Dark Poutine - True Crime and Dark History

Latest Episodes:

Remembrance Day 2026: The Sinking of the SS Caribou Nov 09, 2026

Show notes

Episode 444: On October 14, 1942, the German submarine U-69 torpedoed the passenger ferry SS Caribou in the Cabot Strait, roughly 25 miles off Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. The ferry sank in minutes. Of 237 aboard, 137 died — the largest single loss of life in Canadian-controlled waters during the Second World War, and part of the Battle of the St. Lawrence, the only WWII campaign fought inside North America. Among the dead was Nursing Sister Agnes Wilkie, the only Canadian nursing sister killed by direct enemy action in the entire war; her friend and fellow RCN nursing sister, Margaret Brooke, survived the sinking and was later named a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her efforts to save her.

Sources:
SS Caribou — Wikipedia
Newspapers.com search: SS Caribou 1942
Sinking of the SS Caribou — The Canadian Encyclopedia
U-69 — uboat.net
German submarine U-69 (1940) — Wikipedia
"Youngest Survivor of S.S. Caribou Sinking" — Community Stories
S.S. Caribou Memorial — Veterans Affairs Canada
"Only nurse killed by enemy action in WWII remembered..." — CBC News
Margaret Brooke (Canadian naval officer) — Wikipedia
Agnes Wightman Wilkie — Carman Dufferin Municipal Heritage Advisory Committee
Legion Magazine, "CP bulletin, Oct. 16, 1942: U-boat sinks SS Caribou in Cabot Strait"
Nathan M. Greenfield, Battle of the St. Lawrence: The Second World War in Canada~
"Ulrich Gräf and U-69" — Community Stories
The History of the Nursing Sisters of Canada | Veterans Affairs Canada
Sinking of the Caribou | Heritage.nf.ca
Battle of the St. Lawrence — Canadian Military Heritage
Canada loses a Second World War heroine - Canadian Military Family Magazine
Ulrich Gräf and U-69 | The Tragic Sinking of S.S. “Caribou”

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PREVIEW: Day of Disaster — Columbia: The Last Sixteen Minutes Nov 05, 2026

Show notes

On February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia was returning to Earth after sixteen days in orbit. Seven astronauts were aboard. What should have been a routine homecoming became one of the darkest days in NASA's history.

In this special five-minute preview, we introduce Day of Disaster, a documentary series presented by Dark Poutine, and revisit the final moments of Columbia's last flight.

Hear the complete episode now exclusively on Amazon Music. Ask Alexa to play the Dark Poutine podcast, or listen directly at the link below.

Listen to Day of Disaster — Columbia: The Last Sixteen Minutes on Amazon Music

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Canada’s First Political Assassination: Thomas D’Arcy McGee Nov 02, 2026

Show notes

Episode 443: Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s remarkable life took him from Irish revolutionary and political exile to journalist, celebrated orator, member of Parliament, and Father of Canadian Confederation. After rejecting armed rebellion, he became one of the Fenian movement’s fiercest public opponents, drawing condemnation and threats from former allies. In the early hours of April 7, 1868, only nine months after Confederation, McGee was shot outside his Ottawa boarding house after leaving Parliament. His death is recognized as Canada’s first political assassination. The murder shocked the new country, led to a controversial investigation and trial, and left questions that remain unresolved more than 150 years later.

Sources:

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New Series Coming Soon Nov 01, 2026

Show notes

Every disaster begins as an ordinary day. Until it isn't.

Introducing DAY OF DISASTER , a new documentary podcast series by DARK POUTINE, reconstructing history's most devastating catastrophes, one day at a time.

From the explosion at Chornobyl to the tragedy of Aberfan, the eruption of Krakatoa and the disaster at Bhopal, each episode takes you inside the moments, decisions and failures that changed lives, destroyed communities and altered history.

The warnings. The turning points. The human cost.

Because history remembers the disaster. We go back to the day it happened.

DAY OF DISASTER.

COMING 11.02.2026 only on Amazon Music

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Halloween 2026: The Salish Sea Feet, Nine Years On Oct 26, 2026

Show notes

Episode 442: To mark our ninth anniversary, we're going back to where Dark Poutine began: the mystery of the Salish Sea floating feet. Since 2007, more than twenty disembodied human feet — most still laced into running shoes — have washed ashore along the coastlines of British Columbia and Washington State, sparking theories of serial killers, trafficking rings, and worse. This time we bring the full research the story always deserved: the science that finally explained how it happens, the named victims behind the headlines, and the case that, as of this recording, still hasn't been closed.

