Last Moments: Sentenced to Death in Canada

Before capital punishment was abolished in 1962, more than 700 men and women were executed by hanging in Canada. Last Moments shines a light into a dark corner of a long and painful part of Canadian history that threatens to re-emerge. Here are dramatic stories of the characters whose finals moments and last words were tragic, unpredictable, poignant, eccentric and often bizarre:* The principal object of curiosity at executions, apart from the person about to die, was the executioner; before Confederation, these individuals were often recruited from among the condemned, and they were given two options -- kill or be killed* A Yukon execution was delayed because freezing spectators, tired of waiting in the cold, used the wooden trapdoor of the gallows to build a fire* When Cordelia Viau and her lover, Sam Parslow, were hanged back to back for the murder of Viau's husband, they were separated by a screen to prevent them from offering comfort to one another* George Dowie from PEI didn t believe in brief farewells; his final discourse was so long that officials brought an armchair onto the scaffold so he could sit while addressing the crowd* In 1938, the hangman at the Oakalla prison farm in BC set a grisly, unofficial speed record when he pinioned, hooded, noosed and sprang the trap that sent a killer to his death -- all in five seconds* British Columbian Corky Vincent brawled with his executioner on the scaffold before onlookers leaped into the fray, overpowered him and held him on the trapdoor until he was dropped to his death* New Brunswick killer John Sullivan, overcome by emotion at the thought of saying his final goodbyes, begged his executioner to hang him earlier than scheduled.And so many more tantalizing and twisted tidbits...