The Desperate Ones: Forgotten Canadian Outlaws.

Clint MacNeil teaches history, geography, and world religion at St.
Charles College in Sudbury, Ontario.

This narrative does little more than tarnish Canada’s reputation as a country inhabited by God-fearing, law-abiding citizens—and it’s for that reason that this book is exciting, entertaining, and most of all refreshing. Butts brilliantly chronicles the criminal careers and exploits of 20 Canadian outlaws who were, until now, virtually unknown. Robbing banks, stagecoaches, and individual citizens, these rogues ranged from petty thieves to organized gangsters.

The characters described in this book were truly desperate. Greed, ruthlessness, and even alcohol contributed to their own downfalls that resulted in life sentences and, in some cases, public hanging. Considering the lengths to which criminals would venture to evade capture it is understandable that some readers may feel somewhat sympathetic. Although the public may have deemed their murderous activities abhorrent, they were, nevertheless, more than eager to witness a guilty man fall to his death from the gallows.

For instance, Bill Murell claimed he preferred jail over legitimate work while Orval Shaw resorted to theft to meet his daily needs. Former-police-detective-turned-gangster Louis Morel resorted to drug dealing and gambling to support his family. Meanwhile, the Markham Gang, William Ruttan and George O’Brien, were particularly ruthless when it came to innocent people, family, and friends.

Frank Meeker was drinking the night he robbed the Dain family and killed their son Joseph. Alcohol undoubtedly was a factor that instigated members of the rival Irish families to quarrel, resulting in Richard Oliver’s death. The rowdy and intoxicated McDonald cousins murdered Billy Kittson, only to face an angry, drunken mob that dragged the men to their deaths. Liquid courage was used by the Murrell gang prior to their bank robbery that resulted in Rusell Campbell’s death. The Moses brothers received a reduced sentence after arguing that they were intoxicated when they killed the men responsible for attempting to seduce their sisters with liquor.

On the whole, Butts’s work serves to highlight an aspect of Canada’s interesting, albeit dark and criminal, past.