someone was convicted of a capital crime, the presiding judge was required to submit a detailed report to the minister of justice in Ottawa. The federal Cabinet and officials of the Department of Justice would review the case. At the end of this sometimes lengthy process, Cabinet would make the ultimate decision on what sentence to impose. If they resolved that the law “be allowed to take its course,” an Order-in-Council was issued instructing the local authorities to proceed with the execution.
According to author and historian Carolyn Strange, “condemned persons’ chances of commutation were clearly linked to assumptions about the dangerousness of certain criminals and the culpability of various categories of offenders, as well as to public anxieties about changing rates of criminal violence.” And what swayed the Cabinet’s opinions at one time could have the opposite effect at another, tilting the balance for, or against, the condemned person. Indigenous peoples (that is, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples), for example, were initially treated leniently, but as time passed, racial paternalism evaporated, especially if white people were in the gunsights.
Take the case of the Copper Inuit living on the shores of Coronation Gulf in the Arctic. In 1916, two Inuit men named Sinnisiak and Uluksuk were arrested for the murder of two French missionaries. They were initially tried in Edmonton in 1917 and acquitted, then retried in Calgary and convicted of murder. Their sentences were immediately commuted to life imprisonment. In 1919, the men were released and returned to the Arctic. This leniency was aimed to teach the Inuit people about Canadian law and to “Canadianize” them. If the Inuit were to kill again, they would have to suffer the consequences.
And the consequences proved to be harsh. In 1922, a young Inuit named Alikomiak, arrested with his uncle Tatamigana for the killing of an Inuit man and a baby, shot a Royal Canadian Mounted Police corporal whom he believed had insulted him. Later the same day, he shot a Hudson’s Bay Company man.
Killing whites? Strategically acceptable to the Canadian authorities in 1917, but no longer tolerated in the 1920s. “As kindness has failed in the past I strongly recommend that the law should take its course and those Eskimos found guilty of murder should be hanged in a place where the natives will see and recognize the outcome of taking another life,” thundered T.L. Cory, commissioner of the Northwest Territories.
In 1923, Alikomiak and Tatamigana were tried at Herschel Island in the Yukon Territory. Since trial court officials brought along with them an executioner and lumber to build a scaffold, it was fairly clear what the outcome of the case would be. Public controversy about the case spread across the country, with some arguing that it was a travesty of justice to try sixteen-year-old Alikomiak in a language he could not understand and others insisting that Canada’s sovereignty should be maintained and respected. But despite this, the government was determined to make an example of the two Inuit men, and they were hanged in February 1924.
Not everyone convicted of murder went to the gallows, though. Just over half the 1,533 people listed in the official inventory of Department of Justice capital case files as having received the death penalty escaped the noose. In some cases, their sentence was commuted or quashed; in others, they were given a new trial leading to a reduced sentence or acquittal. Some prisoners awaiting execution died in jail. Chillingly, some unfortunates committed suicide.
So who was most likely to be executed? Statistics show us that certain groups of people, such as young working-class males and men from ethnic and racial minorities, were particularly vulnerable. The poor were often targeted. Women were generally treated leniently, as were Indigenous people in the early stages of their association with whites. However, racist thinking among the ruling classes would sometimes evoke pity for “lesser” peoples but at other times reflect fear and hatred of “the other.” In short, there were never any guarantees, consistent application of the law, or immutable rules or principles in what Strange calls “the lottery of death” — capital punishment in Canada.
The main players are all assembled. Let’s not forget the second-stringers, important in the action, too: police officers, homicide detectives, doctors, court officials, Crown prosecutors crossing swords with lawyers for the defence, jailers, and families of the victims and accused.
And standing by on the sidelines, waiting for his turn, is the most contentious participant of them all: the hangman.
The game is on.
Chapter 3
The Assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee: A Murder Mystery
T homas D’Arcy McGee may have had a premonition that his brains would be blown out by an assassin’s bullet. A few days before his death, he had a terrifying dream of tumbling into a powerful river and being swept helplessly toward a waterfall.
It was April 1868 and things had not been going well for McGee. Once a rising star among Irish Canadians, he had won a seat in parliament in the United Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) in the general election of 1857 and had been instrumental in persuading Irish Canadians to support Confederation. But now his political career was in tatters. After playing a prominent role in the first two conferences in Charlottetown and Quebec that had led to Confederation, he was omitted from the third in London. He had been expelled from the St. Patrick’s Society in Montreal and denounced as a traitor to Ireland. In spite of his waning political fortunes, however, he was elected by a slim majority to the first House of Commons in the Dominion of Canada in 1867. But the Cabinet position he had expected as a prominent member of the ruling Conservative Party did not materialize. His clashes with the Irish community made him a liability rather than an asset, and the proposal was withdrawn. Instead, he was offered a job in the civil service as a consolation prize.
But at 2:00 a.m. on April 7, 1868, all of this faded into the background. In the House of Commons in Ottawa, parliamentarians were on their feet, giving McGee a standing ovation for his last passionate speech on the spirit of Confederation.
Then McGee put on his overcoat, gloves, and new white top hat and left the newly built centre block of parliament. As he started his slow walk back to his boarding house a short distance away, a full moon beamed down on him.
“Good night, Mr. McGee,” called John Buckley, a House of Commons employee, as McGee turned onto Sparks Street.
“Good morning,” joked McGee. “It’s morning now.”
Those were his last words.
His landlady, Mrs. Trotter, heard the drumming of feet and what sounded like a firecracker outside her front door. When she went to investigate, she found a figure slumped against the blood-speckled doorway. It was her lodger, shot to death. The bullet had entered the back of his head, passed through his skull, and exited through his mouth. The gun had been fired at such close range that some of McGee’s teeth were found embedded in the doorpost.
McGee was a close friend and drinking buddy of John A. Macdonald, also a Father of Confederation and now prime minister of Canada. Sir John A., as he was called, was devastated when wakened with the news that his companion had just been shot. He rushed at once to the scene of the murder and helped carry his dead friend into the house. He returned home, covered in blood and, as Macdonald’s wife Agnes described him, “much agitated,” with a face “ghostly white.”
A massive manhunt was launched, with more than two hundred people arrested in the police sweep. That afternoon, Sir John A. delivered a sombre tribute in the House of Commons to the “foully murdered” McGee. Flags flew at half-mast in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. The mayor of Ottawa posted a reward of $2,000 for information leading to the capture of the killer, and the federal government and provinces of Ontario and Quebec between them offered another $10,000.
The
