Street Level

Darcy Robinson — as a person, a hockey player, a student, a friend, a fiance, a son and a brother — touched too many lives during his too-brief 26 years.
They will be coming from near and far for his service Monday morning at the Calvary Community Church on Rogers Way.
They may be coming from Ontario, Calgary, Saskatoon, Red Deer — all to pay their respects to a young man who was taken from the earth far too soon and as yet without explanation.
They’ll join together on Thanksgiving Day, a time when families are supposed to gather around the dinner table and reflect on all their blessings.
Perhaps Darcy’s parents Ernie and Dave will find some time to think about the blessing they had for those 26 years, nurturing a young man whose death Sept. 27 has impacted far more people than they could imagine.
Perhaps his brothers Ryan and Daniel will also think about how their lives were blessed by Darcy, the oldest son, the one they got to watch as he started to live out his dreams playing hockey in Italy.
Perhaps his fiancee will also find some solace as the community gathers together at the church — the scene of many happy graduation ceremonies for young men and women about to set out into the world — and know that she, too, was blessed.
It’s a testament to this young man’s impact on those who knew him, or had watched him play, that they came together so quickly, thanks to technology, to create a website where they could post their thoughts, share their grief.
In a few short days, a Facebook site had registered more than 800 people, including a former teammate on his Italian hockey league squad Asiago, former classmates from Aberdeen elementary and a former Kamloops sports reporter who will make the trip from Calgary back to Kamloops to pay her respects to a young man she watched — and often wrote about — as he developed his love of the game.
Even the omniscient YouTube has a video honouring the man who had dreams of playing for his mother’s native Italy one day in Olympic hockey.
Kevin Stinelli, a student at Pennsylvania State College, copied a slide show of Darcy the hockey player from a tribute one of his former teams created, and set it to lyrics he chose especially for Darcy:
“It’s good to have you with us, even if it’s just for the day, Outside the sun is shining, seems like heaven ain’t far away.”
Heaven wasn’t far away when Darcy missed the puck, turned, collapsed and died with Kristen sitting in the stands, watching.
Some have said it was good she was there but does the heart ache any less if you’re there to say goodbye?
Is the pain any less knowing your son died doing what he loved the most?
Surrounded by his teammates, his coach, his fans?
Is it eased knowing that even young men who never met Darcy remembered him by placing his initials on their helmets, next to the blazing B he never wore? An honour they’ll carry into many games in this painfully young season.
Parents never really know who their children will become, what dreams they’ll have, what heartbreaks they’ll endure.
All they can do is the best they’re able to do, and then watch and hope — until that day comes when they know they did OK, their child did right and the world is a better place because of it.
Even if it was for just 26 years.
dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

