Province paid three men wrongfully convicted in 1973 Winnipeg homicide $4 million apiece

More than five decades after their lives were derailed by a racist justice system, the provincial government has paid millions of dollars to three men who were wrongfully convicted in a 1973 Winnipeg homicide.

Clarence Woodhouse, Allan Woodhouse (no relation) and Brian Anderson were wrongfully convicted of murdering restaurant worker Ting Fong Chan in 1974.

The ruling was reversed in 2024 for Clarence Woodhouse, when he was acquitted by Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal, and in 2023 for both Allan Woodhouse and Anderson. Russell Woodhouse, Clarence’s brother, was also subjected to a miscarriage of justice — he was wrongfully convicted of manslaughter — but died in 2011.

Canada’s first post-mortem conviction review has since been called into his case.

The four men were charged based on questionable eyewitness testimony and what later emerged to be fabricated confessions.

Despite all four having only a rudimentary grasp of English, police produced a full confession in English and ignored alibi evidence.

The three surviving men filed lawsuits in the Court of King’s Bench following their acquittals.

In October 2025, Winnipeg city council voted in favour of a recommendation from the city’s legal team to pay $7 million to settle the lawsuits, in which the federal government and the province were also named as defendants.

The three lawsuits were discontinued in late November 2025, court records show.

None of the parties would comment in January 2026 on the terms of the confidential deal that was reached.

Lawyers for the governments and the wrongfully convicted men met for confidential mediation in front of King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne in summer 2025 in an attempt to settle the matter rather than go to trial.

First reported by CBC, payments of $4 million were detailed in a list made by the province for the year ending March 31, 2026.

First reported by CBC, provincial vendor payment documents for the year ending March 31 of this year listed payments of $4 million beside Anderson’s name and both of the Woodhouses’ names.

The court process to overturn the convictions revealed systemic racism, police brutality and forced and false confessions.

In 2024, after Clarence Woodhouse’s conviction was overturned, Manitoba Justice Minister Matt Wiebe told the Saulteaux man: “the system failed you.”

“It punished you for a crime you did not commit and it stole from you the most precious gift of all — your time.”

Chan, a 40-year-old father of two, was beaten and stabbed while walking home from his job as a chef on July 17, 1973.

morgan.modjeski@freepress.mb.ca