Early on Saturday, January 9, 1965, two youths walked into a service station at Jane Street and Wilson Avenue in North York. They told the night attendant, “We just threw a man into the creek.”
The attendant wasn’t sure whether to believe them. They walked off. He called police only after a body had been found.
At noon, two boys aged 13 and 15 were walking in the weeds along Black Creek, just north of Queens Drive. They saw a man’s arm sticking out of the ice-covered creek. The body was wedged against a tree stump. The boys ran to a nearby house to call police.
Police found a wallet on the creek bank. Papers inside identified the dead man as Aiden Francis MacDonald, 35. A package of matches from a hotel in the Bay-Bloor area helped detectives trace where he had been.
MacDonald had come to Toronto from Prince Edward Island about 12 years earlier. His sister, named in the Toronto Daily Star as Mercedis, said he had flown as an RCAF pilot after the Second World War. She said he had worked as an insurance adjuster for five years. The Globe and Mail would call him an insurance actuary. Both papers called him a bachelor.
“Aiden was a very trusting, gentle man,” his sister told the Star. “He would never pick a fight.” He was looking for an apartment of his own but still ate most of his meals with the family. She said he couldn’t have had much money on him, because he was due to be paid in a few days.
Detectives said MacDonald had been in a Bay-Bloor beer parlour with two men. The three hailed a taxi and asked for the area of Jane and Wilson. There they told the driver to wait, and walked east toward Downsview Avenue. The driver waited half an hour, until the meter read $4.40. Then he complained to police that he hadn’t been paid.
On Sunday, January 10, police arrested Robert Michael Black of Bourdon Avenue, North York, and William Alexander Mackie of Craydon Avenue, Mount Dennis. Both were reported as 18. They were charged with capital murder.
On March 18, the cab driver, Walter Kubasta, testified at the preliminary hearing before Magistrate Robert Taylor. He said he had driven Black, a youth he thought was Mackie, and a drunken older man to a bridge over the creek on Downsview Avenue around midnight on January 8.
The older man said he wanted to kill all Jewish people, Kubasta said. He said the man agreed to go with the youths to pick up girls, and that the man tried to feel his leg.
The two youths helped the man out of the cab. Black told Kubasta to wait at a nearby Mr. Donut. In the Globe and Mail’s account, Black came back about ten minutes later with a man Kubasta had not seen before. Black said they didn’t know where the older man had gone. The Star reported that the two companions came back alone. They rode around, then left without paying.
The pathologist testified that MacDonald had apparently drowned. There were bruises on his face, hands and knees, caused by blunt force. His blood held 3.1 parts of alcohol per 1,000.
The trial opened on May 25, 1965, before Mr. Justice William D. Parker and an all-male jury. The Globe and Mail noted that the accused wore dark blue three-button suits and sat side by side in the dock. Mackie was now 19.
Assistant Crown Attorney Lloyd Graburn outlined the Crown’s case. The youths had met MacDonald in the beverage room of the Babloor Hotel and taken him by taxi to the bridge. He was so drunk that one of them had to hold him up. They stole his wallet and struck or pushed him. He was knocked, pushed or fell down an embankment, and drowned in about two feet of water.
The pathologist, Dr. John Lorinc, testified that MacDonald had probably drowned. Then MacDonald’s brother Stephen, an inspector with the Toronto Transit Commission, took the stand. His brother was a bachelor, he said, and had not been “abnormal or unusual in any way.” Kubasta’s account of the hand on his leg had been in the papers since March. The family was answering it.
The Babloor stood at 1163–1167 Bay Street, on the east side between Charles and Bloor. Friends testified that MacDonald often stopped there for a beer after work. William McKay of Charles Street said he had met MacDonald there in 1963 and often drank with him. In answer to the Crown, McKay said MacDonald showed no religious or racial prejudice in his conversations.
