In Canada, 710 men and women were executed by hanging between 1867 and 1962. Last Moments brings you the dramatic stories of the condemned: their crimes, their final words and their harrowing last moments on the scaffold. This collection shines a light into a dark corner of Canadian history, when the hangman plied his gruesome trade and the guilty met their Maker at the end of a rope:
· An 1879 execution in the Yukon had to be postponed because freezing spectators, tired of waiting in the cold, used the wooden trap door of the gallows to build a fire
· Prince Edward Islander George Dowie didn’t believe in brief farewells: his final discourse was so long that officials had to bring an armchair onto the scaffold so he could sit while addressing the crowd
· In 1938, the hangman at the Okalla prison farm set a grisly speed record when he pinioned, hooded, noosed and sprang the trap that sent a Quebec killer to his death—all in five seconds
· When Cordelia Viau and her lover, Sam Parslow, were taken to the gallows to be hanged together, they were separated by a screen to prevent them from comforting one another
· 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.