Lorna Poplak

Welcome!

Lorna Poplak is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and researcher.

With two award-nominated non-fiction publications with Dundurn Press, articles appearing on the TV Ontario website and in other publications, and inclusion in a new short story anthology, Lorna is establishing herself as an authority on the history of crime and punishment in Canada.

 

LATEST NEWS

 

IN THE CITY’S PICTURESQUE NECROPOLIS, FIND A WHO’S WHO OF 19TH-CENTURY TORONTO

The Toronto Necropolis (Greek for “city of the dead”) opened on Winchester Street in Cabbagetown in 1850.

Between 1850 and 1899, 22,307 people were buried at the Necropolis. Weathered grave stones scattered higgledy-piggledy throughout the cemetery’s 18.25 acres bear mute testimony to battles and disease, heartbreak and loss, and lives cut short.

Many famous — and infamous — individuals whose stories fuelled the headlines found their resting place in this non-sectarian cemetery.

Read the full article on the TVO website!

 


 

Booze peddlers, ruffians, and railways: The checkered past of one tiny Ontario town

Biscotasing (or Bisco), located on Lake Biscotasi some 120 kilometres to the northwest of Sudbury, owes its existence to the railroads — specifically, the Canadian Pacific Railway, which, in the early 1880s, was punching its way across the Canadian hinterland tie by tie, rail by rail, to link the east and west coasts of this vast country.

Boarding houses, shanties, and tents sprang up to accommodate a fluctuating population of workers and hangers-on — sneak thieves, professional gamblers, brothel keepers, and the like.

Biscotasing was humming in the late 19th century. But the combination of money and liquor was combustible — and in 1885, it exploded into the Whiskeyville riot

Read the full article on the TVO website!

 


 

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