McKay said he and MacDonald drank about six glasses of draught at the Babloor on the night of January 8. The Globe and Mail reported that one of them left about 11:30 p.m. It did not say which. A sister, Mary MacDonald, testified that her brother had phoned her about 10 that night. He sounded as if he’d been drinking, she said, but not “terribly much.”
The card in MacDonald’s wallet gave his address as Grandstand Place, Leaside. Mary MacDonald testified that this was her address, and their parents’. She did not know where her brother lived. He probably used the Leaside address because he visited so often, she said.
An analyst from the Attorney-General’s laboratory, Ronald Hallett, testified that MacDonald had drunk the equivalent of about a dozen bottles of beer. A normal man at that level, he said, would be staggering and falling down.
William Rickard, 17, had been drinking with Black and Mackie that evening. He testified that MacDonald was very drunk when he joined them at a beverage room table. “He was swearing and staggering and saying he would kill any Jews he saw,” Rickard said. Black talked with MacDonald, then turned to Mackie. “We’re going to roll this guy,” Rickard quoted him as saying.
Rickard left the two at about 8:30 p.m. About five hours later he met Black at the Jane Town plaza. Black told him, “We rolled this guy and threw him in the creek,” Rickard testified. Before going home, Rickard went with Black along side streets “looking for someone to roll.”
Kubasta told the jury he had picked up the three men at Bloor and Bay. On the way, Mackie leaned over from the back seat and whispered to him. “This guy is loaded with money. He has three or four hundred dollars and we’ll get it.”
The trial entered its second week on May 31. The Star reported witnesses’ testimony that the two had boasted that night of picking up “a homosexual to beat and rob.” Barry Newton, 19, testified that he met Mackie shortly after midnight. Mackie told him he and Black had picked up a “queer,” Newton said.
In the Star’s account, Newton said the three drove to the Jane-Wilson area and began to fight. It ended when the man slid into the creek. Black and Mackie walked away believing he could climb out. The Globe and Mail reported that Mackie told Newton the man was last seen standing waist-deep in the water, and had probably run off.
Other witnesses said the two told them they took the man’s wallet and found it empty. Some testified that Black went back to the bridge with friends to help “the guy in the water.” Carl Bennett, 18, said Mackie “looked stunned” when told a radio newscast had reported a body in the creek.
Det. Benjamin Pitchforth testified that MacDonald had $2.25 in his pockets. The creek was two to three feet deep, with turns as sharp as 90 degrees. It could have carried the body more than a mile downstream, he said.
On June 1, Donald Sullivan testified. He was a former police constable, now a private investigator. After the arrests, he said, he hid in a vestibule outside the two youths’ cells and took notes of what they said to each other.
He quoted Black. “You had the bright idea of punching him out. Do you know where they found him?” Mackie said no. “One and one half miles from where we dumped him in the river,” Black said. At another point, Sullivan said, Black remarked: “Wouldn’t it be funny if he was a wanted criminal and we got $1,000 for drowning him.” Black told Mackie he had stayed behind “to make sure he didn’t get out.”
On June 2, Black testified in his own defence. He was 6 feet 2, and said he had been laid off a few weeks before January 8. That afternoon and evening, he said, he drank about two large bottles of rye and 20 glasses of draught.
Black said the three got out of the taxi beside the creek to drink from a bottle of whisky. Then he told the jury that MacDonald was “a queer” and had tried to touch Mackie. Mackie said “let me alone” and gave him “a push or something,” Black testified. MacDonald lost his footing and fell in. He sat in the water a moment, then got up and walked away downstream.
Black said he later grew worried and searched for him. He told friends MacDonald had $300 or $400 on him so they would help. He knew MacDonald had only a few dollars, he said. He had hoped to “lose him” once MacDonald paid the cab fare.
Graburn put Sullivan’s evidence to him. By Black’s account, the Crown said, it must have been a pack of lies. “Yes sir,” said Black.
