PERFECT LIBERTY

It’s Easter Sunday and in Little Italy, Sault, a pregnant woman fetches an axe from the woodshed. Back inside, she climbs the stairs and enters the bedroom with care. She doesn’t want to wake her husband, who lies sound asleep after his nightshift at the Algoma Steel Plant. By his bedside, she tightens her grip on the axe, raises it high and brings it down four times. Afterwards, she sits by the fire, arms wrapped around the youngest of her four children. She stays like this for an hour. Eventually, she calls out to a nearby neighbour and tells him what she has done. “Here I am,” she cries, when the police arrive, “Take me. I am ready to die.”

Her name was Angelina Napolitano and she was 28 years old. She, her husband Pietro, and their four children arrived in Sault in 1909. They rented rooms in