In Canada and Australia popular support for the reintroduction of the death penalty remains high but the cultural and political resources deployed in capital punishment debates in the two countries are distinct.

This paper argues that public memory of the last execution in Australia, that of Ronald Ryan in 1967, continues to play a critical role in death penalty debates. Through books, plays, documentary film and newer media, such as web sites, the story of a likeable "crim" unjustly hanged has gained popular currency, Like his more famous executed forebear, nineteenth-century bush ranger Ned Kelly, his image has become valuable and widely recognized currency in death penalty debates,

In contrast the last men executed in Canada, dispatched in a double hanging in 1962 remain virtual unknowns. Ronald Turpin's and Arthur Lucas' stories have yet to register in Canadians' popular recollections of crime and punishment. Because the cases failed to stir the national conscience at the time Canadian abolitionists have not utilized the rhetorical potential of their cases at a time when populist politicians call for binding referenda on the death penalty. I suggest that abolitionists' current strategy of stressing recent high-profile wrongful conviction cases could well be supplemented by enhancing Canadians' memories of the last executions, a move that could historicize and humanize on-going death penalty debates.