A few months ago, on one of my weekly trips to find treasures at local thrift stores, I stumbled upon a gold mine.
A box set of every episode and TV movie of Columbo.
If you aren’t familiar with the show, it features Peter Falk as the titular character.
He seems to be a scatter-brained detective who wears a wrinkled raincoat and drives an old beater car, but it is all a ruse.
He does this so suspects underestimate him.
Instead, he has a steel trap logical mind that catches every detail.
Perpetrators become flies unaware of his spider web.
What sets the show apart is that viewers know who the killer is from the very beginning.
It is all about how Columbo catches the murderer.
While watching one episode recently I wondered
Could Columbo have solved some of the most famous mysteries in Canadian history?
I’m Craig Baird, and this is Canadian History Ehx.
Today, we are taking a tour through our history’s most tantalizing conundrums.
From the death of one of our greatest painters to a double murder that was quickly covered up,
These are stories that could even make the great detective scratch his head before saying, “Just one more thing”.
Our first case takes us to Algonquin Provincial Park.
This slice of heaven was established in 1893, it is the oldest provincial park in Canada and is predates most National Parks other than Banff, Yoho and Glacier
Inside its borders are 2,400 lakes, 1,200 kilometres of streams and rivers, and some of the most beautiful landscapes in Ontario.
It is easy to see why Tom Thomson loved it so much.
He was a quiet man who enjoyed the outdoors and communing with nature.
His trips to the park helped inspire some of the most iconic Canadian art. Thomson was 34 years old when made his first trip to Algonquin in 1912 and sketched his surroundings. One of those drawings became the painting Northern Lake, which now hangs in the Art Gallery of Ontario.
He returned to the park the following year; to further develop his skills and on these trips, he was often joined by fellow painters like A.Y. Jackson, Arthur Lismer and Fred Varley.
By 1915, he was spending most of the time, from spring to autumn, in the park.
It was his happy place and his muse.
His life revolved around it.
The park also inspired The Jack Pine, which is considered a masterpiece, because it depicts the title tree in an abstract and decorative pattern against a sunset.
The sketch was made in the spring of 1916, and the painting was completed the following year.
The Jack Pine now hangs in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
But just as his creativity was reaching its peak, Tom Thomson walked into a mystery.
In April 1917, Thomson travelled to Algonquin Park.
Like in the previous years, he planned to spend spring, summer and autumn there.
On July 8, 1917, Shannon Fraser, the owner of the Mowat Lodge, saw him walking towards Joe Lake Dam.
The small, wooden dam is a landmark on canoe routes between Joe Lake and Canoe Lake.
It marks a short, mandatory portage for canoers, who can swim at the nearby beach before carrying their boats over the rocks to the next lake.
Park Ranger Mark Robinson wrote in his diary that day that he spotted Thomson leaving Fraser’s Dock at 12:30 p.m. on.
Fraser’s Doc however isn’t a specific location; instead, it’s the name of a lake and a related trail within the park’s Leaf Lake system.
The park ranger was the last person to see Thomson alive.
Later that afternoon the painter’s upturned canoe was found on Canoe Lake, but Thomson was nowhere to be seen.
Eight days later, the artist’s body was discovered along the shore of the lake.
His watch had stopped at 12:14 and he had a 10-centimetre bruise on his right temple.
He was examined by Dr. Goldwin Howland, and he listed the official cause of death as accidental drowning. No police investigation was conducted.
Thomson was buried on the shore of Canoe Lake on July 17.
Two days later, his brother, George Thompson, had Tom’s body exhumed and sent to Owen Sound to be buried in the family plot.
The prevailing theory is that Thompson was standing in his canoe when he lost his balance, then fell, and hit his head on the edge of the canoe, fell out while unconscious and into the water.
However, other explanations have emerged in the decades since.
Park Ranger Mark Robinson, the last man to see Thompson alive, has implied there was more to the painter’s death.
He found it improbable that Thompson, who was an experienced outdoorsman and familiar with canoes, would have an accident and subsequently die as described.
In 1970, Judge William Little wrote The Tom Thomson Mystery.
Little, using his legal background, exhumed the original grave at Canoe Lake in 1956, with three friends.
They discovered a male skeleton with a hole in the skull, suggesting foul play rather than the official account of accidental drowning.
A subsequent medical examination revealed that the remains were of a First Nations man, but Little believed they were in fact Thompson’s remains.
He released his book which quickly became a best-seller and, in the process, caused renewed interest in Thomson’s death.
