Vancouver - where the angry disabled may open fire

It's been a crazy week worldwide, hasn't it? It's a chore just to single out the worst examples of bad behavior. Witness Gordon Brown, leader of the "Labour" Party in Britain. Gordo loses the national election yesterday, but does he admit his defeat? Nooooo! Today he is reported meeting with his strategists to cobble together an offer to the third-place finisher, the "Liberal Democrats". It's an arrogant, but not unexpected attempt to cling to POWER.

Witness the behavior in another European democracy. In Athens, that ancient capital of culture, the strong men have institutionalized criminal behaviour. A kleptocratic regime has been falsifying Greek public accounts for years, and colluding with powerful unions in a sharing of the spoils. Now that the rat is out of the bag, possibly setting the European Community up for a domino like collapse of its shared economy, the Greeks are braying "Help us, Help us". Legions of soft and pampered Greek workers are demanding the "right" to retire on bloated benefits packages at age 55, and this week demonstrated the violence they will use to safeguard their "rights". Witness the firebombing of an Athens bank, and the immolation murder of three bank employees. Wow, the self righteous evil of it all !

Insert - May 18th. I caught a CBC Newsworld segment this morning which would make a cute Youtube moment. Fred Langan and Carole MacNeil were laughing their asses off at the absurdity of Greek pension legislation which allows citizens in "dangerous occupations" to retire on a full pension at age 50. No one would quibble that coal mining is a dangerous job(although some may doubt that coal is a Greece industry). Langan noted that the list of dangerous jobs in Greece is ludicrous, and includes TV news readers. The point is that taxpayers in several countries are being screwed over to provide billions for the Greek bailout - which is going to be squandered in thick bogus Greek pension packets. The horror!

How about our local shakedown culture? Isn't it more therapeutic to kick your own cat rather than throwing a shoe over the fence? The point is folks, that in a nanny state like England or Greece or indeed our own socialist British Columbia, crime evolves or adapts to exploit the modernized habitat. In a socialist country leaders will toil like Trojans to grab and hold power, for decades if they can. Their loyal followers (we call them supporters here) compete over a rich menu of government benefits. They are the "cheque people," those who cannot exist without subsidy or have adapted to life as a total dependant.

March 31, 2009 - a CTV news chopper hovered over a parking lot in Gibsons, B.C. where an RCMP officer had just shot an angry woman in the parking lot outside an assisted living facility. This is her wheelchair and blood.

On March 31, 2009 the local CTV news affiliate broadcast dramatic footage from "Chopper 9" which was hovering over the location of a multiple shooting. The gunman was already down and emergency crews were swarming the site. The shooter, we learned next day, was Linda Lorraine Howe, the resident of an assisted living facility in a bedroom community northeast of Vancouver. Howe, who was allegedly wheelchair bound, had been resisting all attempts to evict her from a subsidized unit in the complex, going so far as to circulate a petition among residents. After shooting the manager she loaded a wheelchair with her weapons and carjacked a vehicle in the lot outside. There an RCMP trooper knocked her down with his service pistol. Interviewed a few days later, her father laid the blame for her behavior on a head injury sustained in a car accident. Mr. Howe's remarks were almost as confusing as his daughters behavior:


The interesting facts which emerged in court testimony are that while she was injured in 2007 she had been occupying the assisted living unit since Dec. 2006. In other words she had a history of playing the system, which predated the accident. At the time of her arrest I commented in this Blog that I found fault with any man who would place weapons into the hands of a woman with emotional problems. This week we learned that there was a further chain of incompetency involved. This woman was clear enough in her thinking to prepare an armed defence against eviction, and even managed to assemble an arsenal in her room even though though her room was video monitored. I am reminded of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eightyfour who sat in his alcove with his back to the telescreen writing "Down with Big Brother!" I conjure an image of Linda sitting in her suite reading Orwell's novel, with a smirk on her face. (see my footnote)



Linda Lorraine Howe - a tight cropping from a Dec. 2008 snapshot. In March of 2009 Howe refused to submit to eviction from a care home she was ineligible to occupy. She shot the attendant who was serving final Eviction Notice. Her trial continues in B.C. Supreme Court.

This week Howe is being tried in the B.C. Supreme Court. It's all rather routine and she may never utter a word in her own defence. It only remains to be seen whether she will "do a little time" behind bars or perform a little penance in a group home. Either way, she remains a ward of the province. Actually she is minor figure in this piece. The testimony of a score of heavyweight groups and agencies will fill the trial transcript.

What I did find remarkable in the limited coverage of the trial, was testimony concerning the CCTV camera system installed in the residential complex. The idea that Howe's room was video monitored I find repulsive. (No mention was made of audio pickup.) How does a resident manage to exercise the urge to cuddle, pick their nose or masturbate, if there is a camera? To my way of thinking, the denial of privacy was just as dangerous a catalyst for violence as the threat of losing the subsidized housing she had grown dependant on.

What the nominal leaders of this province will never understand, (until a disaster turns off the energy supply for a week or two or our economy implodes), is that social engineering has not created a stronger more resilient B.C. population, but rather a community of selfish interests which is going to react very, very badly if any attempt is ever made to have them resume greater responsibility for their own lives.

