Episode 5 - The Execution of Thomas Scott

Explicit content warning

03/30/23 • 18 min

Few people in Canadian history have created more division than Louis Riel. At the time of his death in 1885, he had been found guilty of high treason, but even the jury who condemned him agreed that something else in Riel’s past was why he was killed: the execution of Thomas Scott. Who was Thomas Scott? Why was he executed in Winnipeg during the Red River Resistance, and why did Riel feel fifteen years later that he was going to be hanged because of an Irishman?

NB – This episode contains explicit language

NB – This episode contains explicit language

Previous Episode

Episode 4 - The Battle of the Windmill

Wild hogs eating corpses on a battlefield, women shot in the face, Irish soldiers strung up by their heels and mutilated, hangings, deportations, and ghosts... Does this sound like Canada to you? Despite appearances of gentility in Upper Canada, the Battle of the Windmill was anything but – and for a Canadian battle, it was chock-full of Irishmen. At the tiny hamlet of New Wexford in November 1838, all sorts of horrible things happened; this week, we’re talking all about it.

Next Episode

Episode 6 - The Body of Mary Boyd

To end our second season, Jane is revealing some of her exclusive research from the Gender, Migration & Madness Project: the mystery surrounding the death of Mary Boyd. Mary was an Irish Quebecer who found work as a young maid in a Toronto doctor’s household in 1868. But the circumstances surrounding her suicide only a few months later caused a major scandal in the city about sex, virginity, pregnancy, medical experimentation, mental illness, and the immense power men had over women’s bodies.

NB – This episode contains graphic discussions of mental illness, sexual assault, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.