Current & Past Articles » General News

Humberview Teacher and students recognized for contributions to Canada’s Innocence Movement

November 6, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Riley Murphy

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

When George Allain was in his teens, he first picked up a book about the Steven Truscott case.

Little did he know that, decades later, he would accept the Rubin Hurricane Carter Champion of Justice Award for his and thousands of students’ work in making significant contributions to the country’s Innocence Movement.

In 1959, Steven Truscott, at the age of fourteen, was sentenced to death when he was charged with the murder of his classmate Lynne Harper. After a nearly 50-year battle for justice, Truscott was acquitted by the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2007.

In 2002, the Humberview Secondary School law teacher Allain wanted to help his students focus on the idea of law being a part of advocacy, advocating for themselves and others.

He had his students look up several potential cases where the legal system may have made a mistake. They then presented their ideas on which case they thought the class should do, and then voted on it.

He says that by working with real cases, he believed the students could advocate for something they could believe in and work with.

“Kids could bring their variety of skills they had to it and wouldn’t feel like they were pretending,” he says.

The students decided on the Truscott case.

From there, Allain’s goal was to introduce as many people as he could to their learnings to help them fully understand the case.

Over the years, they worked with over 25 experts in their fields, including homicide detectives, Defence and Crown attorneys, and judges from both provincial and superior courts.

They held a series of workshops, both in and out of class time to learn from these experts.

They also read all the legal documents from Truscott’s original trial.

At the time, AIDWC, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, the former name for Innocence Canada, had also taken on the Truscott case and had an application for a 690 review by the Minister of Justice, which was an application for ministerial review on the grounds of miscarriage of justice.

It was then that Allain rented a courthouse, and the students from Humberview held a mock trial for the case as part of their studies.

Following their mock trial, Allain shared the students thought to themselves, “What can we do now?”

“We went from being triers of evidence to a degree, to advocates for what we saw as being an issue with Steve’s case,” says Allain.

They launched a website with a petition, and they gained more than 10,000 signatures.

At the time, Allain explained the Attorney General of Canada and the Minister of Justice had already determined that a likely miscarriage of justice had occurred.

The students were asking to ​​expedite the process to have the 690 application looked at.

“There was an intervening time between 2003 and 2004 when that decision came down from the Minister, and then the question was how long it was going to be delayed,” says Allain, and he shared they had heard it was going to be an “incredibly” long time.

“We thought, let’s try to see if we can light a fire, but also get people aware of the fact that this is a likely miscarriage of justice already investigated for a year-and-a-half now.”

The students arranged to go to Queen’s Park and speak with whoever would listen. At this point, much of what the students were doing was outside of class time and the curriculum – on top of which, Allain notes, the students had been changing over time.

In 2005, it was coming up on the first anniversary of the report, which said the Attorney General and Minister of Justice was going to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.

“A year later, there was still nothing,” says Allain. “And so we held a symposium.”

The students, joined by the experts they had initially met, would run workshops on the various areas of criminal law and law they had been studying and working on for the case in a symposium, and invite other students to attend.

What they imagined as a small group grew into an event attended by over 800 students from across Ontario.

Allain notes that throughout this process, they faced many roadblocks, but the students continued to advocate.

“I had to explain to them that the situation that we were in now and what we were doing and advocating, sometimes would make other people question and work through, and sometimes they would come to conclusions that weren’t correct, and so part of advocacy would mean that we would have to show them or explain to them, help to educate them along the way,” says Allain.

“Naively I thought the primary purpose of education was with our students, I didn’t necessarily understand the education that would need to happen with other people around us,” he adds. 

Their symposium was titled “A Symposium on Wrongfully Convicted with a Focus on the Steven Truscott Case” and featured heads of homicide, an entomologist, and others.

Allain notes the symposium was “amazing” and was attended by Steven Truscott and his wife, Marlene, as well as others who had been involved in this case over the many years.

At the time, students were also fundraising through various avenues; they ran car washes and made message bracelets to continue to advocate.

In 2007, when the Court of Appeal unanimously found Truscott not guilty of the offence, Allain and his students were there.

The gallery was packed, he said, and students were even sitting on the stairs to be a part of it.

Finally, in 2008, as the Ontario Legislature debated compensation for Truscott, students continued to advocate.

Allain says the final group of students sent out educational materials leading up to the debate, and they were even given an office in the Legislature to teach MPPs about the Truscott case, wrongful convictions, and compensation for them.

One of the last things they were able to do for Truscott, Allain explained, was fundraise to send him and his family on a trip.

Because of his criminal record, Truscott hadn’t been able to leave the country for decades, and the students wanted to provide that experience for him and Marlene.

“Thousands of dollars came in,” says Allain. “And what was amazing is just before this, David Asper from the National Post called and said, ‘George, wherever they want to go in the world, whatever is supported by the people who are there and didn’t cover it, we’ll cover it.’”

Humberview students continued to ask what they could do and took on more cases to continue to advocate and educate.

“I often thought of us as being the cheerleaders of justice,” says Allain.

For years now, he’s heard from past students who have gone on to become lawyers, join the police force, and more.

In October, Allain accepted the Rubin Hurricane Carter Champion of Justice Award from Innocence Canada at the Law Society of Ontario.

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was a boxer who was wrongfully convicted of a 1966 triple murder in New Jersey and spent nearly 20 years in prison before being exonerated in 1985.

He dedicated the rest of his life advocating for the wrongly convicted.

Allain says he was speechless when he received the call.

He explains that the Humberview mascot is a husky, and that a husky howls to “let you know that they have your back, they’re there for you, they’re there for support.”

“In a lot of ways, that’s what we were for Steve, and for Marlene, and for their family.”

Going back to his point about the thousands of students who put work into this, Allain compares it to a relay race.

“The baton is left by the previous class and you pick it up and work through it. The husky howl being the echo and the echo out there, they hear that echo and they move forward in what’s happening or the baton being passed along.”

Allain says that over all these years, it was “wonderful” to see all the elements and the learning that went into this process.

He reflects on a time after the symposium when he received a note from one of his students.

Allain says in the note his student writes that he was with his mother and his sister for dinner, and he told them about what they achieved, “and they were so amazed, and he was so amazed by what he was able to do and what they were able to do.”

“That was a phenomenal thing to get, that students could see their potential,” says Allain.

“Those students were willing to take this chance on doing something more, where the answer was an unknown,” he says. 

Allain says that, for all these students, he hopes that, coming away from this, they learned to “use the processes to help them in their life and help other people.”

“Not just advocating for yourself, which is really important, but also helping you to advocate for other people.”

Readers Comments (0)