Legends Told in Canada

Don Crosby is a journalist in Durham, Ontario.

A corpse that talks, a benevolent witch, a noisy poltergeist, and the
aggressive ghost of Toronto’s first mayor are some of the characters
Edith Fowke offers from the rich source of Canadian legends. The 22
stories, all of British and French origin, chronicle snippets of the
country’s past not readily found in history books. They are gripping
tales of adventure, yet well grounded in Fowkes’s sound scholarship.

The stories range over all regions of the country, from its earliest
beginning to the 1960s. One legend concerns a Canadian sea serpent seen
off the coast of Newfoundland, as told by Sir Humphrey Gilbert around
1583. Another centres on two families in the 1950s who refused to live
in the servants’ quarters in the house once occupied by Toronto’s
first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie. According to their sworn
statements, they were kept awake at night by a ghost, who punched one of
the women in the eye and carried out nocturnal watering of the
houseplants.

As a celebrated Canadian folklorist and the author of more than 20
books about Canadian folklore heritage, Fowke brings impeccable
credentials to this little book of treasures. The color plates that
accompany the legends were selected from the Royal Ontario Museum.