Thunder Bay

Ryan McMahon and Jon Thompson team up with Cherise Seucharan for the conclusion to Post Mortem, a two-episode dive into the connection between the police, the coroners, and the canary in a coal mine for death investigations across the province.

Host: Jesse Brown 

Credits: Jon Thompson (Reporter), Cherise Seucharan (Reporter), Ryan McMahon (Reporter), Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Annette Ejiofor (Managing Editor), Karyn Pugliese (Editor-in-Chief)

Further reading: 

• Reinvestigation into nine Indigenous deaths to focus on ‘finding the truth’ — TBNewswatch, October 16, 2019
• Lawyer says families 'ignored' as Broken Trust final report on death reinvestigations expected within weeks — CBC News, Feb 15, 2022
• Reports on racism and a reckoning for Thunder Bay — TVO Today, Jan 17, 2019
• 2 police officers step on handcuffed man's back as doctor watches at First Nation nursing station — CBC News, Jul 10, 2017
• Thunder Bay Police Board chair apologizes to families after report urges more death reinvestigations — CBC News, March 16, 2022
• Thunder Bay TV series, Crave

Additional music by Audio Network

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For over five years, Canadaland has been investigating Thunder Bay, Ontario. Specifically, we have been trying to figure out why there were so many unanswered questions around the deaths of Indigenous people in this one Ontario town.

We have looked at the cops. The schools. The courts. The government. The people in the town itself. But we never looked at the coroners and the forensic pathologists who are a central part of death investigations. And once we started to do so, freedom of information requests and leaked reports pointed to even greater problems with how deaths are investigated, that could span the entire province. 

And so we went back to Thunder Bay.

Host: Jesse Brown 

Credits: Cherise Seucharan (Reporter), Jon Thompson (Reporter), Ryan McMahon (Reporter), Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), Annette Ejiofor (Managing Editor), Karyn Pugliese (Editor-in-Chief)

Further reading: 

• Lawyer says families 'ignored' as Broken Trust final report on death reinvestigations expected within weeks, CBC News, Feb 15, 2022
• Reports on racism and a reckoning for Thunder Bay, TVO Today, Jan 17, 2019
• Ontario coroners looking to unionize over working conditions, upcoming reforms, CBC News, June 14, 2023
• Horwath calls for review of Hamilton forensic pathology unit closure, CBC News, August 23, 2019
• 'Disappointing' response so far to 7 youth inquest recommendations, says Aboriginal Legal Services, CBC News, August 23, 2017
• Thunder Bay TV series, Crave

Additional music by Audio Network

Sponsors: Douglas, Communauto, Indochino

If you value this podcast, support us! You’ll get premium access to all our shows ad free, including early releases and bonus content. You’ll also get our exclusive newsletter, discounts on merch at our store, tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you’ll be a part of the solution to Canada’s journalism crisis, you’ll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The verdict arrives in the trial that everyone’s talking about. Can there be justice? As Thunder Bay grapples with the truth about itself, people are still dying. Kids are still dying. 

So where do we go from here?

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This episode is brought to you by HelloFresh.

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When a system is broken, you can work outside of it to create something new, or you can try to change it from within. But what happens when you need the system?

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This episode is brought to you by Missing From the Village and HelloFresh.

Additional music by AudioNetwork.

CORRECTION: An earlier edit of this episode presented an incomplete criticism of the editorial focus of CBC Thunder Bay. Apologies to Michael Dick and his team for this oversight.

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It’s infamous as the homicide and hate crime capital of Canada. And now, Thunder Bay has been officially diagnosed as racist. 

But so what? Does knowing this mean that anything will change?

Welcome to Canada's first post-truth town.

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New stories from Thunder Bay.

Original artwork by Blake Angeconeb and Michah Dowbak.

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What if Thunder Bay isn't broken?

What if it's working just as it's supposed to?

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Agnew Johnston was a lawyer who represented the state against criminals. But he was a criminal himself, paying underage girls for sex. His defence? Everybody in Thunder Bay is doing it, so why are you picking on me? The story of a case that implicated Thunder Bay's elite. 

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Nine teenagers died. There is evidence of foul play. There are suspects. There are motives. There have even been confessions. But nobody has ever been charged. In a town with no consequences, it will happen again. 

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A dark, grainy, cellphone video leads to criminal charges against the mayor, his wife, the chief of police, and a multimillionaire lawyer turned convicted sex offender, whose wife disappeared years ago.

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