Through the years, claims that Thomson was murdered, or that he ended his own life, have been put forward with little evidence and I think a better question is…why are people going around digging up graves?
In 1977, Roy McGregor, who grew up near Algonquin Park, and is still considered an acclaimed Canadian author and journalist wrote in the Toronto Star his theory that Thomson was murdered by Mowat Lodge owner Shannon Fraser.
Mowat Lodge was a historic establishment located on the northwest corner of Canoe Lake that grew out of an old logging camp. It was a frequent stop for artists like Tom Thomson, who stayed there when not camping.
The lodge is now gone, but its former location is still accessible and is often visited by those on paddling expeditions in Algonquin Park.
J. S. “Shannon” Fraser was the postmaster, and owner of Mowat Lodge, with his wife Annie, they operated it and prepared meals for guests.
The reason they were suspects is that immediately following Thomson’s disappearance, Shannon Fraser and to a lesser extent, his wife went to great lengths in constructing false narratives about what actually happened that afternoon.
Annie has been publicly quoted as having had a late breakfast with the painter on the last day he was seen alive and he was “looking bright and chipper”, her words not mine.
MacGregor however focuses on Winnifred Trainor, the woman said to be engaged to Thomson at the time of his death.
She kept several of his oil sketches, worth probably $20 million on today’s market, until she died and this theory became the basis of his 2010 book Northern Light: The Enduring Mystery of Tom Thomson and the Woman Who Loved Him.
But motive isn’t what fueled these theories, instead it was evidence… maybe…
Thomson’s legs were apparently bound by wire when his body was found.
This claim is based on an exaggeration and misinterpretation because.
Thomson often wrapped his ankle in fishing wire to relieve his sore joint. But since his death and despite little fact theories have only grown. What do I think?
I think Thomson accidently drowned while out on the lake.
Even the most experienced outdoor enthusiasts can make mistakes.
But one interesting side story is that Thomson is not the only artist the park has claimed.
Ken Danby was known for his hyper-realistic painting style.
His most famous works include At the Crease, Pancho and Lacing Up.
If you’ve ever been to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, you might have seen a crouching goalie statue at the front doors.
It is based on Danby’s at The Crease.
He also loved Algonquin Park and in 2007 he was on a canoe trip with family and friends, when he suffered a fatal heart attack near North Tea Lake and became the second painter to meet their maker at Algonquin Provincial Park.
The next case on the docket began when F.W.M. Flock met with Ambrose Small on Dec. 2, 1919.
The meeting was most likely to discuss the profit made from the sale of Small’s theatre holdings at a profit of CA$1.7 million but as soon as the lawyer left Toronto, the new millionaire vanished.
Small had no motive to disappear.
He did not take money with him, nor was there any ransom note, let alone evidence of kidnapping left behind.
So, who was the man at the center of this mystery?
Ambrose Small was born on Jan. 11, 1866, in Newmarket, Ontario.
At ten years old his family moved to Toronto, where his father was the manager of the Grand Hotel.
Next door was the Grand Opera House, and it would play a critical role in young Ambrose’s future, and his disappearance.
By the time he was 18 he was tending bar at the hotel when the manager of the opera house hired him as an usher.
From 1884 onwards Ambrose was promoted several times until he became the treasurer of the opera house.
But he was also making money on the side by running an illegal bookmaking operation where patrons came to him when they wanted to bet on horses.
The more money he made, the greedier Ambrose became, because he wasn’t above fixing races in his favour.
With time he accumulated enough wealth to leave the Grand Opera House behind when he got into a dispute with the manager.
His fortune allowed him entrance to the upper crest of society, and he solidified his spot with the elites when he married socialite Theresa Kormann.
Theresa’s father, Ignatius Kormann, was a brewer.
Both families were Catholic and they knew each other well.
Josephine, Ignatius’s eldest daughter, had married Ambrose’s father, Dan Small after his first wife’s death.
She was twenty years younger than him.
Several years later, Theresa, Dan’s sister-in-law, married Ambrose.
Theresa stood out. She was known for her philanthropy to Catholic charities, and was a pillar of the community, and part of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire.
She was not only Ambrose’s wife but also his partner in business and she was provided a gracious living with a chauffeur and servants in a mansion on Glen Road, in the exclusive Rosedale neighbourhood.
Ambrose was an excellent businessman and with the money he made, both legally and illegally, he returned to the Grand Opera House and bought it.
His first order of business was to fire the manager he had quarreled with previously.
Then, over the next 20 years he purchased other theaters across southern Ontario.
