There Is No Place for Sympathy Here (The Belcher Islands Murder Trials)

In January 1941 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police learned of nine deaths in the Belcher Islands, an archipelago in southeast Hudson Bay. The fatalities reportedly occurred during an episode of intense religious fervour among the nomadic Inuit. While the RCMP ultimately charged seven Inuit with murder, none were convicted of that offence. In an era when murder demanded the death penalty and in a place that necessitated days of travel to reach, these legal proceedings illuminate the complex intersection of Inuit society and Canadian legal authority.

In this compelling history David Berg examines the coordinated roles of multiple branches of government in investigating and prosecuting the alleged murders, with the trial itself – conducted in a tent – serving as the book’s central focus. Despite overwhelming evidence of murder, Berg’s extensive research demonstrates that the judge and counsel shaped the proceedings to foreclose the possibility of conviction by jury for murder. Although the judge insisted that “there is no place for sympathy here,” the record reveals a deliberate effort to avoid what all involved regarded as a legal but unjust outcome: the execution of the Inuit defendants. The result was a striking array of verdicts – one acquittal; four convictions for manslaughter; one finding of not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, a verdict not recognized in Canadian law at the time; and a declaration of unfitness to stand trial despite psychiatric evidence to the contrary.

Shedding light on the conduct and reasoning at work in the Belcher Islands trial, Berg offers vital insight into the relationship between Indigenous communities and the Canadian criminal justice system at an early point in its history.

Co-published with the Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History