Late 1940s · Canadian documentary drama

Famous Canadian Trials

Clara Ford, the Booher case, La Corriveau — the courtroom as national history

Long before the podcast, the trial series was a staple of radio everywhere — but the Canadian version had a particular job to do, which was to establish that the country had a past worth dramatising at all. The Trial of Clara Ford, a Black Toronto woman acquitted of murder in 1894; the Booher family killings in Alberta; La Corriveau, hanged in a cage outside Quebec in 1763. It is a national history assembled entirely out of criminal courts, and it is far better than it needed to be.

6 recordings · Canada

Six surviving broadcasts. Recordings held by the Internet Archive.