The Steven Truscott Case: I am a Canadian . . . hero?

I hate disclaimers, but here goes: I'm writing on the Truscott case and the recent fifth estate program about it even though my partner was on the team that produced the show. What a way to start a column. If anyone's still reading, I'll try to explain why.

Steven Truscott is part of the Canadian memory. He was 14 in 1959 when charged with murdering 12-year-old Lynn Harper near an air base in Clinton, Ont. Things moved faster back then. He was tried three months later. It lasted two weeks, he was convicted and sentenced to hang. From the start, the case transcended itself. Pierre Berton, in The Toronto Star, wrote a poem: "The cell is lonely/ The cell is cold/ October is young/ But the boy is old; Too old to cringe/ And too old to cry/ Though young --/ But never too young to die." A man wrote that he hoped Pierre Berton's daughters were raped and killed. A woman said hanging was too good for the boy, he should be whipped first. "It reminds you how mean this place was in those days," says writer Ian Adams, who'd just come to Canada.

In 1960, fearing international embarrassment, the government commuted the sentence to life. In 1966, a critical book on the case appeared. It led to a campaign. Steven Truscott was released in 1969. He married and raised three children under an assumed name but remained part of the national psyche. Blue Rodeo has a Truscott song on its new CD. I know a writer not born then who's planning a novel on him. When his daughter was in high school, her history class discussed the case. She told her teacher she found it disturbing. He said it should be, that Steven Truscott was innocent and a Canadian hero. Since the show, he has reassumed his name in Guelph, where he works as a millwright. Mail gets to him that merely says: Steven Truscott, Guelph. Like Santa Claus, the North Pole.

The show produced new evidence against the case against Steven Truscott. It did so by examining mountains of hand-written police notes, contacting witnesses from 40 years ago and testing with modern forensic methods. Most of the material was available, but it required vast amounts of sifting, time and commitment. It also produced a new suspect. When the project was announced, a retired air force major contacted the show. In 1965, he'd stumbled on a misplaced psychiatric file that led him to believe its subject, a soldier arrested for sexual incidents with young girls, had committed a murder around the time of Lynn Harper's death. He got permission to investigate and eventually met the OPP officer who'd headed the Truscott case and then the OPP itself, but there was no follow-up. He became embittered and provided only limited information to the program. They tracked him down in his mobile home and got a partial identification from him. Then an archivist in Ottawa who knew the historic importance of the case combed thousands of files with only a rough name and date, and found the file. On this basis, the OPP have now reopened two unsolved murders of young girls in the area at the time.

I'd argue that none of this would have happened except at a public broadcaster such as the CBC. No private network would have put in the resources. That's not because resources are lacking; CTV president Ivan Fecan could probably finance it with the interest from his salary and stock options. It's because it's not what they care about: the payoff in profits. CTV's idea of a heavy investigation is testing smoke alarms. The CBC may be strapped, but it retains a sense that this kind of work is its purpose.

In doing so, they enrich our culture. There's been lots of attention to the recent Molson's "I am Canadian" ad, and I agree it's smart and stirring. But Canadians like their myth leavened with fact and reality. I think that's because we see Americans build their myths on the flimsiest factual pretexts. ("Elian's flight to freedom!") By adding its sober research to the Truscott lore already there, the fifth estate went a Canadian route.

The program's co-producer, Theresa Burke, says Steven Truscott is a hero not because he was victimized by the justice system. Victims often simply become angry victimizers in turn. She says it's because he went on to lead a productive, dignified life, raising three kids who clearly experienced respect for who they are. That's the part that's heroic.

Fifth estate host Linden MacIntyre says Steven Truscott's life is a strong argument against the death penalty. Even if his innocence is never definitively proved (he volunteered for a DNA test, but all the evidence had been destroyed), even had he been guilty, nothing would have been gained by his death while the life he has since lived would have been foregone.

The day after the program, Steven Truscott went to his work at a factory in Guelph. It took him an hour to cross the floor amid cheers from co-workers. That isn't a scene from a movie. It happened, here.