Testimony supporting the charge of attempted murder in a nursing home: Video surveillance exists INSIDE each bed unit of a B.C. licensed care facility in Gibsons ! and yet intrusive surveillance failed to detect a long term, angry resident caching weapons in her room... two rifles, a pistol, knives, etc ???!!!

If a disabled 40 year old woman could create such havoc, imagine what thousands of healthy young men and women are capable of accomplishing if they reject our society's values and laws? Come to think of it, have not the 60,000+ veterans of the B.C. drug economy already served us warning?

Update May 15 - testimony in court yesterday disclosed fresh information including the fact that the video monitoring system active in the defendant's suite was installed by Ms. Howe herself, in attempt to catch staff should they mess with her property. As I am no Winston Smith, I will just add this footnote without altering my reference to Orwell's novel.

Fear and Loathing in Vancouver

Vancouver's gang war, the UN Gang vs Red Scorpions, got boring, so I had stopped commenting on it months ago. The police chief recently admitted on camera that local politicians had been twisting his arm, demanding he not admit what all the bodies in the gutter imply... that it is a war. Many of you get your daily drip of gore from the Vancouver SUN, which gooses each edition with crime news, and links news coverage to Bolan's Blog on the same website. The SUN is now requiring its writing staff to participate in building a web-presence for the newspaper...The inevitable is just over the horizon. The expensive printing and distribution crews will get their pink slips... look for it in 2012, and the paper will go to online subscription.

This morning's SUN story on the Bacon family appearing at the courthouse, featured handsome Jarrod Bacon looking like he wanted to audition for a part in a Bond movie. His photo prompts an anecdote shared with me last week by a Grade 12 student who had just taken his Transitions Exit Interview, a process required by the B.C. curriculum. The student wanted to impress, so he bought a new suit and had his hair cut for the interview. He told me that when he walked into the room the first words out of the teacher's mouth were, "Wow, you look just like a UN gang member!"

I found his story a tad funny because it indicates an apparent shift in local perceptions of criminality. We have a whole new image of what might now be making many local women jittery. Good looking young men... those who keep themselves fit and are well groomed and well dressed, may now be deemed physically threatening.

This prompts the question, "What is the investigative profile of the man who killed Wendy Ladner-Beaudry at Pacific Spirit Park last Friday?" The brutal death of Ms. Ladner, who was a member of Vancouver's ruling elite, has shocked fellow residents of the West Side, those who have always believed that money and class insulated them from the more sordid aspects of Vancouver's social evolution. Are the police looking for some bedraggled, long haired transient, or are the looking for some buffed up young bloke, who was seen in expensive runners and designer sunglasses? Ms. Ladner's husband insists that his wife would have met any attacker with a barrage of blows. It was interesting to read that, in spite of their being overtaxed by almost daily gang killings, the V.P.D. was able to deploy 75 officers and 20 vehicles to the scene of Ms. Ladner's murder, and maintain those assignments ever since. Apparently we have more law enforcement capability than we've been told.

And what to make of the recent Paul Rogers story "FROM HEAVEN TO HELL" published in the THE INDEPENDENT ? (Many opinions held by Vancouver residents are posted online under Rogers' article. Have a read.) Rogers, a visiting scholar at SFU, bit into some tender political flesh with that story. Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell offered reporters an identical denunciation - "a cheap shot", apparently annoyed that foreign media are unwilling to fall into lockstep with the local media.

Mr. Beaudry, who is distraught and angry, told the Vancouver Courier "If there's any good in this, it's that we can't give in to terror. We can't fold. Terror is a great tool, but we can't let terror take over."

Linda Lorraine Howe (seen here in Dec. 2008 Xmas party photo) alleges that she was allowed to slip through the mesh of Canada's social safety net.

What are we to make of Linda Howe? This is the woman who recently brandished two weapons inside a nursing home at Gibson's B.C., when attendants tried to evict her from a room she was no longer entitled to. Ms. Howe's response was to barricade herself in the room. After shooting an attendant she had to be taken down by a police tactical unit. I can understand how Ms. Howe managed to conceal a small Argentinian auto pistol in her room, but how did she manage to cache a .303 Enfield Rifle?

Ms. Howe is here seen in a surveillance photo, taken inside her room at the care home.

Linda Lorraine Howe of Gibsons, B.C. was armed with a 7.65 Bersa auto pistol, which was manufactured in Argentina in the 1970s. Which of her beau's was stupid enough to give this gun to a woman with emotional problems?

Ms. Howe has been alleging for years that our "system" has let her down. Which node of the system in particular? DND, ICBC, BC Health, et al. Howe has told anyone who will listen that she is a Canadian "veteran" of the Gulf War, suffering from "post Traumatic Stress Disorder". Her family have told news media that she made up the Gulf War service but I read in today's GLOBE AND MAIL that she enrolled in a Vancouver Military Reserve Unit for a few months in 1990. On the strength of that abortive attempt to fit in, the GLOBE today dubs Ms. Howe a "Veteran". How does someone who doesn't take enough reserve training to get Trade Qualified, warrant the honour of "Veteran"? Gee whiz !

This screen capture is precious, isn't it? Ms. Howe's crimes are deemed "alleged" but the neophyte reporter confirms her supposed status as a "military veteran". (Based on a few months on the nominal roll of reserve unit.) Ouch. I guess we really did let Linda down.

DEC. 20, 2010 - we learn today that Ms. Howe was sentenced to seven years of detention.