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In October 2008, 38-year-old Johnny Altinger was looking for love online and, thinking he’d found it, was lured to his death in a dingy south Edmonton, Alberta garage. Johnny believed he would meet the girl of his dreams, but a Star Wars and Dexter-Morgan-obsessed serial killer wannabe and 29-year-old amateur filmmaker named Mark Andrew Twitchell awaited him in the garage’s darkness.

In Montreal, Quebec on the evening of April 10, 1734, a fire broke out in the home of Madame de Francheville on Rue Saint-Paul and quickly spread throughout the city. Raging for hours, it destroyed over 46 buildings, primarily residential homes, and the Hôtel-Dieu, a hospital that provided medical care to soldiers and people who were too poor to care for at home. There were rumours that Madame de Francheville’s Portuguese-born black enslaved woman, Marie-Josèphe dite Angélique, started the fire as an act of rebellion on learning she was to be sold and sent away from her lover, a white man and salt trafficker named Claude Thibault. Angélique was arrested and subsequently tortured until she confessed to setting the fire. She was then convicted of arson and hanged on June 21, 1734. The fire significantly impacted Montreal’s development and created new building codes and fire prevention measures. The event remains integral to Montreal’s cultural and historical heritage and yet another dark spot in Canada’s history. Some have called Angélique a heroine, others a scapegoat. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is lost to time.

Episode 263: Approaching the week of 4/20, cannabis enthusiasts worldwide are preparing for a unique celebration. However, it’s essential to acknowledge the dark history of cannabis prohibition in Canada and the USA. The criminalization of cannabis wasn’t based on scientific evidence of its harmful effects or widespread health concerns but was fuelled by moral panic, racism, and xenophobia. It served as a tool to maintain a rigid social hierarchy, where those in power and privilege oppressed and marginalized those considered inferior. The ‘war on drugs’ transformed into a ‘war on cannabis,’ ultimately becoming a war on minorities in both countries.

In early March of 1946, John Dick, a 39-year-old streetcar conductor in Hamilton, Ontario, disappeared. Weeks later, five local children found John’s torso on the city’s outskirts — his head and limbs were missing. Suspicion soon fell on John’s wife, Evelyn, who was arrested and charged with the murder. The pair had had a whirlwind courtship and had been married only months before John turned up dead.

On September 5th, 1998, between 11:00 and 11:30 pm, Brianne Ruth Wolgram was last seen at the 7-11 store in Revelstoke, BC., in the company of three young females whose identities are unknown. Five days later, Brianne’s abandoned car was discovered 30 km south of Revelstoke, towards the Akolkolex Falls & River, on Echo Lake Road. Inside the car was her wallet, driver’s license and $200, but there was no sign of Brianne. Nearly 25 years later, Brianne’s family and friends are left wondering whatever became of the shy 19-year-old. Police have not ruled out foul play in her disappearance.

Canada played an important role in the Cold War, a period of intense geopolitical tension and rivalry between the Western powers and the Soviet Union that lasted from the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As a member of the Western Bloc and a close ally of the United States, Canada was involved in a wide range of Cold War activities, including the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the construction of a network of radar stations in the Canadian Arctic known as the DEWline, and the creation of a series of underground emergency government bunkers known as Diefenbunkers. The Cold War also had a significant impact on Canadian society, shaping public attitudes toward issues such as national security, nuclear weapons, and international relations.

After she’d been missing only one day, on the evening of May 7th, 2002, the body of 14-year-old Jessica Grimard was discovered by her father in a stream within a wooded area near her home in Rivière-des-Prairies, a suburban borough on the eastern tip of the city of Montreal, Quebec. As her killer had placed Jessica in the water, washing away evidence, there was not much for the cops to go on. At first, police considered that Jessica had been killed by someone known to her. However, thanks to a few strange twists, the case would head in a new direction, eventually leading to the capture of a known sexual predator and suspected serial killer who had bragged about his crimes. The boasting included confessions of responsibility for two other 1993 deaths around Montreal, initially ruled accidental, that of 12-year-old Christine Speich and 20-year-old Anna Lisa Cefali. The killer had used water and fire to cover his crimes.

On the morning of February 20, 1989, stay-at-home mother of two Janice Faye Johnson was found unconscious, gravely injured and barely clinging to life at the foot of a flight of basement stairs in the Shelburne, Nova Scotia home she shared with her family, Clayton Norman Johnson and daughters Darla and Dawn. Even though she was still alive when she was found by a neighbour, who called for an ambulance immediately, Janice died in the hospital just after noon that day.

In Victoria, B.C., on the rainy evening of Friday, September 29, 1899, on her way home from work alone, forty-four-year-old Agnes Bings walked across a railroad bridge, cutting through the Songhees Reserve as she did every other night without incident. This night, however, would be her last. Someone took her life somewhere during the 20-minute walk between her bakery on Store Street and the Bings family home on Russell Street. The next morning, Agnes Bing’s body was discovered. She’d been strangled, and her body mutilated. Her slaying has never been solved, although there have been a few suspects, interestingly including the world’s most famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, whose 1888 crimes also remain unsolved.