The next day, Black told it another way. MacDonald slipped into the water, he said. “I tried to help him out but couldn’t reach him.” Mackie confirmed Black’s story. He said they left when MacDonald started to walk under the bridge. Both denied telling anyone that night that they had picked up a homosexual, rolled him and pushed him into the creek.
This was how MacDonald’s sexuality came into the courtroom. The Crown’s witnesses described two youths who chose a gay man to rob. The defence used the same fact to explain the fall. In the accused’s account, MacDonald made an advance and Mackie pushed him away. The Globe and Mail reported that Black and Mackie claimed the man with them had been a homosexual, and that Kubasta corroborated this. Friends of MacDonald said there was nothing unusual or abnormal about him.
In closing, defence lawyers Norman Borins and Eric Marsden argued that the Crown had not proved the man at the bridge was MacDonald. They argued there was no evidence the youths knew, or could reasonably have known, that their actions could cause a death. Graburn said all the testimony pointed to an assault and robbery, after which the two intentionally pushed or threw MacDonald into the creek.
The papers printed what was said in court about the accused. Black’s cousin described him as a coward who had been beaten up by boys half his size at school. He had been living with his parents on Bourdon Avenue and spent much of his time playing pool around the Janetown Plaza. He had received a suspended sentence for theft the year before.
Walter Corson, a retired inspector of detectives and a relative of Mackie’s by marriage, said Mackie had an excellent reputation. He was a hard worker in school and later as a welder. His parents owned a small restaurant. He played golf to a 15 handicap and was in an organized hockey league.
On the night of Friday, June 4, the jury returned after three hours. It found both youths guilty of capital murder, with a strong recommendation for mercy. Black and Mackie stared at each other, then turned to look at their mothers, who were weeping.
Parker said he had no choice but to pass the death sentence. He set the hanging for September 29.
“There has been a bad mistake made,” Black said loudly. “We never put a hand on this man at all.”
“That’s right,” said Mackie.
Parker told them they had had a fair trial. He told the jurors he did not quarrel with their verdict, and that he would include their recommendation in his report. Speaking over the sobs of the two mothers, he thanked the jurors. All were husbands and fathers, he noted. The two-week trial was the longest criminal case he had sat on.
MacDonald’s father, a brother and three of his sisters sat in court as the verdict was announced.
Black and Mackie spent the next six months on death row in the Don Jail, in adjoining cells five feet by nine. Until recently, the Globe and Mail reported in December, one of their cellblock mates had been Matthew Kerry Smith, 25, the Beatle bandit. His sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment that week.
On December 2, 1965, the Ontario Court of Appeal ordered a new trial by a vote of 3 to 2. Mr. Justice Dalton Wells wrote the judgment, with Mr. Justice James McLennan and Mr. Justice Bora Laskin. They held that Parker had erred in his charge to the jury, because he did not leave it open to the jury to find non-capital murder. They also held that he had erred in two rulings on the admissibility of evidence.
Mr. Justice Frederick MacKay dissented, with Chief Justice Dana Porter agreeing.
Stephen Borins, Mackie’s counsel, said Mackie’s mother seemed quite relieved by the news. He told a jail official of the ruling. He was told the youths would stay in the death-row cells until the jail received official notice.
The Crown appealed. On February 3, 1966, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the new trial. The court said the Crown’s appeal turned on questions of fact, and it could hear appeals only on questions of law. Black and Mackie would be tried again for capital murder.
The second trial came before Mr. Justice Edson Haines in March 1966. Black was now 19 and Mackie 20. Both pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Haines told the jury to accept the plea. Both youths had apparently been drunk, he said, and the Crown could not prove which of them had assaulted MacDonald.
Det.-Sgt. James Noble testified that the two had befriended MacDonald in the Babloor’s men’s beverage room and taken him by taxi to the creek. MacDonald’s wallet, with no money in it, was found in a nearby field the day after Black’s arrest. The Globe and Mail recalled that at the first trial both had denied boasting they were going to rob MacDonald, “whom they called a queer.” The paper described MacDonald once more as a bachelor who was an insurance actuary.
