Notorious Ontario is a rogue’s gallery of villains and miscreants, narrating the troubled lives and lawless misdeeds of criminals from Lake Superior and Muskoka to the depths of Depression-era Toronto. Ontario has had its share of colourful lawbreakers to bedevil police:
• Joseph, Mohawk, Louis and Antoine Moses terrorized communities on the remote, wild north shore of Lake Superior, stealing and murdering for more than a decade in the late 1800s
• The most successful bank robbers in American history were the Texas-born Newton Brothers, and in 1922, they brought their criminal skills to Canada—blowing up bank vaults and running circles around the RCMP and OPP
• In 1890, American scoundrel Arthur Hoyt Day, tired of his wife, lured her to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and pushed her over a cliff into the Niagara Gorge
• Seeing himself as Canada’s John Dillinger, Lennie Jackson pulled off a string of bank heists in 1951 culminating in a shoot-out with police on main street Bradford, shattering the calm of that peaceful farming town
• For one week in 1914, Muskoka was beset by fear and violence as local farmer-turned-outlaw William “Black Bill” Ruttan struck out on a vendetta-driven reign of terror against his neighbours.