Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Life and Crimes of Canada's Master Bank Robber

Geoff Hamilton is a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
British Columbia.

The leader of a gang responsible for a string of high-profile and very
lucrative robberies from 1949 until 1952, Edwin Boyd, Toronto’s
“Gentleman Bank Robber,” was one of Canada’s first celebrity
criminals. This short volume explores his early life, his transition
from TTC driver to notorious gangster, and ultimately his arrest, trial,
and release from prison.

The book effectively conveys the outlaw romance of Boyd’s rise from
hardscrabble beginnings in the Depression to infamous serial bank
robber. Hendley’s writing is consistently lively, and his subject
matter gives him plenty of colourful material to work with. We get a
clear sense of Boyd as a “natural charmer” who “closely resembled
matinee idol Errol Flynn” and “was good at getting people to give
him what he wanted.” Particularly engaging are the accounts of
Boyd’s early misadventures as a criminal, including an amusing
description of the time he was caught hiding under a desk in a foiled
burglary of a gas station. The occasional free indirect discourse of
Hendley’s narration gives a compelling sense of this intriguing
personality: “As Boyd drove his streetcar up and down Toronto tracks,
he spent a great deal of time pondering his future. He felt destined for
bigger things. Surely, a man with his good looks, athletic skills, and
charm shouldn’t be spending his time driving passengers around
Toronto.”

As the book’s epilogue sketchily acknowledges, some historians now
question how much of a “gentleman” Boyd really was: a recent CBC
documentary accuses him of a grisly double murder in 1947. Exploring the
darker aspects of Boyd’s legend is, unfortunately, beyond this
book’s scope.