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.

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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