Magazine covers carried lurid pictures of murder, crime and sex.

"My first reaction was, 'Wow. We will never see this again,' " Brisebois says.

Before him were boxes of manuscripts, provocative photographs, celebrity stills from black-and-white movies, colour proofs, original water-colour cover art, newspaper clippings and uncirculated copies of some of the trashiest crime magazines Brisebois had ever laid eyes on.

And they were all Canadian.

At the time, as rare books curator for Library and Archives Canada, he sensed that this was an important acquisition — trashy, but important.

"I'd been in this business a long time and I hadn't seen them. So, I knew this must be pretty rare."

The magazines flourished during the Second World War, when the federal government banned the import of all non-essential goods, including British and American periodicals. Canadian publishers like Toronto's Al Valentine and the Ruby brothers — Mo and Lou — raced to fill the void left in the magazine racks of the nation.

Daring Crime Cases, for example, sold for 15 cents a copy and blared headlines like "Trailing Toronto's Love Slayer: True Facts from Official Files." Then there was "The Strange Story of Vancouver Cult" or "Trapping Winnipeg’s Pock-Marked Frankenstein."

Another mag, Factual Detective Stories, offered the reader "Terror in the Sanitarium" and "Trapped by the Lie Detector: Plunder of the Bank-Cracking Beauty."

Naturally, the pages were also rife with crimes of passion, like this one from Startling Crimes magazine: "Rather than see her wed another, he would see her dead. His plan was simple and effective. Yet it was no more effective than the hangman's noose that snuffed out his life in the grey dawn of the morning of March 2, 1945, in Bordeaux Jail in Montreal."

Canada's dirty literary secret Canadian true crime magazines from the 1940s. Requires FlashPlayer

Even though the magazines emphasized Canadian names and locations, Brisebois says, "ethics weren't their big thing."

The editors were "trading" material back and forth with American publishers all the time.

"They were taking stuff, then they changed the locations, changed the dates and changed the names."

The facts and details about the particular crimes were, however, surprisingly accurate.

Brisebois says he anticipated the "polite reservations" of some of his colleagues when he proposed acquiring what has been dubbed The Valentine Collection. Indeed, some eyes did roll to the ceiling when he made his pitch. But, in the end, they bought it.

"For about $35,000," he says.

Daring Crime Cases was one series within The Valentine Collection.

"As a national library we have an obligation to collect this material, not make a moral judgment on the content."

Brisebois had also banked on the collection being important to researchers. His instincts proved to be right again. Professors Carolyn Strange and Doris Loo delved into The Valentine Collection and produced a book, True Crime, True North: The Golden Age of Canadian Pulp Magazines.

Other academics also came to his support. Some called the acquisition an important slice of Canadian culture.

"The magazines are a reflection of us," Brisebois says. "It's a reflection of what a percentage of people read in the '40s. It wasn't the criminals reading this. It was the very nice people with nice homes and three kids.

"Also, it was the war period, so not many movies were coming out. Not much literature. Not very much else shows that seedy part of us that people like to hide. Especially in English Canada, which was much more Puritan. If we don't have these, how are we going to document that side of us? This is a survival collection."

This golden era of Canadian pulp publishing didn't survive the '40s.

In 1945-55, "there was mounting hysteria over literature for young adults," according to John Bell who deals with social and cultural manuscripts at National Library and Archives. Some churches, Parent-Teacher Associations and politicians began pressuring the federal government to censor paperbacks, crime magazines and comic books.

"There was major hysteria about these things," Bell says. "There were public burnings. It was a moral panic."

Backbench member of Parliament E. Davie Fulton sponsored a bill that passed in 1949, which made it an offence to make, print, publish, distribute, sell, or own "any magazine, periodical or book which exclusively or substantially comprises matter depicting pictorially the commission of crimes, real or fictitious."

So if you had been reading this stuff, you got rid of it fast. That's what drew Michel Brisebois to these mags in the first place.

"I like material that is unusual ... whether it's underground or popular. The material you didn't keep is what you want to see."

John Bell also says this is a significant piece of Canadian history. He is working on a web site for Library and Archives Canada devoted to Canadian pulps between 1945 and 1955, which should be up and running by next year.

"We are swimming in American culture, he says. "It's important that we explore our own popular culture. Even if it's seedy."

Related Links Library and Archives Canada — beyond the funnies Impressions: 250 years of printing in the lives of Canadians Sensational stories at the National Library of Canada