© Copyright 2007 Kamloops This Week

Posted by Dale at 10:35 a.m. Comments

Someone asked if it’s true my husband and I have academic expectations for our youngest son.
The person on the other end of this conversation seemed stunned when I replied that we did.
But he has autism, this person continued. Wouldn’t his time be better spent learning life skills and collecting attendance slips?
Well, as my other children would say, that’s a big N-O!
I’m sure this person didn’t realize the comments made were reinforcing a negative stereotype.
He doesn’t know that Sean has been successful in every grade so far, that he was well ahead of his class last year in some areas and definitely behind in others.
He doesn’t know we were once told Sean would never speak or interact with others, but now has many friends — including his beloved Kailah B. — and loves to act out his self-written stories, which he illustrates with his own “movie posters.”
The conversation left me not so much angry, but rather sad that an educated adult would have that immediate reaction.
It comes as no surprise to Christa Haywood-Farmer of the Kamloops branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Even in 2007, she said, the stigma of any mental illness is incredible.
In far too many minds, a person with a mental disability or illness is dangerous, scary, unemployable — images Haywood-Farmer said are reinforced in popular culture, particularly movies.
It’s her job to try to dispel these stereotypes — not an easy task considering a Mustel poll, released earlier this week, that shows that less than half of British Columbians who thought they might be suffering from depression would seek help.
Only about one in four would look for professional help.
The rest either wouldn’t or didn’t know how they would react.
The statistics may seem alarming, unless you’ve been one of them. Count me in that group that wouldn’t seek help.
There was nothing wrong with me — it was everyone else who had a problem.
The world was making me nuts — but it wasn’t my fault.
Sure, I cried a lot and got angry a lot and then got happy a lot — but that was just me.
My husband used to dread the days I’d wake up in a truly great mood, because he knew what was coming next. Only I didn’t see it and wouldn’t listen to the family telling me to get help.
Until the day I sat in a corner of the living room in the dark, crying.
And crying.
And crying.
For hours, I cried.
Doctors diagnosed bipolar disorder, put me on medication and into therapy that lasted a year.
Most of that time was spent coming to accept the disease and learning how to deal with it.
That took some time.
I spent about two years saying I had a chemical imbalance in my brain. Just couldn’t get those two words to come out.
I didn’t want people to think I was crazy.
That’s when Sean provided the life lesson that was needed.
He has a disability. He works hard to overcome and compensate for it. I want people to accept him as he is and understand we’re not all made with a cookie cutter.
And just as he puts another face on the concept of autism, it seemed right for me to add my face to the community that battles the stereotype of mental illness every day.
Yes, I’m bipolar. And I work, have a family, a truly messy house, friends, volunteer work, a monumentally bad sense of humour, goals and aspirations.
For those of you out there — and statistics show one in five B.C.ers is living with some form of mental disorder — Haywood Farmer is the organizer of Beyond the Blues, a depression anxiety education and screening day on Oct. 4 at Thompson Rivers University from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
People can attend and learn about mental illness, take an anonymous test that will indicate if they should be addressing their own mental health and get information on how to get help.
It’s a long road being walked by the people with mental illnesses and for those who advocate for them — but for Haywood-Farmer, “every step that we can make is a positive.”
Even when those steps are scary.

© Copyright 2007 Kamloops This Week

Posted by Dale at 10:34 a.m. Comments

I grew up in Southern Ontario, just an hour or so south of the place where Lynne Harper and Steven Truscott lost their lives.

For Lynne, it was a permanent loss, a murder that will never be solved even though so much evidence now points to someone else, a long-dead pedophile.

For Truscott, it’s hard to actually really know how much of his life died on June 11, 1954, when Lynne’s broken body was found and he became the only suspect. He was convicted in a sham of a trial and sentenced to hang, all at age 14.

Like most of us who grew up back then, we knew the Truscott story. Many of us read the first book to challenge his conviction, The Trial of Steven Truscott, written by Isabel LeBourdais and published by a British firm because not one publisher in Canada would do so, including the high-profile Jack McClelland, who often cloaked himself in the cape of freedom from censorship and advocating for the unheard.

Later, of course McClelland opted for the Canadian publishing rights, once the book had made its impact.

I’ve read everything that has been written on this travesty.

I’ve had dinner with one of the producers of the Fifth Estate episode when Truscott, who had built a life for himself under an assumed name, reclaimed his birthright and told the world — again — he was innocent.

It’s good that this horrendous wrong has been officially righted — after 48 years — and the Canadian public now know the police firmly planted their tunnel-vision glasses on their faces back in 1954, decided they had the guilty party and never once looked anywhere else, even though a known and active pedophile lived in the area.

There’s been an alarming number of mistakes made by the police in the last several decades.

In Canada alone, there are 41 known instances, many of them coming in the last two decades.

Names like James Driskell (convicted of murder in 1991, he spent 12 years in prison before being cleared in 2005), Steven Kaminski (convicted of sexual assault in 1992, he spent seven years in prison before being cleared in 1999), Donald Marshall Jr. (convicted of murder in 1971, he spent 12 years in prison before being cleared in 1983), David Milgaard (convicted of murder in 1970, he spent 23 years in prison before being cleared in 1992 after a long, impassioned fight against the government by his mother) and Guy Paul Morin (convicted of murder in 1992, he was cleared in 1995).

