5 of Canada’s most famous unsolved mysteries

No, not the Great Maple Syrup Heist—that one was solved. In July of 1996, thieves nabbed a truck in a Montreal CN yard that was loaded down with 1.5 million toonies. (That’s three million dollars, in case you’re really bad at math.) The truck was later found abandoned and empty and the money never recovered. It was the biggest coin heist in Canada’s history.

We’ll probably never know what really happened on June 13, 1901. What we do know? On that evening, both 59-year-old Ada Redpath (yes, of the sugar company) and her 24-year-old son, Clifford, wound up shot to death in the Redpath mansion in Montreal. There was no investigation, and the bodies were buried two days later after a speedy coroner’s inquest. The jury decided that Clifford, in the middle of an epileptic seizure, shot his mother, then turned the gun on himself. Today, true-crime buffs still scoff at this conclusion, and think it smacks of a cover-up. There was no evidence that Clifford had a seizure, no evidence that he even had epilepsy.

One of Canada’s most famous UFO encounters—at Falcon Lake, Man., on May 20, 1967—kicked off a rash of UFO sightings, including one in Kananaskis, Alta., and one in Shag Harbour, N.S. The “Falcon Lake Incident” revolved around an industrial mechanic from Winnipeg, who, during a long-weekend visit to Whiteshell Provincial Park, spotted two “cigar-shaped” crafts that looked like they were made of “hot stainless steel.” When he approached one, it released a blast of gas that lit his clothes on fire. A half-dozen Canadian and U.S. authorities—including the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Department of National Defence, and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization—investigated. A UFO encounter? Sure. But were they alien spaceships? Even the mechanic didn’t believe that; he only ever claimed that what he saw was an “experimental aircraft.”

For decades, the Peterborough Lift Lock on the Trent Canal has been the site of tragic accidents (a worker plummeting 60 feet to his death when scaffolding collapsed) and unexplained events (workers finding mysterious wet footprints on the ground, or seeing tools fly through the air as if thrown by an unseen force). Why? Some people believe the lock is cursed by the ghost of a woman who was burned alive for being a witch in the 1840s.

Maybe it’s not Canada’s most famous unsolved mystery, but it has to be cottage country’s. Who killed artist Tom Thomson? Or did he die by accident? Could it have been suicide? Here are the facts: Thomson disappeared in Algonquin Provincial Park’s Canoe Lake on July 8, 1917. Twelve days later, a vacationing doctor spotted his body floating in the water. His death was ruled an accidental drowning. But that didn’t explain the fishing line wrapped neatly, 16 or 17 times, around one leg, or the mark on his left temple. In a 1953 tape recording, his friend Mark Robinson described the injury: “It looked as if he had been struck—struck with the edge of a paddle.”