The Canadians: are a group of people who dedicated years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars to helping Rubin "Hurricane" Carter contest his sentence for triple murder. They wrote a book about their experiences, and one of them was married for a time to Carter. They are featured in the movie, The Hurricane. They later discovered many untruth's that were told to them by Carter. Just to name a few: 

According to a letter Carter sent to the Canadians, which was quoted at length in their book, Carter and his siblings were shipped down to Georgia every summer vacation to work in the cotton fields from sunrise to sundown, picking cotton. But in his autobiography The 16th Round, Carter says he never went to the Deep South in his life 'til he joined the Army at 17. And even if Carter had gone to Georgia during summer vacation, there would have been no cotton to pick. According to the Georgia Cotton Commission, harvest time for cotton is from September to December.

His letter about his childhood labors in Georgia also relates that he was going to a white ice cream vendor to buy ice cream when his father hit him and sent him flying, presumably to teach him to fear white men. But if Carter was never in Georgia, where he says the incident took place, the ice cream vendor story is also questionable. The Canadians fell for it, though, as did his biographer James Hirsch.

THE FILM'S CAR WRECK SCENE:

A most disturbing aspect of the movie is the way that the Canadians are shown as being threatened by an evil detective and his shadowy accomplices.

In a "based on a true story" movie, we see people being threatened, and their car being sabotaged.

In his DVD commentary, director Norman Jewison claims that these incident were described in Lazarus & the Hurricane.

He's wrong. The Canadians' only encounter with an American cop in the entire book is excerpted below:

In the movie, the Canadians are threatened by the evil detective. In their book Lazarus & the Hurricane -- they had such a fear and loathing of the police that Sam, one of the Canadians, nearly pees himself at the sight of a cop on the beat.

An officer was just getting out of the vehicle, his gun prominently on display.

"Oh, shit!" mumbled Sam. The ground seemed to sway underneath him and his heart was in his mouth. He was certain that the old woman (they had tried to question) had called the cops and that they were about to be arrested.... They left (Paterson) unmolested, but it took Sam hours to come down from the adrenalin rush.

Discrepancy: In the movie, a telephone record is forged by evil detective Della Pesca, which alters the time of the call to the police, reporting the murders, from 2:28 a.m. to 2:45 a.m., a 17 minute difference.

Truth: The first police report was drawn up the same day as the murders, before any "frame-up" occurred, before any policeman had a chance to investigate where Rubin Carter was and at what time. That report states that the estimated time of the murders was 2:30 and the police were notified by 2:34 p.m. 

Alibi time: Carter testified that he gave a ride to Catherine McGuire and Anna Mapes, then went back to the Nite Spot by 2:30. This is in his official statement, given by his lawyer and in his trial testimony. In their book, the Canadians uncover a taxi driver (who alas, won't come forward) who says Carter was back at the Nite Spot when the shootings took place. The Canadians are convinced the murders happened at 2:20 a.m. or earlier. So that means Carter gave the ladies a ride home and was back at the Nite Spot by 2:20 a.m. or earlier. However, that's not what he or the ladies said in court. Catherine McGuire was certain of the time because she kept checking her watch, she testified. 

The Canadians Efforts: Regardless of what the movie led you to believe, the Canadians had no part in finding any new evidence at all for his last trial. All they really accomplished was to gather funds for Carter's defense. They were also not able to "disprove" any evidence already used in his previous trials.

Their Payback for their Efforts: After Carter moved in with them. Carter claims in his biography that the Canadians watched him like a hawk when he was in public and even listened in on his telephone conversations.

Three years after Lazarus and the Hurricane was published, Carter left the Canadian commune for good and hasn’t looked back. 

In Carter’s 2000 biography, it was the Canadians who came under attack. Carter told biographer James Hirsch the Canadians were incapable of treating Carter like an equal. He felt like a "trophy horse to fill their coffers," and he felt like they were his new jailers. Furthermore, he charged, they were bigoted, smug homophobes with disdain for almost everyone but themselves.

Suddenly, the Canadians were willing to acknowledge that Carter was, uh, capable of a less than scrupulous adherence to the truth: ``There are so many untruths in the book,'' one of the Canadians sighed in an interview for the Toronto Star. ``This is not a pleasant thing to talk about. It's distasteful.''

The release of the movie should have been the culmination of the Canadians' efforts. Instead, their book and their story was overshadowed by the release of Carter's new biography, written by James Hirsch. As journalist Tom Cohen reported for the Associated Press, "while the film is based on Carter's jail house book The 16th Round and Lazarus and The Hurricane, Carter is promoting the Hirsch book while ignoring the re-release of (Sam) Chaiton's account written with Terry Swinton." The Hirsch book competed with the Canadians' book in the marketplace, and to add injury to insult, the Hirsch biography uses many anecdotes and incidents from the Canadians' book.

And -- unkindest cut of all -- Carter claims that Lisa, the Canadian he married, tried to force him to get a vasectomy, which he refused, and that he married her only to get legal residency in Canada. 

It’s not just that Carter and the Canadians no longer live together, they no longer speak. This awkward fact was a problem for the promoters of the movie, who don’t portray the less-than-perfect postscript to Carter’s life after the judge sets him free. On screen, the Canadians and young Lesra leap up in exultation as Rod Steiger frees Denzel Washington. At the film’s premiere, the Canadians and Carter sat in separate rows and never spoke to one another. The producers of The Hurricane have not announced plans for a sequel.

Most of the people involved in his big publicity push in the 1970’s were cut out of his life by the time the jury in his second trial found him guilty. His son, Raheem, hasn’t seen him in years. When the movie came out, Raheem was in jail, awaiting trial for assaulting his girlfriend, and, he claimed to reporters, waiting for his father to post his bail. As for the Canadians, his relationship with them was over years before last year’s movie came out.

Important Present day facts: Carter, now 64, promotes himself as an advocate for the wrongfully convicted, and lives in Toronto. He continues to tell his audiences at his motivational speeches (at thousands of dollars a pop) that Willie Marins said he wasn’t the killer, that he was persecuted because of his black activism, that he was the victim of a racist frame-up, that he was exonerated by the courts. Corporations and universities pay thousands of dollars to be told fictions by Carter. Lesra Martin and John Artis, recognizing a good thing when they see it, have also joined the lecture circuit.

If the Canadians, or Carter, or Lesra Martin -- now an attorney himself -- believe that any of their accusations about Carter's frame-up are true, if they have a shred of evidence that such despicable acts occurred, they should be hounding the U.S. Department of Justice to indict the wrongdoers. The fact is that no person involved in prosecuting Carter and Artis has been officially accused of forgery, perjury, witness tampering, attempted murder, or any of the heinous things the movie, the Canadians, and Carter accuse the New Jersey authorities of doing.

The End Misconception in the Movie about Rubin's Release: In the film, we see the Canadians and Rubin leaping for joy over the verdict. The Canadians felt like they helped set this "wrongfully accused" man free, and Rubin felt like he finally "won" a war with the justice system. 

Truth: Carter was not exonerated for the Lafayette Grill murders, as Carter claims. Two juries, one convened in 1967 after the murders and the other at a retrial nine years later, found him guilty as charged. The authorities decided that because so many years had passed since the crimes occurred, because some witnesses had died, because Artis had already been paroled and Carter had served virtually a life term anyway, that they would dismiss the charges, rather than hold a third trial.

Even still, the movie ends with the words: "the real killers were never caught, nor were they pursued."

(Information from Cal Deal and Lona Manning's websites; Used with permission)