This is not a North American phenomenon. Take the time to look at http://forejustice.org/db/location/innocents_l.html and it will stun you. Then go to http://www.aidwyc.org/cases.cfm and read about the ongoing work in Canada to right wrongs.

It’s there that you’ll read about Wilbert Coffin, who was hanged in Quebec in 1956 after being convicted of murder — although it now appears he was wrongly convicted. Two Canadian groups are looking at this case.

I raise these cases not to point out all the mistakes that have been made. They happened, most can be fixed and some can only be resolved to provide solace to the families.

Instead, I raise it because of a conversation I had with a member of our own detachment last week, one that disturbed me immensely.

I’ve left phone and e-mail messages for Supt. Jim Begley to talk about it, but haven’t heard back from him yet.

The conversation involved complaints I have received in recent months about treatment of people arrested and held in our jails.

In particular, the concerns involve the women’s lockup.

I wanted to know if it is true that blankets aren’t provided, even when it’s cold, and whether the area is usually staffed by male officers, as has been alleged by these complainants.

I wanted to know just what the lockups are really like.

The reply from a local Mountie was to be expected and not really hard to challenge — it’s jail, not a hotel.

Good point, but being the socialist I am, I pointed out that people being held in jail are technically innocent until proven guilty.

And this is where the answers from this officer became frightening.

“That’s the American attitude,” the officer told me. “If we arrest them, we have enough good reason to do that.”

They’re guilty because the cops say they’re guilty? Presumption of innocence is American?

It’s 2007. Isn’t it time for the police to get rid of those tunnel-vision goggles? Maybe if they did, we won’t have any more Steven Truscotts.

Posted by Dale at 10:03 a.m. Comments

While watching some of the televised news of the protests at Montebello, my husband — a very wise and insightful man when it comes to these kinds of issues — said the protesters were carrying the wrong message on their signs.

Rather than condemning U.S. President George W. Bush as a criminal, or Prime Minister Stephen Harper as a pawn, their message should have been this, he said:

“We are the people. We are not the enemy.”

But later, after the event was done and the “three amigos” had all returned to their respective homes, I watched another video that drove the point home.

It’s one on youtube.com and, while there’s nothing to confirm allegations the three masked protesters were in fact undercover police, just watching it made me feel sick.

There are some of the older protesters, including Council of Canadians head Maude Barlow and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union president Dave Cole. They’re standing between a group of younger protesters and the Quebec police sent to guard the meeting.

A trio is standing there with rocks in their hands. They’re wearing identical masks. They look fit.

They’re trying to provoke a confrontation with the police.

Cole and his crew confront them.

“This is our line,” he shouts. “It’s a peaceful demonstration.”

Then it gets ugly.

Cole says the three are cops trying to get the rest of the police a reason to go after the protesters.

He demands they identify themselves. He tells them to take off their masks. He orders them to put down the rocks.

They do none of this.

Instead, you can watch them start to push their way toward the police, who immediately put them on the ground, handcuff them — and they walk casually to the waiting police vans.

No struggling. No pepper spray. No tear gas. No rubber bullets.

All police tools other protesters were exposed to at the rally.

It gave me the creeps. I don’t know who these three were, but they were certainly spared the manhandling we watched others endure at the secretive talk site.

We are the people.

We are not the enemy.

It’s something these two powerful men, and their buddy from Mexico, President Felipe Calderon, should remember.

But don’t expect Harper to do so.

He sanctioned the police actions.

A protest camp six miles from the posh Montebello retreat was deemed a security risk.

Apparently, six miles is way too close for the average person to approach our prime minister.

For these business titans, however, the room next door was just fine.

