Brian Vallée

A journalist who worked on newspapers in England, the US, and Canada, Brian Vallée left the Toronto Star in 1978 for CBC-TV’s award-winning documentary program the fifth estate where he spent ten years, the last five as a producer/director.

Vallée was researcher and associate producer of John Zaritsky’s documentary, Just Another Missing Kid, which won an Oscar at the1983 Academy Awards. Two of the numerous CBC documentaries produced by Vallée won ACTRA Awards for the fifth estate and he was associate producer for the one-hour documentary Cruel Camera, which won an Audubon Society award.

Vallée’s first non-fiction book, the best-selling Life With Billy, about Jane Stafford, an abused wife who took the law into her own hands, was published in Canada, the US, and France. The Stafford case led to the battered wife syndrome as a legitimate defence. A TV movie based on the book won three Gemini Awards in 1995 (Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director).

Vallée’s first novel, Pariah, was published in Canada and the US in 1991 and was followed by the non-fiction Life After Billy which examined the mysterious gunshot death of Jane Stafford, ten years after she killed her husband. The two “Billy” books were combined and released in a single updated volume, Life and Death With Billy, in November 1998.

In November 1997, Doubleday Canada published Vallée’s non-fiction book Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang. The gang terrorized Toronto in the late forties and early fifties, and two gang members were hanged after a Toronto policeman was shot and killed on a downtown street.

Since leaving the CBC in 1988, Vallée has produced and directed several documentaries for the fifth estate as well as one-hour documentaries on Edwin Alonzo Boyd and Canadian artist Ken Danby for the network’s Life & Times program.

Vallée’s latest non-fiction book, The Torso Murder: The Untold Story of Evelyn Dick, was published in October 2001, and the documentary he researched and wrote – The Notorious Mrs. Dick – aired on CTV in March 2002.

Vallée also produced, directed and wrote a new one-hour documentary on Alonzo Boyd for Life & Times, revealing that the famous bank robber murdered a Toronto couple in cold blood in September 1947. The item aired on CBC on Dec. 3, 2002, and he wrote a front-page feature article on the case for the Toronto Star.

In 2004, Vallée edited an unauthorized biography of Conrad Black and is currently working on a new Alonzo Boyd book, movie script, and documentary, as well as two non-fiction books and documentaries – one about the biggest armed heist in North American history and the other about the unabated killing of women by the men in their lives.

Future projects include a documentary on the life of Canadian war artist Michael Forster as well as a documentary and book that Vallée believes will solve the mystery of who killed Sir Harry Oakes in the Bahamas in 1943.

Vallée is associate publisher and editor-in-chief of West-End Books, a new Toronto-based book publishing company founded in the fall of 2004. The new company’s first book (501 Things You Really Should Know by Walter Stefaniuk) was released in May 2005. 

Selected Bibliography
Life with Billy. Toronto: Seal Books, 1986; US: Pocket Books (Simon and Shuster), 1989
Une femme en enfer (French translation of Life with Billy). Paris: Presses de la CitÈ, 1988; France: France Loisirs (hardcover book club selection). Paris: J'ai Lu, 1992 (paperback)
Pariah. Toronto: Seal Books, 1991; New York: Bantam Books (Falcon), 1991 (suspense thriller)
Life after Billy. Toronto: Seal Books, 1993 (hardcover) and 1995 (paperback) (non-fiction)
Life and Death with Billy. Toronto: Seal Books, 1998 (original paperback combining Life with Billy and Life after Billy into one volume with an update on spousal abuse issue)
Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1997 (hardcover) and 1998 (trade paperback)
The Torso Murder: The Untold Story of Evelyn Dick. Toronto: Key Porter, 2001