it. Certain military offences under the National Defence Act (committed by members of the Canadian Armed Forces) continued to carry the death penalty (cowardice, desertion, unlawful surrender, and spying for the enemy), with mandatory death penalty if committed traitorously. Bill C-25 replaced their penalty with life imprisonment, resulting in the de jure abolition of the death penalty when it came into force Sep 1, 1999, although it received royal assent on Dec 10, 1998. Last executions in Canada The last two people executed in Canada were Ronald Turpin, 29, and Arthur Lucas, 54, convicted of separate murders, at 12:02 am on December 11, 1962, at the Don Jail in Toronto. The last woman to be hanged in Canada was Marguerite Pitre on January 9, 1953, at Bordeaux Prison in Montreal, for her part in the bombing of Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 108. The last person sentenced to death was Mario Gauthier on May 14, 1976, for the murder of a prison guard in Quebec. He was reprieved when capital punishment was abolished for all common crimes on July 14 the same year. Military executions During the First World War, 25 Canadian soldiers were executed. Most were shot for service offences such as desertion and cowardice, but two executions were for murder. For details of these see List of Canadian soldiers executed during World War I. One Canadian soldier, Pte. Harold Pringle, was executed during the Second World War for murder. Executioners John Radclive John Radclive was Canada's first professional executioner, placed on the federal payroll as a hangman by a Dominion order-in-council in 1892, on the recommendation of the justice minister Sir John Thompson. Radclive is often described as having trained under British hangman William Marwood although there is no documentary proof for this. He can be shown to have hanged at least 69 people in Canada, although his life total was probably much higher. At his death, the Toronto Telegram said he had 150 executions. He died of alcohol-related illness in Toronto on February 26, 1911, at the age of 55. Arthur Ellis Arthur Ellis was the pseudonym of "Arthur B. English", a British man who became Canada's official hangman in 1913, after Radclive's death. Ellis worked as a hangman in Canada until the botched execution of Thomasina Sarao in Montreal in 1935, in which she was decapitated. He died in poverty in Montreal in July, 1938, and