Episode 2 - Grace Marks

The Irish in Canada Podcast

In late July 1843, the colony of Upper Canada was stunned with the news of a bloody double-murder. Thomas Kinnear had been shot and Nancy Montgomery – his housekeeper and pregnant mistress – had been strangled and dismembered. The two people accused of the murders were Kinnear’s Irish servants: James McDermott and the teenager, Grace Marks. Grace’s story has since become one of the most famous fictionalised episodes from nineteenth century Canada, but what was the real Grace like?