The Coffin Affair

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
The Coffin Affair
Abstract
In 1956, Wilbert Coffin (b. 1915) was hanged for the murder of three American tourists in Gaspé three years earlier. Many believed that his conviction, based mostly on circumstantial evidence, was politically motivated. Accusations were made that the Premier of Quebec at the time, Maurice Duplessis, made Coffin, a unilingual Anglophone, the scapegoat for the murders so as not to disrupt Quebec's lucrative American tourism industry. The author, a reporter who covered the Coffin trial, wrote two books condemning the verdict -- Coffin était innocent (1958) and J'accuse les assassins de Coffin (1963). As a result of these two books, a Commission of Inquiry was held into the case, which concluded that Coffin had received a fair trial. In 1980, the author published L'affaire Coffin, translated into English as The Coffin Affair.
Date
1982
Publisher
General Paperbacks
Place
Toronto, ON
# of Pages
267p.
ISBN
0-7736-7005-X
Language
en
Citation
Hébert, Jacques. The Coffin Affair. Toronto, ON: General Paperbacks, 1982.
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