Edmonton killings among worst mass murders in Canadian history

J. Albert Guay is shown shortly after his arrest in 1949 in one of the first airliner sabotage cases on record. (CP PHOTO)

The killing of eight people, including two children, in Edmonton earlier this week is being called the worst mass murder in the city's history. It also ranks among the worst in Canadian history.

Here are some of the most shocking incidents of mass murder in Canada:

On Sept. 9, 1949, Rita Guay and 22 other people were killed when a dynamite bomb exploded on Canadian Pacific Airlines Flight 108 not long after taking off from Quebec City. It took a jury a mere seventeen minutes to find Guay's philandering husband, J. Albert Guay, guilty of murder. He and two accomplices were sentenced to death by hanging.

In April, 1965, Vancouver Police Const. Leonard Hogue shot his wife as she slept in their Coquitlam, B.C. home before stalking and killing his six children as they ran for their lives through the house. Hogue then killed himself.

On August 15, 1967, 21-year-old Victor Hoffman killed nine members of the Peterson family, including seven children, in their farmhouse near Shell Lake, Sask. Only the Peterson's four-year-old daughter, Phyllis, and the family dog, Skippy, were left unharmed. Hoffman had been released from a mental institution just three weeks before the killings.

On Sept. 5, 1970, logger Dale Merle Nelson killed eight of his neighbours: one man, two women and five children. Nelson, who was reported to be under the influence of LSD, was also accused of committing a range of acts, including necrophilia and cannibalism, with two of the female victims' bodies.

In 1975, purported gangster Richard "The Cat" Blass locked 13 people in a storage room in Montreal's Gargantua nightclub. Some were shot dead, while the rest suffocated after Blass set the building on fire.

On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique. He also wounded 13 others before fatally shooting himself.

In 1985, an Air India flight that had departed from Vancouver exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 329 people on board. Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the case, while two Canadians were ultimately acquitted of mass murder.

In September, 1992, a dynamite bomb planted deep in Yellowknife's Giant Mine exploded, killing nine replacement workers who were filling in during an acrimonious strike. Roger Warren was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder after being found guilty of rigging a trip wire that the victims hit as they rode in an ore car.

On April 4, 1996, Mark Vijay Chahal, entered his ex-wife's family home in Kamloops, B.C. home as they prepared for her sister's wedding. He killed nine people, including his ex-wife, before taking his own life at a separate location.

In April, 2006, eight members of the Toronto chapter of the Bandidos biker gang were shot execution-style. Their bodies were found in cars that had been abandoned on a rural property near London, Ont. Five men are currently appealing their convictions in the case.