Nanaimo Mysteries

With Aimee Greenaway, Nanaimo Mysteries curatorAimee Greenaway was reading Blood, Sweat, and Fear when she came across George Hannay, a safe cracker from Nanaimo. She’d heard a story about the former BC Provincial police officer turned criminal, but this was the first time she’d seen evidence of his crimes.

Aimee thought Hannay’s story would make a great inclusion in the museum’s new exhibit—Nanaimo Mysteries.

The exhibit opened February 16, and my friend (and book editor) Susan Safyan  and I went over to check it out. It’s the first time I’ve been to the Nanaimo Museum, and it blew me away.

Inspector Vance, the subject of Blood, Sweat, and Fear and founder of the Vancouver Police Museum’s building on East Cordova Street, gets a starring role. Vance was known as the “Sherlock Holmes of Canada” in the media at the time, and in 1934 there were seven attempts against his life. The last and most brutal was an attempt to blind him with acid and stop him from testifying against Hannay in court. The attack was thought to be instigated by Hannay—at least the note left in Vance’s garage was signed “Hannay’s pals”— (apparently criminals weren’t too smart back then either). The attack on Vance delayed the trial, but went ahead a few weeks later with the Inspector under police guard.

Vance linked Hannay to the robbery through trace evidence. But even though fibres found at the scene were from Hannay’s clothing and a splinter in his coat matched a floor board, the jury was unable to reach a decision because the foreman—a friend of Hannay’s—refused to bring in a guilty verdict.

The material for this chapter and the archival material that Aimee has curated for the display, was found in the garage of one of Vance’s grandsons, in 2016 while I was researching the book.  He found several cardboard boxes filled with photos, newspaper clippings, forensic materials and case notes predating 1950. After the book was finished, the Vance family donated everything to the Vancouver Police Museum.

This is the first time any of these documents have been displayed, and there’s some intriguing, material including a letter that Hannay wrote to Vance’s boss in an attempt to discredit him. Aimee has also uncovered Hannay’s connection to Albert Planta, a corrupt senator from Nanaimo.

Nanaimo, it turns out, is quite mysterious. The exhibit has a section on hauntings and ghosts, another on murders and missing children, the red-light district and the infamous Brother X11, who started a cult in 1927 until 1932, when he and Madame Zee skipped town with donations from their wealthy followers.

The exhibit runs through until September 2, and if it’s your first time, there’s plenty of other things there to keep you fascinated, including the mystery of a samurai sword dug up in downtown Nanaimo in the late 1800s.

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