Latest Episodes

Episode 378: Fredericton, New Brunswick, in the sultry summer of 1949, was a community caught between the relief of peacetime and the tensions of post-war hardship. Along the margins of this…

Episode 362: We explore chilling events that unfolded at POW Camp 132 in Medicine Hat, Alberta, during World War II. This prisoner-of-war camp, one of many scattered across Canada, became the site of…

In Mike's first book, Murder, Madness and Mayhem, he wrote about an unknown man whose body was found on Somerton Park beach near Adelaide, Australia, by two trainee jockeys who’d been out with their horses on the morning of December 1, 1948. Lying in peaceful repose, the man wore a suit, overdressed for the warm Australian summer, and had no wallet or identification. He was unknown to anyone locally. The labels of his clothing had been ripped out. Some enigmatic leads proved fruitless, including the discovery of a book, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, believed to have belonged to the stranger. In that book, what appeared to be coded writing was found. Experts have yet to decrypt the supposed message. Some believe the man was a spy, possibly murdered for what he knew. Called by many Somerton Man, the stranger's identity has remained unknown for decades until recently, when two separate groups came forward claiming they had information about who he was, leading to further speculation and even more questions.

In the annals of military history, few figures stand as singularly remarkable as Léo Major, a French-Canadian soldier whose audacious feats in World War II and the Korean War etched his name in the pantheon of military legends. During World War II, he served with the Régiment de la Chaudière, participating in the D-Day landings and embarking on a series of extraordinary exploits that culminated in the single-handed liberation of the Dutch town of Zwolle from Nazi occupation. Unfazed by injuries and fueled by a relentless drive, he refused to be sidelined, resolutely continuing his service. Major's saga did not conclude with the end of World War II; he reenlisted to serve in the Korean War, where he would once again defy the odds and solidify his legacy. His story is a captivating tale of bravery, resilience, and a steadfast commitment to justice, offering an inspiring testament to the power of individual courage in the face of overwhelming adversity. Some have called him Quebec’s Rambo. He is the only Canadian to have received the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) twice for his actions in two different wars.

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.

Eighty years ago, on August 19, 1942, in Operation Jubilee began as the Allies attacked the French port of Dieppe on the English Channel Coast. Of the more than 6100 troops involved, five thousand were soldiers of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division and a thousand British, many commandos, with a handful of others including Americans. The hope was to gain a foothold in Europe, breaching Hitler’s heavily-fortified Atlantic Wall. But unfortunately, the Germans were ready for them, and things did not go as planned. After nine excruciating hours of brutal fighting along the shore, the allied force retreated. Almost 1000 Allied troops lay dead, and at least 2000 more were prisoners of war, making this one of Canada’s darkest days ever in a time of war.

At the outset of World War II, a number of Canadian citizens of German and Italian decent, as well as Jews who were immigrating to Canada, fleeing Europe were rounded up and put into internment camps. After the Japanese attack on the United States in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, on 6 December, 1941, North Americans were afraid. The Second World War had come far too close to home. Just over a month after the Pearl Harbour attack, a process began which saw the mass internment of Japanese Canadians from 1942 until 1949. Many of the detainees, including women and children, had been born in Canada. The country they’d grown up to love had uprooted them from their homes, seized their properties and taken away their rights and freedoms.

During the harsh winter of 1941, as World War II raged elsewhere, closer to home, a tragedy occurred on the remote, ice-covered island archipelago in Hudson Bay called the Belcher Islands. After witnessing a dramatic meteor shower, a tribal group of Inuit people believed the world was ending. Inspired by a copy of the New Testament Bible translated into Inuit syllabics by Anglican missionaries, 27-year-old Charlie Ouyerack, self-professed shaman of the tribe, claimed he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. Charlie determined his friend, Peter Sala, a skilled hunter and navigator, to be God. Their cult, Charlie, Peter, Peter's sister Mina and their followers, labelled any deniers as satanic heretics, eventually leading to the brutal murders of nine people within the group.

