to amaze and entertain.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada’s prairies were still sparsely populated. Crimes such as horse theft, random murders, and prison escapes were the order of the day, and the North West Mounted Police continued to rely on their horses, their contacts, and their wits to apprehend the culprits. By the mid-1930s, a sea change in technology and police science had changed the game.

Albert Johnson was a loner, a deadly shot, who in 1932 triggered a gruelling manhunt that has become an Arctic legend. For over six weeks, amid blizzards and numbing cold, he eluded a posse of trappers, First Nations and RCMP, who for the very first time used a two-way radio and an airplane in their search. Johnson was involved in four shoot-outs, killing one policeman and gravely wounding two other men before being shot to death. Over a half-century later, an intriguing mystery remains: Who was Albert Johnson?

Do you think the smuggling of drugs and people is a new phenomenon in Canada’s west? Think again! Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, many daring smugglers carried contraband goods and people into western Canada across the US–Canada border or into BC from Asia. Smugglers of the West tells the dramatic tales of the bold criminals who smuggled Chinese immigrants, opium, liquor and a host of commodities ranging from wool to live animals to tobacco.

The legend of the Lost Lemon Mine is one of the most enduring unsolved mysteries of the Canadian West. In 1870, so the story goes, two prospectors named Lemon and Blackjack found gold in the rugged mountains of southwestern Alberta or southeastern British Columbia. Shortly after, Blackjack died at Lemon’s hand. The distraught Lemon left the scene of the murder and never recovered his senses—or his gold. Despite exhaustive searches by treasure seekers and historians, the mine has never been located.