I believe the death of a 17-year old in Winnipeg last week after being Tasered by city police brings to about 22 the number of people killed in Canada with the device since 2003.

Coincidentally, that would be one-quarter of the number of soldiers killed to date in Afghanistan, tragic events that bring pomp and ceremony, flag lowering, somber parades serious national debates and calls for change. I don’t know if you can draw any intelligent revelations from that comparison, but I just thought I would mention it and see if anything strikes you (zaps you?)… two different worlds, both our Canadian people.

We still hear claims from some of the law enforcement community that the “stun gun” is a comparable device to things like Billy Clubs, and perhaps even safer since you don’t get welts on the head from it. Certainly it’s been judged as safer for the officers involved, who wish to avoid a thrashing on the ground with the enraged “arrestee”, something that might have resulted in harm to them. I noted with interest the recent racially charged incident in Digby where a highly trained off-duty police officer took a swing at a young man outside a lounge, and was promptly felled and hospitalized with one punch (then the young man was soundly Tasered, of course, and arrested). There is a danger in mixing it up.

Continue reading →

Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer convicted of the 1993 killing of his 12 year old severely handicapped daughter Tracy, is up for day parole on December 8. Legal experts say that it is extremely likely he will get it. Although it’s certainly an issue that sharply divides Canadians, public sentiment appears strongly on the side of Latimer, and those connected to the court system have shrugged their shoulders in helpless sympathy through the years at the case of a man for whom the law had no loopholes available.

In his second trial (the first was quashed by the Supreme Court because of jury interference by RCMP and prosecution), Latimer was found guilty of second degree murder for asphyxiating his daughter, an act normally abhorrent beyond comprehension to a loving parent, but brought on in Latimer’s claim, out of love to stop her steadily increasing suffering. In a cruel path of legal pitfalls, his jury was strangely not aware that the Canadian minimum for second degree murder is 25 years, 10 years without full parole, as they recommended a sentence of one year jail and one year house arrest to the presiding judge. Confronted with what they had inadvertently done in the aftermath of the trial, several jury members wept. Only too aware of the jury intent versus the cold Canadian law, the judge attempted to foil the mandatory requirements with a ruling that the sentence was “cruel and unusual punishment” and grounds for exemption, but this was overturned in appeal and this supported by the Supreme Court. With the usual legal wrangling and court time, Latimer and his wife and other two children spent years following the charge dealing with the court system, and he only began his 25 year sentence following the Supreme Court decision in 2001, with some allowance for time served. Continue reading →

I had notions of writing this article on Saturday, but the power was flickering as former hurricane Noel probed its way into Nova Scotia. The notion might have returned on Sunday, but at that time we were without power, and I was walking from room to room, flicking on light switches out of habit, and flicking them off again out of common sense.

We went 16 hours without power, all because of a little jumper wire between the main line outside out house and the pole transformer being off and swinging in the breeze. A ten minute repair job, but with whole communities off the grid due to the storm, we weren’t a top priority.

We were fairly geared up for the event, since when we first built it seemed that longer duration power outages were a regular winter event (thankfully there hasn’t been that many since). Our furnace burns oil or wood, and while we can’t “blow” the heat around, when the power is off I remove the doors from the furnace blower compartment, keep open the basement doors, and like a central heating furnace of old (remember those big black grates in the hall floor?), we let the heat rise and fall of its own accord. We have lamps and candles, and if needed I haul out a propane camp stove for primitive cooking. Water is a bit more of a problem, but I ran off four water cooler bottles before things started.

Continue reading →

I suppose with “Be Prepared” still one of the guidelines of my life (on the negative side, probably an aspect of being a control freak), it was only natural that as a youth I got involved in the Boy Scout movement.

I don’t recall being in Cubs long, but I did attend for a time. Squatting down with fingers to ears chanting “A-Kay-La!” didn’t inspire me that much I guess, but I did take more to the older Scouts themselves, and remember proudly being a patrol leader and wearing a silver scout emblem on my mountie-like hat. Carving a particularly nice walking stave was also something I liked. I recall it was marked off in feet for the first five or six, and then about six one-inch markings on the top, useful for measuring all kinds of things. Likely now the pole is gone (insurance rules to avoid injuries) and the marking would have to be metric.

Continue reading →

It seems that all my life I was aware of Steven Truscott. He was 14 when convicted in 1959 of the rape and murder of 12 year old Lynne Harper, and I was 13 at that time.

It was a case that would never die for the Canadian public. Initially, spurred on by the headlines of the time that Truscott was the perpetrator, I think like many others, far away from the Clinton Ontario area where the crime took place, I thought him guilty and really didn’t pay him much attention following the conviction. But the case kept rearing its head over the years. I can recall numerous television programs taking yet another look at the case, and stirring the pot over and over again. Truscott kept stating his innocence, though it seemed that few seriously listened. Continue reading →

I don’t know what it is in the nature of men that makes them like to drive fast. Now I don’t mean just over the speed limit, because without cruise control to exert a little influence, my wife will come home bristling with speeding tickets, while I tend to stick to just a little above—the calculated area of “they won’t bother to ticket me here”. I mean the “let’s see what it can do” style of driving that men seem drawn to, certainly more often when they are a little younger and a lot more foolhardy.

Lately, young men of average means have an interest in cars that just look serious…. Honda Civics and even Chevy Cavaliers dressed up with wings and body fairings, fancy paint jobs, mufflers that sound like you have more under the hood than a four-cylinder designed primarily for economy, and the ubiquitous booming of a thousand watt stereo system with trunk-filling subwoofer. One went by with a lot of noise the other day and I asked, “What was that?” My wife identified it correctly as, “A Cavalier trying to pretend it’s a sports car.” Continue reading →