Blyth Festival debuts story of local woman charged with witchcraft [Video]

Under a highly faded gravestone in the Blyth Union Cemetery, lies Maggie Pollock, the last Canadian woman accused of witchcraft.

“Maggie Pollock, was a local Blyth woman who was a medium, and she grew up here and lived just three kilometers away from the Blyth Festival, so it’s a really, really local story. In 1919, she was charged with witchcraft and it went all the way to the Ontario Supreme Court. That was the kind of big controversy of her life and that’s what this play is all about,” said Director of ‘The Trials of Maggie Pollock,’, Anne-Marie Kerr.

Pollock’s journey from local visionary to national spotlight, is the centrepiece of the latest play at the Blyth Festival.

The ‘Trials of Maggie Pollock’ centres on a simple Huron County farm girl who had the uncanny ability to help people find lost items, who ended up on trial for “telling fortunes,” …