Sources:

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Spooktober 2026: Keeper of the Light — John Radelmüller’s Ghost Oct 19, 2026

Show notes

Episode 441: In January 1815, the keeper of Toronto's Gibraltar Point Lighthouse vanished, and John Paul Radelmüller was never seen alive again. Within weeks, two soldiers from a nearby garrison were under arrest for his murder. Months later, a jury acquitted them both. Over two centuries later, the case remains legally unresolved, and the lighthouse where Radelmüller spent his final years has become the basis for Toronto's oldest and most enduring ghost story—one that's grown so far beyond the documented record that most people who know it can't say which parts actually happened. This episode goes back to the original sources — the coroner's inquest, the trial record, the earliest newspaper account — to find out.

Sources:⁠York Gazette | Sat, Jan 14, 1815 | Page 3⁠⁠Gibraltar Point Lighthouse — Wikipedia⁠⁠New Light on Toronto's Oldest Cold Case: The 1815 Murder of John Paul Radelmüller — Eamonn O'Keeffe⁠⁠Toronto's First Murder at Gibraltar Point Lighthouse — my-toronto.ca⁠⁠The Ghost of the Rock: Toronto's 200-Year-Old Lighthouse Cold Case — Sofistikateit⁠⁠Gibraltar Point Lighthouse — Toronto Island Investigation — The Paranormal Seekers⁠⁠Glengarry Light Infantry — Wikipedia⁠⁠Battle of Ogdensburg — Wikipedia⁠⁠Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles, 1812–1816 — regimental history⁠⁠Lighthouses in Canada — Fisheries and Oceans Canada⁠⁠Sambro Island Light — Wikipedia⁠⁠Sambro Island's Haunted History — Pinecone Diaries⁠⁠Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Site — Wikipedia⁠⁠Gibraltar Lighthouse Toronto | Ghost of Accident or Murder | Article⁠⁠https://ghostwalks.com/articles/gibraltar-lighthouse-toronto⁠⁠The true story of Toronto's island ghost - Spacing Toronto⁠

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Spooktober 2026: Headless Mary — The Ghost of Griffintown Oct 12, 2026

Show notes

Episode 440: In 1879, Montreal’s Griffintown was a crowded working-class neighbourhood shaped by Irish immigration, heavy industry and life along the Lachine Canal. On June 27, Mary Gallagher entered a tenement at the corner of William and Murray streets, where a morning of drinking with her friend Susan Kennedy ended in a brutal killing for which Kennedy was accused.

The crime became one of Montreal’s most enduring ghost stories. For generations, residents have said that Mary returns to the corner every seven years, searching for her missing head. In this Spooktober episode, we examine the documented case, the legend it inspired and the changing neighbourhood that kept her story alive for nearly 150 years.

Sources:
The Ghost of Griffintown: Mary Gallagher's Haunting Legend
Mary Gallagher | Haunted Montreal
Mary Gallagher – The Ghost of Griffintown / WKT2 26
Calling all ghost hunters: Headless Mary may return to Montreal tonight | CP24
Headless Mary | Scholastic
Meurtre de Mary Gallagher | Wikipedia
The Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada · Tuesday, July 08, 1879
The British Whig, Kingston, Ontario, Canada · Monday, June 30, 1879
Montreal Gazette, Quebec, Canada · Wednesday, October 01, 1879
Montreal Gazette, Quebec, Canada · Saturday, October 04, 1879
The Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada · Thursday, July 03, 1879
The Montreal Star, Quebec, Canada · Saturday, July 05, 1879
The British Whig, Kingston, Ontario, Canada · Saturday, November 29, 1879
The Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada · Tuesday, October 07, 1879
The Montreal Gazette Thu, Oct 02, 1879 ·Page 4
Ottawa Daily Citizen • Mon, Jun 30, 1879 • Page 1 • (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
The British Whig, Kingston, Ontario, Canada · Monday, July 07, 1879
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Missouri · Thursday, October 02, 1879
Ottawa Daily Citizen, Ontario, Canada · Thursday, October 02, 1879
Ghost of Griffintown | Concordia
Les origines d’une légende irlandaise… montréalaise ! | banq.qc.ca

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Spooktober 2026: Road Trip — The Possessions at Loudun Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

Episode 439: In September 1632, plague was tearing through Loudun, France, when the Ursuline nuns began reporting apparitions, unexplained blows and violent physical attacks. During a series of exorcisms, the voices speaking through the women named a local priest: Urbain Grandier.

Grandier was intelligent, outspoken and surrounded by scandal. He had also made powerful enemies. As clergy, physicians and royal officials entered the case, reports from inside the convent became part of a much larger struggle involving religion, medicine, politics and the law.
In this episode, we examine the Possessions at Loudun and the people who tried to explain them. Were the nuns experiencing a supernatural attack, a shared psychological illness or something shaped by suggestion and institutional pressure? What happens when investigators settle on an answer before they finish asking questions?

