12 May 2009

Canada Death Penalty Index

Ancestors in the Attic asks, were your ancestors sinners or saints? I've yet to find a list of Canadian saints, but this index gives brief information on people associated with the other end of the spectrum.

The site lists all persons executed in Canada, 1011 prisoners found to date. It includes the names of most persons executed under Canadian jurisdiction between 1867 and 1962 plus many others before Confederation. There is also information on the date, victims and crime.

I found this site mentioned in the Winter 2009 issue of the Quebec Family History Society magazine Connections.

3 comments:

GW said...

Interesting. I hope the people who are putting this together know that Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in its previous incarnation as the National Archives of Canada published a detailed guide, Persons Sentenced to Death in Canada, 1867-1976: An Inventory of Case Files in the Records of the Department of Justice (RG 13)(Ottawa: 1994) compiled by Lorraine Gadoury and Antonio Lechasseur. Most bizarre about this is the fact that this publication is not found on LAC's own library catalogue. I searched by name (Lorraine Gadoury) and by title. Fortunately, I have a copy and it is a valuable finding aid to these records with an alphabetical list of persons sentenced, indexes of sentences by year, by province, by name of victim and women so sentenced. Each entry includes the name and a brief description of the accused, name of the victim, place and date of the crime, dates of the trial and where, the result, a full archival reference and a brief descritpion of the file contents. I would suggest that this publication be made available on the LAC web site.

DWP said...

Many thanks to GW for this valuable reference. I'll have to find a copy.

DWP said...

Further to GW's reference, I think Archives Finding Aid 13-39 is the same thing. Try the two PDF links in the following excerpt:

"The finding aid is a typed file list for volumes 1407-1854. 13-54 90 Textual records (Paper)
http://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf001/p000001052.pdf
http://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf001/p000001051.pdf