Cold Case North
The Search for James Brady and Absolom Halkett
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Missing persons. Double murder? Métis leader James Brady was one of the most famous Indigenous activists in Canada. A communist, strategist, and bibliophile, he led Métis and First Nations to rebel against government and church oppression. Brady’s success made politicians and clergy fear him; he had enemies everywhere. In 1967, while prospecting in Saskatchewan with Cree Band Councillor and fellow activist, Absolom Halkett, both men vanished from their remote lakeside camp. For 50 years rumours swirled of secret mining interests, political intrigue, and murder. Cold Case North is the story of how a small team, with the help of the Indigenous community, exposed police failure in the original investigation, discovered new clues and testimony, and gathered the pieces of the North’s most enduring missing persons puzzle.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This engrossing account charts the efforts of three dedicated people to determine the fate of two missing Indigenous men in the north of Canada. James Brady, a respected Indigenous activist who helped establish the M tis Association, and Absalom Halkett, a Cree band councillor, disappeared in June 1967 while prospecting in northern Saskatchewan. After a cursory investigation, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police concluded the men, both experienced prospectors, had gotten lost. In 2007, Reder, a Cree-M tis literary critic related to the two missing men, decided to try to find out what really happened. She enlisted the help of researcher Nest and Bell, a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian band. The team doggedly pursued every avenue, including the theory that Brady and Halkett's two business partners killed them after they discovered a big uranium find. Eventually, the authors learned that at the time of the disappearance, a fishing guide and an American tourist found a body with tied wrists near the lake where Brady and Halkett were last seen, but didn't report it. The authors hired a scanner and divers, who believed they'd identified a body in the lake, but the RCMP Historic Case Unit wanted more proof that there was actually a body to be found. Reder and her team didn't reach any conclusive answers before running out of funds. Meticulously researched, this smoothly written tale of injustice showcases the authors' tenacity and arouses the reader's indignation. This is a scathing rebuke of the RCMP's failure to take the case of missing Indigenous people seriously.
