Welcome at Canada’s History Magazine August-September 2023 Issue

I was never a huge fan of westerns; science fiction and fantasy films were more to my liking. But my brother and my dad loved stories of the Wild West, and in the 1980s we rented and watched plenty of spaghetti westerns on VHS.
Forty years later, I can still whistle from memory Ennio Morricone’s theme song for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hollywood’s version of the Wild West is filled with charming desperadoes and tough-as-leather lawmen engaging in gunfights at high noon. Stories of fictional outlaws, along with those of real-life characters like Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Wyatt Earp, have thrilled people for generations.
However, life as an outlaw in the American West during the 1800s was hardly as glamorous as it has been portrayed. In reality, bandits and brigands often lived desperate lives ruled by brutality. For many, there was no riding off into the sunset — just dates with the hangman or a quick burial on Boot Hill.
In this issue, we bring you the story of a Canadian woman who became one of the most notorious female outlaws of the American West. “Desperado,” by John Boessenecker, explores the tragic, abusive upbringing that forced Lillie Davy of Lindsay, Ontario, into a life of crime.
In 1899, Davy, dressed in men’s clothing and using the moniker Pearl Hart, robbed a stagecoach in Arizona Territory. Her subsequent arrest — and the discovery that she was a woman — caused a media sensation. Davy even became the subject of a jailhouse profile in Cosmopolitan magazine.
Elsewhere in this issue, we remember the Canadian veterans of the Korean War, seventy years after the armistice in 1953; we recall the unlikely series of events that led to the greatest horse race of the twentieth century being held in the backwaters of southwestern Ontario; and we explore the history of Quebec’s once-thriving pulp fiction publishing industry. Davy’s arrest both scandalized and titillated the public. But few people knew the real story behind the larger-than-life persona of Pearl Hart.
The media romanticised Lillie Davy, painted her as a desperado. In truth, she was driven by desperation. Scarred by abuse, Davy didn’t choose a criminal’s life — she was simply trying to survive the harsh hand life had dealt her. Her story is a sobering reminder that the reality of the Wild West was often more brutal — and ultimately much sadder — than fiction.

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