In the midst of the Great Depression, the townsfolk of Port Eddy are looking forward to the annual diversion: a horseshoe tournament against nearby Petroleum City. When a ringer, a hotshot outsider illegally brought in to help the City win the contest, is murdered, Constable Stan Garrett, the recently appointed village cop, is surprised that he might be involved in something more than jaywalking. However, when the uncle of his new lady friend, Susan Shaw, is suddenly arrested by the City p...

Someone is killing women in 1841 Toronto. One victim is a singer in a bordello frequented by three prominent men. Another is a man dressed as a woman. The only evidence are a glove and a set of footprints in the snow. Cobb is on the case. Meanwhile, his former comrade Marc Edwards is in Kingston trying to forge an alliance between Upper and Lower Canada for the opening of Parliament. The goal: greater democratic forms. The murder of a workman threatens to destabilize the alliance.

In Toronto’s rough days of 1839, several elite citizens harbor dark secrets, offering rich compost for a sleazy blackmailer. Caught in the muck is the gallant young Brodie Langford who is desperate to protect his sweetheart from disgrace. When Brodie is arrested for the extortionist’s murder, Marc Edwards, now a barrister, struggles to save him from the gallows and to reunite the couple.

In Toronto 1839, an abortion goes tragically wrong, killing a 15-year-old maid in the household of the distinguished Baldwin family, enveloping them in a scandal that has political implications for the union of two British colonies, Ontario and Quebec. Accused of raping a minor and causing her death is a beloved Baldwin uncle. Marc Edwards has the challenge of his career in finding the truth.

Lily Fairchild follows the life of a pioneer woman, born in the backwoods of Lambton County in 1840, throughout her long life, ending in 2019. During that time, she is witness to historical events that impinge on her life: the Underground Railroad, the coming of the railways, the discovery of oil, the Fenian raids, the first and second Riel Rebellions, the construction of the tunnel under the St Clair River, the Great War, and the flu pandemic of 1919. Lily struggles against the f...

This locked mansion mystery is set in 1839 at a country estate north of Toronto. Marc and Robert Baldwin have been working tirelessly to effect responsible government in Upper Canada (Ontario). In a few months, Upper and Lower Canada (Quebec) will be joined in a single legislature, and savvy political leaders see this as an opportunity to forge a solid alliance with like-minded Quebec representatives to facilitate democratic reforms. The secret meeting with visitors from the Quebec Rouge P...

The political elite attends a charity ball at the residence of the wealthy Humphrey Cardiff. His widowed daughter, Delores Cardiff-Jones, flirts with all the men, enraging their wives. Amidst the political plotting of Marc Edwards and his associates, Delores is found impaled on an iron fence, with one of her suitors standing over the body. Marc controversially decides to defend him, while Cobb races to find the truth behind the beautiful young woman’s untimely death.

Lurid gossip surrounds the distinguished barrister Dick Dougherty who fled to Toronto from New York in 1838 with his two wards. But calumny mixes with politics, and a fiery sermon by Bishop John Strachan incites his murder. Dougherty is found dead in an alley with a note pinned to his back, scrawled with the word, “Sodomite.” Marc Edwards, Dick’s dear friend, travels to New York to plumb the secrets of his exile and perhaps discover who killed him. The investigation leads Marc into the sho...

Lily Fairchild is born in southern Ontario in 1840 and leads a life of constant struggle against the historical forces of her time: the coming of the railroads, the discovery of oil, the Riel Rebellions, the Great War and the influenza pandemic that followed. Three marriages and two children complicate her life and against all the odds she struggle and survives, always deciding on love whenever she can.

Don Gutteridge’s collections of poetry celebrate the poet’s childhood in Point Edward, the small town nestled under that yawning bridge teeming with cars dashing to places only dreamed about by those young villagers. One gets to know the wiles of the local fish and the best fishing places, and then sits and wonders at the woodworking skills of the poet’s grandfather or the eerily brilliant skating of his father. As I’ve read his collections, I’ve come to view the sands of Canatara as my ow...

Stubborn Pilgrimage traces both the development of new teaching methods (what I call the post-Diltzian paradigm) and the resistance of English teachers to the serial attempts to have their programme hijacked by well-meaning psychologists and sociologists and a Ministry of Education increasingly in opposition to the kind of programming B.C. Diltz promulgated as long-time instructor and later principal of the Ontario College of Education; that is, the aesthetic appreciation of our b...

Don Gutteridge approaches his home town of Point Edward, Ontario, with an array of listening and recording devices, mixing poetry, documentary newspaper collage, interviews and photography. A milestone in the documentary poem.