Harper wouldn’t even accept a petition from the 10,800 people of Canada who are worried about the talks the trio was having with representatives from big — very big — business to discuss harmonizing the economies and border restrictions of the three countries that comprise North America.

These are discussions about how our economy will synchronize with those of the U.S. and Mexico — discussions Harper has said he doesn’t have to take to Parliament for approval.

They’re talking about regulations and all those mechanisms we rely on to ensure not only that our economy is strong, but that the goods we import and export meet these standards.

And all we have by way of explanation of this Security and Prosperity Partnership are assurances from Harper, Bush and Calderon that there’s nothing sinister about it.

Trust them.

It’s not hard to understand why people went there to protest.

Harper’s comment when he heard of the protests, the clashes with police?

“I’ve heard it’s nothing. A couple hundred [protesters]? It’s sad.”

No, Mr. Harper. It isn’t sad.

It is the people speaking.

They are not the enemy.

Maybe some day, you’ll understand that.

Posted by Dale at 9:50 a.m. Comments

There’s an event happening today that makes me wish that we could all be transported back to the summer of ‘69.
Not to relive all the wild and crazy stuff that was going on, but to once again feel the complete wonderment that enveloped the world on July 20, 1969, when a man from Wapakoneta, Ohio, walked into history.
Remember those words?
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
What a moment.
It was one of the rare times my parents let my sister and I stay up way, way, way past our bedtime (although, in truth, they had to wake me up) so we could watch a grainy black and white image on our very tiny television screen (ensconced, of course, in a massive hunk of wooden furniture and with two controls — on/off and channel).
How could anyone possibly go back to bed after seeing something that, up to then, had been nothing more than a seemingly ridiculous promise made by then-U.S. president John F. Kennedy at the beginning of the decade, that man would walk on the moon before the 1960s ended?
A few years later and we were all tethered to our TVs — many of them by then colour — listening to the only journalist who mattered as Walter Cronkite helped us through the crisis of the disabled Apollo 13.
Remember how you felt when that capsule finally was shown onscreen, bopping in the waves of the Pacific Ocean, the crew aboard all massively stressed but safe?
Today, Canadian astronaut Dave Williams is expected to make the first of perhaps three space walks, using the Canadarm, to make repairs to a space station.
That is beyond cool.
There’s a teacher aboard the Endeavour space shuttle this time, the first teacher to head for space in 21 years.
And that fact is also amazing.
It doesn’t seem like more than two decades have gone by since the shuttle Challenger blew up on takeoff, killing its crew, including teacher Christa MacAuliffe.
By that time, there were few of us even interested in watching the takeoff.
Cronkite was long-since retired; the major networks weren’t carrying the takeoffs anymore.
CNN was watching that day, however, and some of us in the newsroom where I was working were also watching.
It’s one of those moments that lives in your memory forever.
The entire space program still brings a thrill of amazement — at least to me and likely many of my generation.
I’ve tried to explain all of this to my children in the ensuing years — how truly remarkable these accomplishments were.
How they changed the way we viewed our world and gave us an entirely new universe to contemplate.
When I took my older children to the then-Cape Kennedy site, now back to its original Cape Canaveral name, they looked at me in a mixture of bemusement and bewilderment as I rhapsodized about the Gemini series of space flights, of how we were all waiting for John Glenn to fall out of the sky — because the idea of leaving the Earth was basically science fiction.
And now, with the younger ones, it’s become apparent that the space program is old hat, a fact of their lives and doesn’t capture their imagination nearly as much as it did mine.
If they want to experience the concept of space flight, all they need to do these days is plug in a video game or load up a computer game. They can go beyond Buck Rogers and venture into any world they want to create.
And, while they can have fun pretending to be an astronaut at the controls of a joystick, it seems they’re missing out on something that was integral to those of us growing up in the ‘60s — that sense of awe and the realization that the world was just starting to open up.
And that we had no idea what would come next.

dale@kamloopsthisweek.com

Posted by Dale at 11:54 a.m. Comments