Old English Beuerage Co.

Ltd.

Telephone Garden 5414
*

558-560-562 Johnson Street

VICTORIA B.C.

Established 1871

RITHET CONSOLIDATED
LIMITED
Real Estate
FINANCE, INSURANCE, REAL ESTATE
AND SHIPPING
706 Fort St. Victoria, B.C.

|

Hibberson Timber
Co. Ltd.

TIMBER BROKERS

Cruisers, Surveyors and Valuators
Consulting and Foresters

406-410 Jones Building 723 Fort St.
VICTORIA, B.C.

Telephone E-5233
Sussex Apartment Hotel

Sussex Holdings Ltd.
E. A. Cox, Managing Director
COFFEE SHOP
Rooms or Suites by Day, Week or
Month

1001 Douglas Street Victoria, B.C.

McGill & Orme

LTD.
PRESCRIPTION DRUGGISTS

627 Fort St. 1021 Douglas St.
G-1196 G-2222

SURGICAL SUPPLIES
PRIVATE FITTING ROOMS

The B. Wilson Co. Ltd.

Individual Cold Storage Lockers
COLD STORAGE - ICE

e@
Wbon’s eee Lays
aad! Vegetables
e

Victoria, B.C.

Phone B-1025

“Victoria’s Finest Furniture Storage”

STOCKER’S SECURITY
STORAGE & WAREHOUSE
CoO., LTD.

824 JOHNSON STREET
VICTORIA

Page Forty

period a McGill University student
rose at the back of the room.
“Doctor,” he said in a loud, clear
voice, “I was interested to hear you
say that intoxication on methylated
spirits is not necessarily fatal, that the
spirits can be drunk if a person knows
how. Will you tell us a little more
about this, please?”

A laugh went up and the bio-
chemist replied: “Yes, it’s really very
simple. As long as you drink the stuff
at a rate not exceeding the rate at
which the body oxidizes it to formic
acid, you’re perfectly safe. Of course,
an error might result in blindness or
death, or both, which you are prob-
ably anxious to avoid .. .”

The problems put to medico-legal
experts are not always as simple as
the student’s, are never, never meant
as a gag. Their responsibility is great.
They use every known scientific aid
and do their own research in perfect-
ing new instruments and new tech-
niques in forensic medicine.

Only recently Dr. Rosario Fontaine,
one of the leading medico-legal ex-
perts on the North American contin-
ent, gave testimony that helped send
to the gallows a little, thin-faced
jewelry salesman by the name of
Albert Guay. His evidence helped
convict Genereux Ruest, the crippled
watch-maker, and he was called as a
witness in the murder trial of Mrs.
Arthur Pitre, Genereux’s sister.

Guay, enamoured of a_ pretty
waitress, master-minded the plot to
place a time bomb aboard a Canadian
Pacific Air Lines Ltd. plane at Quebec
City and, the Crown asserted, hoped
not only to be rid of his wife, one of
the passengers, but to collect $10,000
flight insurance he had taken out as
he bought her passage. Ruest built the
bomb, Mrs. Pitre was accused of
placing a parcel aboard, knowing it to
contain a murderous weapon.

“It was diabolic,” said Dr. Fontaine,
head of the Laboratory of Legal
Medicine and Police Science of the
Province of Quebec. “And one of the
frightening things about the mad
scheme is that it very nearly suc-
ceeded.”

*

George Law, Bris-
tol, England,  rec-
ognized an auto
stolen from him

three years before,
despite fake engine
and

chassis
bers and a
paint job. He
proved his owner-
ship by pointing
out a piece of
chewing gum he
once had used to
patch an oil leak.

*

num-
new

The bomb exploded and the plane
crashed at Sault au Cochon, a rock
covered by stunted spruce and under-
growth on the North Shore of the
St. Lawrence.

“But,” — and Dr. Fontaine tapped
his pencil on his desk — “if the plane
had left Quebec on schedule, if it had
not been a little late, the explosion
would have occurred over the river
and all the debris, all the evidence of
the cause of the crash, would have
gone to the bottom.” The disaster
would probably have been recorded
as an unexplained aviation accident
that took a toll of 23 lives.

As it was, police combed the
wreckage of the aircraft for clues,
Bits and pieces of airframe, clothing,
luggage, were examined in the labora-
tory.

Vital to the prosecution were these
facts, as proved in the lab: (1) that
dynamite was aboard the plane, (2)
that dry cell batteries were there, too,
to spark the detonation and, (3) that
dynamite and nothing else (eg. a
motor of the plane) caused the explo-
sion. Spectrographic analysis of bits of
metal and paint was introduced in
court to prove that the batteries were,
in fact, Ever-ready dry cells No. 6.

This data was assembled on the
third-floor laboratory in Montreal’s
Coroner’s Court building, a grey,
three-story structure tucked in among
the buildings on St. Vincent Street,
one of the downtown sub-canyons
hard by the financial district of St.
James Street. The lab is the oldest
medico-legal department in North
America, dating back to 1910 when it
was founded by the late Dr. Wilfrid
Derome.

Dr. Fontaine, the present director
of the laboratory, served overseas as

Furniture Moving, Storage, General
Delivery

BRAY’S TRANSFER LTD.

HAULING CONTRACTORS
Licensed Limited Freight Carriers

Phone G-7823 734 Johnson St.
VICTORIA, B.C.

For Lumber, Finish, Mouldings, etc.

Call at

B.G. Forest Products

The Largest Manufacturers of Lumber in Victoria

*
371 Gorge Road

or Phone Your Requirements to Garden 1126

THE SHOULDER STRAP