Subseries 10 - Shortis

2.4 m of textual and graphic records

The Lipski manuscript had been completed in early 1983 and I wanted to try another case to see if Lipski could be duplicated. I had enjoyed writing it and thought that I had made some good points about the criminal process. I tried to find a good Canadian case from about the turn-of-the-century.

In April 1983 I went up to the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa to examine their Capital Cases Files. I had worked in the Public Archives earlier when I was exploring the Canadian material on the R.S. Wright article in 1980 and, I think, when I was working on the paper for the Royal Society in about 1982.

I systematically went through all the files over a 30-year period around the turn-of-the-century to see if I could find a good case. All murder cases that ended with a conviction had to go to the Department of Justice to determine whether the death sentence should be handed out.

The Shortis case wasn’t immediately attractive because it was a ‘why-done-it’ not a ‘who-done-it’. Still, there were important political dimensions to the case that were interesting and there was good material on the defence of insanity.

One of the cases that I was also considering was the Hyams case from Toronto. It ended in an acquittal, however, and so there wasn’t a file in Ottawa. The problem with Hyams was that there wasn’t good background documentation, although I had a full transcript. Some material on the Hyams case is in a separate file in this collection (‘Other Professional Activities’).

Over the summer of 1983 I started collecting material on the Shortis case, the manuscript of which was published in 1986 under the title The Case of Valentine Shortis: A True Story of Crime and Politics in Canada. For four summers I had, as usual, excellent summer research assistants. (See file 5). I engaged in extensive correspondence on the cases (files 6 to 11) and extensive use of archival sources in Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec City, Ireland, and England (files 13 to 15). As I often did, I made my notes in numbered notebooks (files 16 to 21) and at an appropriate time I would write into the notebooks how I would categorize the material (e.g. psychiatry, hanging, Laurier, etc.), xerox the notebooks, cut up the pages and then set up files for the headings. There would be a constant process of adjustment because the categories kept changing. Most of those files have been thrown out, but I kept some because they might be of future interest to others researching that particular event or person, for example, the Minister of Justice, Hibbert Tupper, or the psychiatrists, R.M. Bucke or C.K. Clarke (files 22 to 39). As I worked on each section of the book, I would make rough notes of the material I wanted to cover in that section. Only some of these have been kept (files 40 to 45).

Endnotes were done in a rough manner at the time of writing, then put in a proper form, and then carefully double-checked. The source material for each note was then kept in a separate file. I have only kept the file for chapter one as an example (file 46). The others were thrown out.

The outline of the manuscript kept changing as I accumulated more material and as I thought about how best to present the material (file 3). In March 1994, I presented the inaugural Cullitan Lecture at the University of Saskatchewan in which I discussed the story. That outline essentially formed the basis of the final manuscript.

The manuscript was hand written (files 47 to 51) and my secretary entered it on her word processor, which I would then correct. A number of drafts are contained in the material (files 53 to 55). Gerry Hallowell of the U of T Press copy-edited the manuscript himself (files 56 and 57). I eventually received page proofs (file 58) and prepared an index (file 59).

Pictures were important to the book. There was a full-page picture before each of the 18 chapters that conveyed something about the material in that chapter. There was extensive correspondence in order to obtain the pictures (file 62). The best pictures came from the Notman collection at McGill. The files contain the pictures that were used in the book (file 60) as well as those that were not used, although many were later used for slides (file 61).

I received many comments on the draft manuscript from various scholars. These included Craig Brown, John English, John Beattie, Jack Robson, and many others (file 65).

Publication was by the University of Toronto Press. The various files contain material on the negotiation of the contract (file 66), the process of production (file 68), promotion (file 69 and 74), etc. The book was an optional extra of the Osgoode Society (file 71) which, along with the U of T Press, sponsored the book launch (on a stormy November day) (file 75). I did a book tour of the West (file 76) and to Ottawa (file 77) and did a number of radio interviews (including Gzowski) in Toronto and elsewhere. In 1988, I went to Trinity College Ireland to give a formal lecture as well as a talk on the book. I also went to Waterford, where Shortis was born (file 78). A number of other talks with slides on the book were given in Toronto, Montreal (file 79). I also went to Newfoundland in 1989 to give the Kenneth Gray lecture at the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychiatric Association (file 80). There was a paperback edition in 1988 (file 81). Nothing came of attempts to get a French translation (file 83).

After publication, a number of persons with personal knowledge of the case came forward to offer further information (file 84). The U of T press sent out a generous number of review copies (file 85) and I sent out a lot of copies (file 90).

The book was widely reviewed in newspapers, legal and other journals and there was a two-page spread in the Bulletin (files 86 to 89). I received a large number of letters about the book from person who received copies and some who were reviewing it (files 91 to 94).

There was some activity relating to a film or TV adaptation, but so far nothing has come of it. Telescene wanted to produce it with the National Film Board and were apparently fairly close when Donald Brittain, the person they had in mind to direct it, suddenly died (files 95 to 96). I’m still hoping.

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