A ‘hotbed of anarchy’

Rough & Messy Justice: A Train Heist, Murder & Misdeeds
by W. Keith Regular

Calgary: Durvile & Uproute, 2025
$29.95  /  9781990735660

Reviewed by Kenneth Favrholdt

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Set against the backdrop of a rough and tumble mining district, this historical work recounts a bold train robbery, a brazen shoot-out, and a bungled court case presented in a detailed and authentic fashion.

“It was only a hundred years ago, but Southern Alberta was still the Wild West.” So writes The Honourable Peter W. L. Martin, retired Justice of the Alberta Court of Appeal, in the foreword to historian W. Keith Regular‘s book Rough & Messy Justice. He writes: “The story is a stark reminder of the frailties of early western Canada’s legal system and the role of prejudice in shaping judicial outcomes.”  He is referring to Regular’s exceptional account of one of Canada’s last train heists and its aftermath.  The hold-up that resulted in a deadly end took place in Crowsnest Pass in August 1920.

Regular, who calls Cranbrook home, lives close to where the action took place. He has written an impressive and exciting account of this infamous episode using a great variety of references including archival documents, newspapers and magazines, web sources, a thesis about the Alberta Provincial Police, and numerous books and articles. The countless newspaper accounts are perhaps the most compelling sources, written at the time.  As well, Regular has received the support and expertise of many individuals in writing this important work.

Three Russians had plotted their robbery plans in Great Falls, Montana.  On August 2, 1920, the trio boarded Canadian Pacific Railway train #63 in Lethbridge, destined for Cranbrook. The Lethbridge to Fernie route in 1920, potentially used CPR’s G3 class Pacifics suited for mountain lines.

Heading west, the bandits had tickets to Crow’s Nest on the BC-Alberta border. After reaching Coleman, they pulled out their revolvers and held up the train, robbing male passengers of their cash and some jewelry, including the train conductor Sam Jones’s ninety-six dollar pocket watch. Then, “the train unexpectedly pulled into Sentinel, a siding stop between Coleman and Crow’s Nest.”  The trio panicked and fled.

On August 7, Thomas Bassoff and George Akroff appeared in the town of Bellevue. Ausby Auloff had left them at Sentinel.  The two men casually entered the Bellevue Café on Main Street. Alberta Provincial Police constables James Frewin and Frederick Bailey along with RCMP corporal Ernest Usher were alerted of their presence, killing Akroff in the street. Usher and Bailey were also killed in the shootout. Bassoff escaped in the mêlée.  Another constable, Nick Kyslik, was later killed by friendly fire.

Much was made of the ethnic makeup of the coal mining towns of the Crowsnest Pass in the local newspapers, resulting in the area becoming a “hotbed of anarchy,” including bootlegging, prostitution, and crime in general.  Regular states: “It is not difficult to imagine that the work life reality the three Russians endured had something to do with their eventual engagement in criminal activity.”

Five days after the holdup of the train, Bassoff and Akroff casually walked down Bellevue’s Front Street and went into the Bellevue Café to eat.  Author Regular provides remarkable detail about the unfolding events, even about the dimensions and plan of the booth in the café, including the table and chairs. The crime report includes verbatim statements of the shootings.  Akroff, Usher, and Bailey were dead.

Thomas Bassoff was shot in the leg but quickly escaped from the café heading east toward the rock debris left by the infamous Frank Slide of 1903. The shooting spree quickly mobilized the people of the Pass.  

Bassoff remained in hiding for two days, then reappeared at a ranch near Frank Slide, received some food and medical attention from the housekeeper, then left to hide again. The police were called and forty constables and a posse scoured the area.  Bloodhounds – Lightning, Dan, and Dynamite from Seattle, Washington — were brought in to track Bassoff.

The author devotes much print to describe the public view of the three police forces – the RCMP, APP, and CPP – involved in the manhunt for the chief protagonist, Thomas Bassoff. “The press quickly rocketed the raw and tragic violence of the Bellevue shootout to national and international attention,” Regular notes. “It was largely the press that transformed Bassoff from an itinerant sheepherder and labourer who had eked out a hand to mouth existence during his years in Canada, into an accomplished gunslinger bandit with American criminal connections.”

On August 9, APP Special Constable Nick Kyslik, a local miner of Russian descent, was added to the tragedy when he was accidentally shot in the search at Passburg, east of Bellevue. Kyslik was shot in the dark in an abandoned house by Constable Frank Hidson of the APP.  Finally, on August 11, CPR personnel captured Bassoff at Pincher Station near Pincher Creek.

“The Crowsnest Pass was portrayed as the embodiment of the wild west,” Regular writes, “a hotbed for Bolshevik and labour union troubles, and home to a resentful and disaffected foreign populace that willingly helped Bassoff frustrate the grasp of the law.”

In Part Two, Chapters 9 and 10, Regular provides the proceedings of the court case with its many twists and turns. Bassoff’s trial began on October 12, 1920, who offered a “not guilty” plea for Constable Bailey’s murder. But the testimonies and poor evidence were not in Bassoff’s favour.

Bassoff was pronounced guilty and hanged at the Lethbridge Jail on December 22, 1920.  But “not everyone accepted the state’s conclusion that Bassoff’s was a justifiable homicide.”  

As for Alex Auloff, when a CP pocket watch surfaced in a Portland, Oregon pawnshop, he was finally tracked down and arrested in Butte, Montana. Auloff served seven years in the Saskatchewan Penitentiary where he died.

Regular’s Rough & Messy Justice is an exciting read, well-written and, above all, factual.  Regular makes excellent work of recounting the robbery, the shootout in Bellevue, and the trial of Bassoff.  He leaves the reader thinking about and questioning “the integrity of the process, the reliability of the evidence, and whether Bassoff was truly responsible for Constable Bailey’s murder.”  But most importantly the cautionary tale “raises unsettling questions … about fairness, truth, and how easily justice bends to fear and bias.”

The book has ample photographs, including surprisingly vivid portraits of the three desperadoes and images of numerous newspaper reports of the entire affair.  

I only have two complaints. One is the overview map (p. 12) which is hard to read. A hand-drawn map showing the train route and sites of the robbery and killings would have been helpful.  Another is the historical 1913-14 map of Crowsnest Forest Waterton Lakes Park (p. 48) that is almost impossible to decipher.

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Kenneth Favrholdt is a freelance writer, historical geographer, and museologist with a BA and MA (Geography, UBC), a teaching certificate (SFU), and certificates as a museum curator. He spent ten years at the Kamloops Museum & Archives, five at the Secwépemc Museum and Heritage Park, four at the Osoyoos Museum, and was past archivist of Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc. He has written extensively on local history in Kamloops This Week, the former Kamloops Daily News, the Claresholm Local Press, and other community papers. Ken has also written book reviews for BC Studies and articles for BC History, Canadian Cowboy Country Magazine, Cartographica, Cartouche, and MUSE (magazine of the Canadian Museums Association). He taught geography courses at Thompson Rivers University and edited the Canadian Encyclopedia, geography textbooks, and a commemorative history for the Town of Oliver and Osoyoos Indian Band. Ken has undertaken research for several Interior First Nations and is now working on books on the fur trade of Kamloops and the gold rush journal of John Clapperton, a Nicola Valley pioneer and Caribooite. He lives in Kamloops. [Editor’s note: Kenneth Favrholdt has recently reviewed books by Dr. Jennifer Grenz, k’ʷunəmɛn Joe Gallagher and John Matterson, Leigh Joseph, James R. Gibson, Patrick Brode, and Taiaiake Alfred for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
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Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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