Episode 207: After World War II, Canada’s economy rose. Work was much easier to come by than during the depression. Even though he’d been able to secure decent employment, family man and world war veteran with movie star good looks, Edwin Alonzo Boyd, was bored. He’d had his share of trouble already and was feeling the itch again. In the fall of 1949, he robbed his first bank. This crime kicked off events that would lead to one of the most infamous Canadian criminal gangs of the era. Over just a few years, The Boyd Gang, named for their charismatic de facto leader, Edwin, robbed numerous banks broke out of one of Canada’s toughest prisons, not once but twice. To some, they were folk heroes. However, public sentiment turned firmly against them after members of the gang, Steve Suchan and Lennie Jackson, murdered Toronto Police Department Sergeant of Detectives Edmund “Eddie” Tong and severely wounded his partner Roy Perry.Sources:Regina v. Boyd, 1953 CanLII 88 (ON CA), Edwin Alonzo Boyd: Life and Crimes of Canada’s Master Bank Robber by Nate HendleyFatal Intentions by Barbara Smith - Ebook | ScribdLine of Fire by Edward Butts - Ebook | ScribdJohn J. Robinette by George D. Finlayson - Ebook | ScribdThe Desperate Ones by Edward Butts - Ebook | ScribdNow You Know Canada’s Heroes by Doug Lennox - Ebook | ScribdLost Rivers — Don JailHistoricist: Titillating and Terrorizing Toronto - Torontoist — ArchivedGeocities — BOYD GANGToronto’s Infamous ‘Boyd Gang’ - CBC ArchivesCBC Archives — Suchan and Jackson hanged back to backEdwin Alonzo Boyd | The Canadian EncyclopediaToronto Feature: The Boyd Gang | The Canadian EncyclopediaWHAT THE BOYD GANG FIASCO CAN TEACH US — Macleans Magazine — 1952ExecutedToday.com » 1952: Lennie Jackson and Steve Suchan, of the Boyd GangSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/darkpoutine

Episode 181 - The region in the South Nahanni River played host to several unexplained and disturbing occurrences in the first half of the twentieth century. Between1905 and 1945, in the remote and rugged wilderness in the lower west corner of Mackenzie Mountains in the Northwest Territories and other unexplained events, there were at least 44 people who went missing under mysterious circumstances. Most unsettling of all were the four bodies that were found during that time in three separate incidents. All of the corpses had been decapitated, and their heads were never recovered, earning the area the ominous nickname, the Valley of the Headless Men. No one knows who was responsible for these horrific mutilations or what became of the other missing people. Sources: Secrets of the Nahanni: The Valley of Headless Men – The Outdoor Journal The Lore Behind the Mystery of Canada’s Nahanni National Park The Valley of Headless Men. The spectacular scenery of the Nahanni… | by L Hall | Chameleon | Medium Nahanni National Park Reserve - Wikipedia Valley of Mystery — Pierre Berton | Maclean’s | March 15, 1947 Parks Canada — Nahanni National Park Reserve Mysteries of the Nahinni Park Reserve in Canada — StrangeOutdoors.com Did giants roam Canada’s Northwest Territories — or do they still? | CBC News The Valley of the Headless Men: UnresolvedMysteries Legends of the Nahanni Valley Legends of the Nahanni Valley by Hammerson Peters Serial Killer Quarterly Vol.1 No.3 “Unsolved in North America” — Scribd Read The Dangerous River Online by R. M. Patterson | Books | Scribd Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Weird Canada Online by Bathroom Readers’ Institute | Books | Scribd Read Strange but True Online by John Robert Colombo | Books | Scribd The Strangest Northerns: The Valley of the Beasts - Dark Worlds Quarterly The Willows, The Wendigo, and Other Horrors: The Best Weird Fiction and Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood: Annotated and Illustrated Tales of Murder, Mystery, Horror, and Hauntings eBook: Blackwood, Algernon, Kellermeyer, M., Kellermeyer, M.: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store Canada is a huge country. Most of it is unfit for human habitation. - Vox This Is How Empty Canada Really Is (PHOTOS) | HuffPost Canada News Geography | The Canada Guide Largest Countries in the World by Area - Worldometer Table 24.1 Population, by province and territory, selected years, 1861 to 2009 Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/darkpoutine