Joe Ralko

The Devil's Gap Joe Ralko

The scene on May 10, 1973, seemed like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster. In the town of Kenora, on the north shore of the Lake of the Woods near the Ontario-Manitoba border, a man was robbing a bank in the most bombastic way.



Paul Higgins walked into the bank armed with a home-made bomb and Dead Man's Switch in his mouth to detonate it. If anyone were to shoot him and if he let go of the switch, he would blow himself up and take as many people with him as possible. The police were in a standoff. Was it worth the risk to shoot?



Acclaimed journalist Joe Ralko has spent his entire life mulling over this case. It wasn't his career that put him on the trail of Paul Higgins-Joe was there! He was a curious high school student who watched the drama unfold from the street. He had a clear line of sight down the sidewalk as Higgins emerged from the bank fifty feet away.



What happened next would go down in Canadian history. Ralko would become fascinated with every aspect of the case. It was only years later, after he had established himself as a writer and while recovering from his first battle with cancer, that he decided to finally tell the story.