In July 1923, the British author Arthur Conan Doyle arrived in Winnipeg to give a public lecture, “The Proofs of Immortality,” as part of a 40-city North American tour that attracted sizable audiences.
Doyle, widely known today as the writer who created Sherlock Holmes, was also a spiritualist — part of circles of people who adhered to and investigated the religious belief that souls of the dead can interact with living people.
On Doyle’s first night in Winnipeg, he and his wife Jean Leckie Doyle were invited to sit in on an investigative seance led by physician Thomas Glendenning Hamilton and his wife and collaborator Lillian Hamilton, a trained nurse.