At the height of his business, he owned 34 theatres which meant if you wanted to perform in the biggest theatres in Canada, you most likely went through Ambrose Small.
Photos of Ambrose showed a duplicitous-looking fellow with a walrus moustache.
He was known as a sharp dealer and a jack who was shifty, full of secrets and voraciously ambitious. His wife enjoyed charity work and supporting the arts.
She travelled the world to learn about other cultures and could speak eight languages.
Ambrose was the exact opposite.
He easily gave into his vices and spent his time gambling, drinking and having affairs.
Ambrose even built a secret room off his office in the Grand Opera House where he could meet with women.
Whereas his wife was admired, Ambrose was seen as a ruthless man with no morals.
He was not above cheating his friends and business associates if he could find a way to do so.
Most people who met Ambrose Small felt a deep dislike for him.
I guess what I’m saying is…a lot of people might’ve been happy when he disappeared. Despite his faults, his ambitions helped him grow his business to a point that a rival Montreal company wanted to buy him out.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. By 1919, movies were taking over, and the theatre business was dwindling.
Ambrose knew it was time to get out.
On Dec. 1, 1919, he sold his chain of theatres for $1.7 million, which equals $28 million today.
Someone, either Theresa or Ambrose, deposited that huge cheque in the Dominion Bank the following morning.
Later that day, Ambrose bought Theresa a car, jewellery and a fur coat.
The couple then went for lunch with his lawyer F.W.M. Flock.
Afterwards, Theresa went to the local orphanage where she volunteered her time.
Ambrose and Flock returned to the Grand Opera House to finish business.
At 5:30 p.m., the lawyer left the office so he could make a 6 p.m. appointment.
For his part, Ambrose, vanished.
Flock was the last person to see him.
And what’s even more strange, for the next two weeks, no one reported him missing.
That’s because disappearing was not out of the ordinary.
Ambrose was known to leave with women for weeks at a time, but he always came back.
Theresa even said,
“I believe my Amby is in the hands of a designing woman, somewhere, and will be back.”
Except… to this day no one knows what happened to him.
Ambrose packed no suitcases and didn’t withdraw any more money from the bank or pay by cheque for any expenses.
Police found no evidence of him in any of his usual places.
Even his mistress, Clara Smith, knew nothing about where he had gone.
Eventually, Theresa admitted that her husband was missing.
She offered a reward of $50,000 for any information relating to his whereabouts.
As soon as she did, sightings poured in from Canada, the United States and even Mexico.
All of them were false leads.
The story became a media storm.
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was in New York City, he was asked to help in the case.
He politely declined.
But the question of what happened to the millionaire continued to be a subject of fascination for years.
“Where’s Ambrose?” became a social phenomenon, a kind of parlour game, and it attracted its share of fraudsters and crackpot theorists.
People said they heard Ambrose had gone into hiding after cheating the wrong person out of money.
Others claimed he had amnesia and was wandering around North America.
The most common theory was that Ambrose had been murdered, his body dumped in Lake Ontario and armchair detectives often blamed his wife.
They said she had grown tired of his philandering and killed him.
Others said she killed him for his fortune because once Ambrose disappeared, she had acquired control over his estate.
Ambrose’s sisters, Florence and Gertrude, opposed this by enlisting the services of a man named Patrick Sullivan to help them investigate Theresa’s claims. He was unable to find any leads or concrete evidence of wrongdoing, but he did sell stories to newspapers and tabloids claiming everything from assassination by the Catholic Church to a massive police cover-up over the murder.
Sullivan and the sisters even produced a written confession by Theresa in the alleged murder of her husband which a judge threw out.
The scandal forced Theresa into a quieter life but not before she had to deal with questions about Ambrose’s assistant of 18 years.
John “Jack” Doughty had been Ambrose’s personal secretary and knew most of his secrets.
Doughty resented his boss and had been heard making threats against him so when Ambrose vanished, he became a prime suspect.
Evidence of nefarious activity mounted when Doughty took over $100,000 in Victory Bonds from Ambrose’s safety deposit box at the Dominion Bank and fled to Oregon, where he assumed a new identity.
A detective named Austin Mitchell went in pursuit and apprehended Doughty who confessed to the theft.
He was charged with stealing the bonds and plotting to kidnap his boss.
But because no physical evidence existed, the charges of theft and conspiracy to kidnap his employer were dropped.
Doughty was only convicted of stealing the Victory Bonds and spent several years in the Kingston Penitentiary before returning to Toronto to live out his remaining years.
