Aug. 19, 2018

It was still early on Sunday morning at the Allan homestead on Pigeon Lake, near Peterborough, Ont., but there were always chores to be done.

Wendy Allan drove down the dirt road, past the rail fence that kept her animals in, and pulled into the driveway.

The paddock out back was Allan's happy place. She called it Freedom Five Ranch.



She got out of the truck. Her husband was waiting. John Allan had a gun, and Wendy was his target. He pulled the trigger again and again.

Wendy’s teenage daughter rushed to her side and started CPR. Someone called 911. Eventually, paramedics were there, taking over what would turn out to be a hopeless task.

Wendy’s mother, Angela Askew, rushed over from her own house just around the corner.

"I did see Wendy laying there," Askew said later. "I was hoping she was just hurt."

In the backyard, Wendy’s killer was dead, too. John Allan had turned the gun on himself.





Aug. 22, 2018



Sandra Finn tried to grab the gun that was pointed at her through the open car window.

She had just buckled up her seat belt and started the engine. But now she was trapped.

"Stop! Stop!" she yelled at the man she’d been married to for 50 years.

Terry Finn stood outside the car, aiming the .38-calibre Colt revolver at his wife. Then he pulled the trigger.

Several contractors in the Home Depot parking lot in Peterborough heard the gun go off, then two more shots.

The car’s engine revved as Sandra slumped over the wheel.

Terry calmly laid the gun, still cocked, on the hood of the car. He lit a cigarette and walked up to a man who had just left the store.

"I told a guy, 'Can you call 911 for me? I’ve shot and killed my wife,'" Terry later said to police.

Sandra Finn was shot to death by her husband in this Home Depot parking lot in Peterborough, Ont. (Jean LeSavage/CBC)

Sandra Finn was shot to death by her husband in this Home Depot parking lot in Peterborough, Ont. (Jean LeSavage/CBC)

Although they lived just three kilometres across the lake from one another, there’s no evidence Sandra Finn and Wendy Allan ever met. Yet they shared some tragic commonalities: both lived in relative isolation, both were in abusive long-term relationships and both had sought help.

Finn and Allan were among the dozens of women who lost their lives to domestic violence in Canada in 2018.

According to the most recent, complete data from Statistics Canada, in 2018, intimate partner homicides happened disproportionately in rural areas. Also that year, homicides were most prevalent among older, married people — a disturbing trend as the population ages.

Sandra Finn and Wendy Allan were both looking for a way out when they died, just 72 hours apart.