At the sentencing hearing on March 9, P. G. Whitehead, governor of the Don Jail, testified that he had noticed a marked change in the two since their months in the death cells. They seemed to appreciate the seriousness of their situation, he said. Other witnesses said the youths had matured in prison. They described them as high school dropouts from good families, courteous and well-mannered, who lived at home.
Haines said he would have liked to give them a short prison term, corporal punishment and life probation. The corporal punishment, he said, would let them know what society thought of them for robbing the man and allowing him to drown. The law did not permit it.
He sentenced Black to 10 years and Mackie to seven. He said he thought the sentences might err on the side of leniency. He told the two he hoped they would not lionize themselves in the penitentiary over their six months in the death cells.
If Mackie had kept to the old friends who testified on his behalf, Haines said, he would not be in court. He would have had a more complete picture of the two, he added, if their drinking companions had come to testify.
The surviving reports do not say which evidence was wrongly admitted at the first trial. They do not say how a private investigator came to be hidden outside the cells of two prisoners awaiting a capital trial. They do not say where Aiden MacDonald lived.
The record also disagrees with itself. MacDonald appears as 34 and as 35, as an insurance adjuster and as an actuary. His death is dated January 8 in some reports and January 9 in others. The pathologist at the preliminary hearing is named in one report as Dr. John Lawrence. The distance the body travelled runs from half a mile to a mile and a half. His wallet was found on the creek bank in one report and in a nearby field in another. The guilty pleas are dated March 3 and March 4, 1966. We have found no record that settles his age.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Aiden Francis MacDonald |
| Age | 35 (34 in two Toronto Daily Star reports) |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Insurance adjuster (insurance actuary in the Globe and Mail); former RCAF pilot |
| Date of death | January 9, 1965 (some reports give January 8) |
| Manner of death | Drowning |
| Location | Black Creek, North York, just north of Queens Drive, where the body was found; last seen at the Downsview Avenue bridge |
| Accused | Robert Michael Black, 18; William Alexander Mackie, 19 (18 at arrest) |
| Charge | Capital murder; guilty pleas to manslaughter, March 1966 |
| Defence counsel | Norman Borins and Eric Marsden (trial); Stephen Borins for Mackie (appeal) |
| Crown counsel | Lloyd Graburn (trial); R. A. Cormack (appeal) |
| Judge | Mr. Justice William D. Parker (trial); Mr. Justice Edson Haines (plea and sentence) |
| Verdict | Guilty of capital murder, with a strong recommendation for mercy; set aside by the Ontario Court of Appeal, December 2, 1965; manslaughter on guilty pleas, March 1966 |
| Sentence | Death by hanging, set for September 29, 1965; set aside; on the guilty pleas, Black 10 years and Mackie 7 years, March 9, 1966 |
Sources
- Toronto Daily Star, January 11, 1965, pp. 1–2
- The Globe and Mail, March 19, 1965, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, March 1965, “In the Courts” (date and page unconfirmed)
- The Globe and Mail, May 26, 1965, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, May 26, 1965, Metro News section (page unconfirmed)
- The Globe and Mail, May 27, 1965, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, May 28, 1965, p. 49
- The Globe and Mail, June 1, 1965, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, June 1, 1965, p. 26
- The Globe and Mail, June 3, 1965, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, June 4, 1965, p. 26
- The Globe and Mail, June 5, 1965, p. 5
- Toronto Daily Star, June 5, 1965, p. 14
- The Globe and Mail, December 3, 1965, p. 5
- The Globe and Mail, February 4, 1966, p. 10
- The Globe and Mail, March 5, 1966, p. 5
- The Globe and Mail, March 10, 1966, p. 5
- City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1257, Series 1057, Item 516 (Babloor Hotel, ca. 1945)
- Photographs: City of Toronto Archives (Babloor Hotel); Toronto Daily Star (MacDonald); Kathy Toth (Black Creek)
Murder Village Map