Stephen Reid (writer)
Canadian writer and bank robber (1950–2018)
Stephen Reid (March 13, 1950 – June 12, 2018) was a Canadian criminal and writer, who was a member of the notorious Stopwatch Gang and was also convicted twice of bank robbery. Reid served time in over 20 prisons in Canada and the United States.
Reid was born in Massey, Ontario, on March 13, 1950, and is of Irish and Ojibwa descent. Reid, working with fellow Canadians Paddy Mitchell, and Lionel Wright stole approximately $15 million—mainly in the 1970s and 1980s—from more than 140 banks and other sites across Canada and the U.S. The Stopwatch Gang, which was famous for its speedy heists—including the 1974 robbery of $750,000 in gold bars from the Ottawa Airport—was named for a stopwatch Reid wore around his neck. They successfully completed a $750,000 gold heist in 1974 from the Ottawa airport. They were arrested after that robbery and all escaped from prison by 1979. Later in 1980, Reid was arrested in Arizona, and began writing in 1984 while serving a 21-year prison sentence at the Kent Institution in Agassiz, British Columbia. During his first sentence, he submitted a manuscript to Susan Musgrave, then writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. Thus developed an ongoing correspondence, and they married in 1986 at Kent. He published his first novel, Jackrabbit Parole, that year.
The public source identifies “Stephen Reid (writer)” as canadian writer and bank robber (1950–2018). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Stephen, Reid and writer.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7610344. VIAF identifies the subject as 96712950. The Library of Congress control number is n89662825. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2018, 1974 and 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stephen Reid (writer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.