Even though Inspector Edward Hammond with the Ontario Provincial Police was one of the original investigators he wasn’t able to move the case forward.
Until his dying day he believed that Doughty had killed Ambrose Small and Theresa was involved in exchange for money.
The Toronto police, however, had no evidence to prove this theory, despite excavating and searching the basement in Ambrose’s home, as well as the Grand Opera House.
A nearby ravine in Rosedale was scoured to no avail.
No matter police found no trace of Ambrose Small
However, that doesn’t mean there weren’t sightings of him across North America.
One of the most unusual happened in 1921.
Private detective John J. Brothy claimed he found Ambrose Small in Des Moines, Iowa after he was hit by a car and dropped off at the hospital.
He said Ambrose had a gunshot wound in his neck, a serious concussion, and both his legs had been severed from the knee down.
When asked who he was, the man said he was John “Jack” Doughty
But Doughty had been imprisoned in Ontario at the time.
When Brothy showed the man a photo of Ambrose Small, he said,
“Yes, that is me.”
Brothy said the mystery man shared similar physical characteristics with Ambrose but that the man in the hospital weighed only 100 pounds.
The claim was proven to be false and in1923 Ambrose was officially declared dead.
Most believe Theresa Small knew more than she ever acknowledged but she took her secrets to her grave.
Theresa died in 1935 by then her estate had been largely eaten up by back taxes and by its concentration in illiquid stocks and real estate.
A year later in June 1936, her possessions were auctioned off.
Florence Small, Ambrose’s sister purchased items and later told the press that she had found a letter in one of Theresa’s old chests from someone named Reuter, who wrote.
“Poor Ambrose was killed on December 2, 1919, and I know that part of his body, the trunk, was buried in the Rosedale ravine dump and other parts of the body were burned in the Grand Opera House furnace. You will be surprised, my dear Florence and Gertrude, to learn that I am more responsible for your brother’s death. God forgive me. — Reuter.”
Since the ravine and the basement of the opera house had all been extensively searched, it is likely the letter was just another falsification in order to collect the reward money.
The case was officially closed in 1960.
The next case takes us to just outside of Digby Neck, Nova Scotia where George Colin Albright was walking near his family home on Sept. 8, 1863.
The eight-year-old was surprised to find aman in his 30s, with both legs amputated above the knees laying on the beach.
George ran to alert his parents, who transported the man back to their home where them. nursed back to health.
When he was asked his name, he mumbled something that sounded like Jerome.
The amputations had been done by a skilled surgeon and both legs had partially healed by the time he was found.
The fact he couldn’t talk may have been related to a brain injury suffered whenever he lost his legs.
Jerome was a mystery, his hands were soft, so many believed he was unlikely to have spent his life doing manual labour.
His story spread to newspapers, and people came to see him who spoke French, Latin, Italian and Spanish, but Jerome didn’t seem to understand any of them.
As the years passed Jerome was taken care of by the community and stayed in the homes of various families.
While some wanted to help, others saw dollar signs and charged people admission to see him.
The Nova Scotia government also provided two dollars per week to whatever family was housing him.
Eventually, he was placed in the home of Jean Nicola where he remained for about the last decade of his life, never saying who he was or what happened to him.
He died on April 15, 1912, his death was vastly overshadowed by the sinking of the Titanic.
So, who was he?
Was he a sailor who attempted a mutiny and received amputation as punishment?
His soft hands don’t seem to match someone who worked on a ship.
There were some who believed he was the heir to a fortune, and someone had dealt with him to claim the money.
The most believable theory may have come from New Brunswick historian Fraser Mooney Jr.
In 2008 he published the book titled Jerome: Solving the Mystery of Nova Scotia’s Silent Castaway and in it he claims the young man fell through the river ice in Chipman, New Brunswick in 1859.
He developed gangrene in his legs, which were amputated by a local doctor.
When he woke up from the surgery, the man said “gamba”, Italian for leg.
Those around him called him Gamby.
Unfortunately for Gamby, the people in Chipman felt he was too much of a burden and had a captain take him to the opposite side of the Bay of Fundy.
The captain left him on a beach and sailed off.
Then, quite possibly, an eight-year-old boy named George happened to walk by and a mystery was born.
Our next case takes us to Montreal and to the foot of Mount Royal.
There we will find a mansion on Sherbrooke Street in the Golden Square Mile neighbourhood where the richest of the rich called home.
That is the where The Redpath family lived and they were VERY rich.
