Histoire de la Corriveau

Brian Busby remembers la Corriveau, who was executed at Quebec City exactly 250 years ago today, and explores her posthumous literary career, and even the beer named after her.

Widowed at twenty-seven, in 1761 she married Louis Étienne Dodier who, like Charles,was a farmer from St.Vallier on the St. Lawrence, just south of Ile d'Orléans. A little over eighteen months later, poor Louis was found dead in the barn, his head nearly caved in. The horse was to blame... or so it was thought at first. Then the rumours began to circulate.