This is for all those who thought Canadian History was boring, or that nothing exciting every happened in Southern Ontario, except maybe the Rebellion, or Laura Secord, or ... ok, but this is the murder and mayhem sort of vast mob network above-the-law reign of terror excitement so black on the blotter of Ontario history that most everyone had completely forgotten the whole episode until Paul Arculus, a local historian and retired high school teacher in Port Perry, stumbled upon them while doing other research.

And who were The Markham Gang? Poor desperate immigrants caught in the religious and class frictions of 1840's Ontario? Guess again ...

It was a remarkable fact that several of those charged were the sons of respectable farmers, while others were men ... with comfort and plenty around them!

They were successful merchants and businessmen, and errant sons and daughters of respectable families, the sons and daughters of prominent settlers from Pickering, Reach and Uxbridge townships. This was a homegrown, nineteenth century Canadian 'mafia', one of the earliest known cases of organized crime in British North America.

[ Source: TheStar.com - The mafia of the 1840s ]