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Over July and August, more than five million foreigners will come to Canada on their summer vacation. For the rest of the summer, the National Postpresents this series on the revolutionaries, luminaries and criminals who have taken time out from shaping world events to pay us a visit — and how that visit shaped them. Today, the time Hollywood star Errol Flynn came to Vancouver … and came back in a box.



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Only hours before, Errol Flynn had a drink in his hand and in his signature high-brow accent, was regaling Vancouver society with tales of globetrotting swashbuckle.

Fifty years old and dressed in a mauve, open-necked shirt, the energetic Flynn had an endless library of gossip and anecdotes at his command. He had dodged shellfire during the Spanish Civil War, hung out in the mountains with rebel leader Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution, and there was that one time his friends pranked him by propping up the corpse of actor John Barrymore on his couch.

But a massive heart attack later, and the actor was laid up on a cold stainless steel table as Canadian pathologists broke apart his ribs with hand tools, sifted through his liquor-ravaged organs and scrutinized his legendary genitalia.