In 1854, John Redpath founded Redpath Sugar.
He imported sugar cane and built the first sugar refinery complex in Canada.
Within a few years, the company was processing 7,000 tons of raw sugar per year.
That helped the Redpaths become one of the 15 families that lived in the Golden Square Mile and held an estimated t 70 percent of the wealth in Canada.
On the home front, Redpath was busy; he had fathered seventeen children and their mansion which today would be near today’s Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was opulent.
It also became a crime scene on June 13, 1901.
That day, Montreal was shocked to learn that Ada Maria Redpath, 59, and her son, Jocelyn Clifford, 26 had been found dead under suspicious conditions.
They were found in her bedroom in a pool of blood but was even more mysterious was that it seemed the family didn’t want answers.
In fact, they wanted everyone to stop talking about it immediately.
Within 48 hours, both Redpath and Clifford were buried and there were no follow up investigation and the remaining family members did not discuss the tragedy.
Naturally, people started to gossip about what really happened.
The prevailing theory was that it was a murder-suicide.
A few claimed the mother murdered the son.
Others said the son murdered the mother.
Decades later, researchers, looking at diaries and letters from family members and servants, developed their own theory of what happened that night.
It is believed Clifford was in a relationship with one of the mansion’s maids.
When his mother told him to end the relationship, he flew into a rage.
Clifford allegedly went out and purchased a gun. He returned home and rushed up to his mother’s room.
As soon as the door closed, two shots were fired.
When everyone ran to the room to investigate, they found mother and son dead.
If you find two people dead in a room where no one else has entered, chances are, one of them was the killer.
And while the story has only grown in prominence over the decades, the home itself fell into disrepair and in 2014, it was torn down.
For their part the rest of The Redpath children married into wealthy and influential families and continued to enjoy the wealth their father had accrued, while only some continued to be involved in the family business.
Our last case takes us to the shores of the Pitt River in British Columbia where Slumach, a First Nations man, was put to death by hanging in 1891.According to the legend, Slumach, had shot a man known as Louie Bee on the west shore because of a gold deposit worth millions.
Slumach was an elderly man who had spent much of his life living around the lake.
He knew every mountain, tree and rock.
If there was a gold deposit around the lake, Slumach would have known about it, and some believe he had found a gold deposit that would make anyone rich beyond their wildest dreams.
After shooting Louis Bee Slumach evaded the police for months but as winter approached, he surrendered to authorities.
Most believed Slumach had acted in self-defence, but it was to no avail and when the noose around his neck extinguished his life on Jan. 16, 1891, a legend was born and today Kru Williams, Adam Palmer and Taylor Starr, the team behind Deadman’s Curse are on the trail trying to find Slumach’s long lost motherlode. Adam Palmer is a historian and expert, and he says like most people he was drawn to the mystery surrounding and tales of lost riches.
The team is on the third season of the TV show, which premiered in September 2025 and from the beginning this story has captivated him.
This season, one of the more intriguing storylines is the discovery of a hidden mine that may have played a part in the overall mystery of Slumach’s gold.
Like with any great mystery, the deeper you dig, no pun intended, the more questions you have.
From a lost Spanish mine from the 1700s, to Slumach’s gold, every bit of evidence like old maps and interviews, is a piece of the overall puzzle.
That is what makes this hidden mine so intriguing for the team.
The Deadman’s Curse team investigates this story far removed from a soundstage. Instead, they venture into the wilderness, where even experts like Adam, say anything can happen. But that makes great television.
But the story of Slumach’s Gold isn’t just about finding the gold.
It is also revealing the history of the First Nations from the Lower Mainland of British Columbia that stretches back thousands of years.
Adam says working alongside Taylor Starr and Don Froese has helped him connect to something greater than the legend.
In their search for the gold mine they have also tapped into plenty of other mysteries including the story of Volcanic Brown, one of the most famous prospectors of his day.
[TRANSITION]Will any of the mysteries I’ve explored here today be solved?
Probably not.
But that isn’t quite the reason we love these mysteries.
Often, the real story just isn’t as interesting.
It is much more fun to speculate and make our own theories.
Columbo may have solved every mystery, but that doesn’t mean we have to.
Sometimes the unknown is just more fun.
[OUTRO]You can watch season 3 of Deadman’s Curse in Canada ON THE HISTORY® CHANNEL AND STACKTV
And listen to two seasons of the award-winning podcast Deadman’s Curse, ad free, exclusively on Apple Podcasts by subscribing to Curiouscast Discovery.