Sources

The Possession at Loudun by Michel de Certeau
The Devils of Loudun by Des Niau
Documents pour servir à l’histoire médicale des possédées de Loudun by Gabriel Legué Sœur Jeanne des Anges, supérieure des Ursulines de Loudun: autobiographie
Possédées de Loudun, Affaire des (1632–1634)
“The Possessions at Loudun” by Craig E. Stephenson
“La possession de Loudun (1632–1637) by Sophie Houdard
“Mass Sociogenic Illness” by Robert E. Bartholomew and Simon Wessely
“Divine Punishment or Disease?”
The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley
Jeanne des Anges bibliography and manuscript record
“Edict of Nantes”
“Tarantism, Dancing Mania and Demonopathy: The Anthro-political Aspects of ‘Mass Psychogenic Illness’”
Looking Back: The possessions at Loudun | Stephenson
The Possession at Loudun by Michel de Certeau
Malleus Maleficarum Index | Internet Sacred Text Archive
The Devils of Loudun by Edmund Goldsmid, free ebook download | Global Grey

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The Expulsion of the Acadians: Grand Pré Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

Episode 438: In September 1755, more than four hundred men from Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia, were summoned to their parish church and told their land, homes, and livestock had been forfeited to the Crown. They would not be going home, and neither would their families. The Acadians, French-speaking Catholic settlers who had farmed the Bay of Fundy’s tidal marshes for more than a century, were about to be deported in one of the largest forced removals in North American history.

Here we tell the story of what the Acadians of Grand Pré built, why the British destroyed it, and what became of the families torn apart and scattered across the Atlantic world. More than ten thousand Acadians were forcibly removed from their homeland over the course of the operation, and by some estimates, nearly half did not survive the decade that followed.

From Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow, who carried out the deportation, to René Leblanc, the elderly notary who refused to abandon his people, we follow the Great Upheaval from the shores of Grand-Pré to the bayous of Louisiana, where the Acadian legacy lives on as Cajun culture.

Sources:
L'Histoire de l'Acadie | Moncton.ca
Expulsion of the Acadians | Wikipedia
Heritage Minutes: Acadian Deportation | YouTube
History of Acadia | The Canadian Encyclopedia
Centre d'études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson, Université de Moncton
Acadian Expulsion (Plain-Language Summary) | The Canadian Encyclopedia
View of The Deportation of the Acadians from Ile St.-Jean, 1758 | Acadiensis
The Records of British Government at Annapolis Royal, 1713-1749 | Nova Scotia Archives
Papers Relating to the Acadian French - 1714-1755 | Akins, Thomas Beamish
Papers Relating to the Forcible Removal of the Acadian French from Nova Scotia - 1755-1768 | Akins, Thomas Beamish
Notes on Nova Scotian Privateers by George E. E. Nichols | Archives of New Brunswick
Great and Noble Scheme by John Mack Faragher
The Acadian Diaspora: An Eighteenth-Century History by Christopher Hodson
Parks Canada - Expulsion of the Acadians National Historic Event
The Acadian Deportation, Women, and Refugee Resettlement in the British and French Atlantic (1755-1793)
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Grand-Pré National Historic Site | Memorial church
Landscape of Grand Pré | UNESCO World Heritage Site 2012

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Over the Wall: The Ty Conn Story Sep 21, 2026

Show notes

Episode 437: Tyrone William ‘Ty’ Conn became the first man in over forty years to climb over the wall at Kingston Penitentiary, Canada's oldest and most secure federal prison. Born to a teenage mother in 1967 and adopted at age three by a prominent Belleville psychiatrist, his childhood unravelled into a cycle of theft, institutionalization, and escape that would follow him for the rest of his life. By the time he was thirty-two, a string of armed bank robberies and repeated prison breaks had compounded into a forty-seven-year sentence, a number that raised eyebrows given that not one of his crimes had ever physically harmed another person. On May 6, 1999, using a homemade ladder and a length of sewn canvas, he scaled Kingston's wall and disappeared into the Ontario countryside, setting off a thirteen-day manhunt that captivated the country. What happened when police finally caught up with him in a Toronto basement apartment two weeks later remains, to this day, a matter of dispute, one his own mother was never able to get answered.

Sources:
Tyrone William Conn | Brief Biography
Ty Conn: A Life Imprisoned (2000) | The Fifth Estate
Ty Conn : My Brother The Outlaw | YouTube
Ty Conn : My Brother The Outlaw | Facebook
Who Killed Ty Conn by Linden Macintyre, (Paperback) | Indigo
Ty Conn Project Materials - York University
Ty Conn | Wikipedia
Tyrone Conn's escape ends in death | CBC News
7 Things You Need to Know About Kingston Penitentiary
Niagara Falls Review • Wed, Mar 14, 1984 • Page 8
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Thu, Mar 15, 1984 • Page 1
The Ottawa Citizen • Sat, Mar 07, 1987 • Page 8
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Fri, Jun 30, 1989 • Page 2
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Mon, Dec 18, 1989 • Page 9
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Thu, Jun 28, 2001 • Page 1
The Kingston Whig-Standard • Thu, Jun 28, 2001 • Page 10