Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History

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Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History

13 Canadian History Mysteries to explore! Engaging, web-based, bilingual, free materials for all ages All the material is provided free as a public service.

The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History project provides high quality materials to universities and schools for the teaching of Canadian hiistory. The project, based in the History Department at the University of Victoria, has completed a series of instructional websites based on the premise that students can be drawn into Canadian history, critical thiking and archival research through the enticement of solving historical cold crimes. Each mystery can be used in one class period or as a complete unit over many classes.

09/24/2026

One of Canada’s most intriguing mysteries is about what happened to the Franklin Expedition. In 1845, the expedition’s two well-equipped ships got trapped in sea ice in the arctic – no one survived. But what’s the whole story? Explore this mystery for yourself today!
In 1845, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror set sail from England under the command of Sir John Franklin. Their mission: to explore the Canadian Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage, a cheaper and safer route for trading goods, including silk and spices, with China. The mission was also a scientific one: they were seeking a better understanding of geomagnetic science as they traveled near the earth’s northern magnetic pole. We do not know if they succeeded: both ships and the entire party of 129 men disappeared into the Canadian Arctic and never returned.
The Franklin Mystery: Life and Death in the Arctic, gives you what you need – the real historical evidence left over from those terrible events - to find out why.
The disappearance of Franklin`s Arctic Expedition immediately sparked one of the most extensive search efforts in world history. Thirty-two expeditions from Britain and the United States were engaged in the search for Franklin between 1847 and 1859. As grisly details about the expedition’s untimely end began to trickle in from these search and rescue operations, the public’s intrigue turned to horror. For the next 160 years people around the world have considered that evidence and pondered the fate of Franklin's men and their two ships. And it isn’t over.
In 2014 and in 2016 the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and Terror were discovered and are currently being explored by an underwater research team from Parks Canada. The mystery continues!
🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/23/2026

Content Notice: Discussion of child abuse

Aurore Gagnon was a young girl who died on February 12, 1920, under suspicious circumstances. The coroner’s inquest revealed that she had succumbed to blood poisoning and general exhaustion, the result of the great number of untreated wounds which covered her body.
What really happened to Aurore Gagnon? Who was responsible for the mistreatment and abuse that she had clearly suffered? How did this rural family become such a dangerous milieu for this young girl? And how did Aurore Gagnon become Aurore, l'enfant martyre, an icon of Quebec popular culture? As you explore this site, you will not simply follow the proceedings of the trials and the investigations; you will also enter into a rural Quebec village and see how people lived and related to one another. Through the story of Aurore Gagnon, you are invited to discover many facets of Quebec society in the 1920s: how rural families were structured, what special treatment was reserved for women accused of violent crimes, and how the mass media played a role in the formation of collective memory.

🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/22/2026

Early on October 29, 1924, an explosion destroyed a railway car on the remote Kettle Valley railway line in southern British Columbia, killing the leader of the Doukhobors. Assassination or accident? No one has ever been charged and the case remains open. Explore this Canadian history cold case today!
Known by the single name “Lordly,” he was revered as a semi-deity by Doukhobors. Peter Vasilievich Verigin inspired his Doukhobor followers to build a communal empire that spread over three western provinces in the years after 1899, when they arrived in Canada.
But in the early morning of October 29, 1924, an explosion on the remote Kettle Valley Line in southeastern British Columbia ripped apart Canadian Pacific Railroad Car 1586, killing the 65-year-old Lordly, his 17-year-old female companion and seven others.
Assassination or accident? No one has ever been charged and the case remains open. What shattered Verigin and the others on that snowy night has remained locked in the lonely Monashee Mountains where they died. Now, with the benefit of access to archives, a reconstruction of the death scene and a modern forensic report, perhaps you can solve this mystery.

🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/16/2026

Five different people claim that they discovered the first Klondike Gold. But who actually gets that lucrative title? Explore the mystery of who discovered Klondike Gold today and decide for yourself!
On August 16, 1896, four people—an American miner, an Indigenous man from the Yukon, his sister, who was married to the American, and his nephew, were looking for gold on a creek that flowed into the Klondike River, a few kilometers east of the present town of Dawson. One of them—no one is sure which one it was—looked into the waters of the creek and saw something glittering. Turning over a rock he (or was it she?) saw gold lying “thick as cheese” in the cracks between the rocks and stones. The others came rushing, and with shovel and pan, dug more gold out of the water. Dancing for joy, they realized that they were suddenly rich, that they had found the rich deposit of gold that men and women had been seeking for more than twenty years in this northwestern corner of Canada.
This site explores the question “who was responsible for starting it all?” The mystery does not lie in the fact that no one has any idea who made the great discovery that resulted in the production of millions of dollars worth of gold. The mystery is that there were several candidates—five to be exact, including a Canadian who was not present but who might have told them where the gold was —all of whom have claims to the honour of being the discoverer. They all have claims, yet only one claim can be accepted, for there was only one discoverer. It is up to you to assess the claims and, based on the evidence, choose a winner.

🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/15/2026

“The massacre of the Donnelly family, in the township of Biddulph, by an armed mob, is a crime which has no parallel in the history of Canada,” proclaimed the Listowel newspaper in February 1880.
On February 4,1880 the Donnelly farm was burned to the ground. The bodies of James, his beloved Johannah, son Tom and niece Bridget were in the ashes, the victims of a cruel and vicious mob. Another son lay dead in a separate murder the same night. To this day, despite a great deal of evidence (including an eye witness), no one has been found guilty of the crime. Many had no doubt “who done it”, but in two trials the jury would not deliver a guilty verdict.
Take a look at the evidence and a reconstruction of the scene of the crime. ‘Who did it?’ is part of the mystery here. Who would you have convicted if you were the jury? But there are other, deeper mysteries. What were the motives? Why would no jury convict the murderers? Was this a community taking justice into their own hands when the justice system failed, or was it mob rule terrorizing rural Ontario? Did the Donnellys deserve their fate? Why was there no justice for the Donnellys?

🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑ Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/10/2026

The blood of the fourteen men spilled into the Homathco River before dawn on the morning of April 29th, 1864. By the end of May, 19 road-builders, packers and a farmer would be dead. It was the deadliest series of attacks by Indigenous people on immigrants in western Canada, before or since. Within six weeks an army of over 100 men were in the field to find those who had attacked the road crew and the other settlers.
On this website you will find a comprehensive collection of documents, oral histories, newspapers, paintings, and photos that relate to the events of the 1864 war and the aftermath. You are invited to become an historian, to study the evidence and come to your own conclusions about the causes, outcomes and how the war has been understood through time. You will find other mysteries here too, not the least of which is, who was Klatsassin? The name means: "nobody knows him".
🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based
🔎

09/09/2026

In the 1800s, Salt Spring Island was a very diverse place.
William Robinson was a real person, a Black American who was murdered on Salt Spring Island in the British Colony of British Columbia in 1868. He had arrived in the colony a decade before as part of a contingent of Black Americans fleeing persecution and enslavement in the years leading up to the American Civil War.
Robinson was one of three island residents killed in this small community in a space of less than two years. All three were Black. An Indigenous man named Tshuanhusset, also called Tom, was charged with Robinson's murder, and convicted and hanged, but a closer look at the evidence challenges the guilty verdict.
On this Mystery Site, you will find as complete a collection of historical documents that relate to the death of William Robinson and the other two Black men killed in the same period as the two originators, their research assistants, and their friends and colleagues have been able to find.

🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/08/2026

In the Catholic cemetery of Meteghan, in the Municipality of Clare along St. Mary’s Bay in Nova Scotia, there lies a grave marked by a stone bearing the simple inscription, “Jerome.” Who was this Jerome? Where did he come from? For half a century the Acadians of St. Mary’s Bay asked exactly those two questions. On September 8, 1863, a stranger whose legs had been amputated above the knee was found on the beach of Sandy Cove, on the coast of the Bay of Fundy. Taken in by the local Acadians, he spent the rest of his life in almost total silence. People named him Jerome because in the midst of his grunting he is said to have uttered this name. The families that took him in received an allocation from the Nova Scotia government to provide for his needs. People came from everywhere to see the mystery man, who was put on show. By the time he died in April 1912, the legend of Jerome had only begun.
On this site, you can try to retrace Jerome’s journey through the Maritimes from the 1860s to his death, using newspaper articles both local and regional, along with legal, political, private, parish, municipal and provincial records. You will do as historians do, piecing together an account and an interpretation based on historical documents, as you attempt to solve the riddles left behind by this stranger.

🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/03/2026

Have you heard of Vinland? A thousand years ago, stories circulated in Europe about a lush, abundant land called “Vinland” – the land of w**e – somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean. The mystery continues today as achaeologists search for this mysterious land. Explore what we’ve learned so far on our mystery site!
A thousand years ago, as Europe was emerging from what historians have called the “Dark Ages,” stories began circulating in Europe about a lush, abundant land far across the Atlantic called “Vinland” – the land of w**e. For a long time scholars dismissed these stories as fanciful fables but then, in 1961, an indisputable Viking settlement was unearthed at L’Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada. It was true! The Vikings had been to America 500 years before Columbus “discovered” it. But L’Anse Aux Meadows is not a “land of w**e”. So where was this idyllic Vinland where Europe first encountered America?
There are many mysteries to solve here, and “Where was Vinland?” is just the start. What drove the Vikings to far-away countries? Why did they come to North America? Once here, why did they not stay? What impact did they have? And, why does legendary Vinland continue to have such a strong hold on our imagination?

🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

09/02/2026

In the spring of 1734, a fire occurred in Montréal that destroyed a hospital and 45 houses on rue Saint-Paul. Criminal proceedings were soon underway against Marie-Josèphe dite/called Angélique, an enslaved Black woman, and her White lover, Claude Thibault. The latter fled, leaving Angélique on her own to prove her innocence.

We invite you first to allow this period in the history of the judicial system of Nouvelle-France to unfold before your eyes, and then to assume the role of the judge and render your own verdict on this important chapter of Canadian history: Angélique, was she guilty or not guilty? What was her motive? Was there sufficient proof to sentence her? Was there enough of an enquiry? Was the fire accidental? This site will take you back to the Montréal of 1734 and its daily way of life. You will discover how a colonial city functioned, its people, its housing and its constant fear of fires.
🔎Explore this and all our Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History on our website www.canadianmysteries.ca
The "Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History" project provides engaging, high-quality materials to schools and universities for the teaching of historical methods and 🍁Canadian History.
☑Free! ☑Bilingual ☑Teacher resources included ☑Web-based

Address

Department Of History, University Of Victoria, P. O. Box 3045 STN CSC
Victoria, BC
V8W3P4

Telephone

+12504725249

Website

http://canadianmysteries.ca/

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