Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2018

The Current Transcript for March 6, 2018

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I would ask anyone who recognizes the individual in this picture to contact us as soon as possible. We need to put a name to this face, and bring closure to this man's loved ones.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: The investigation into a serial killer in Toronto continues to disclose new evidence, raise questions, and add new victims. And as it does critics circle back to concerns over the police work and the time lost in realizing there could be a serial killer. So what can we learn from a project in the U.S. where researchers are compiling a massive data base of all murders stretching back more than 40 years? In a moment we'll hear from a criminologist who says algorithms and data bases are tools every police department should be using. And still with concerns over police Indigenous leaders say Thunder Bay's police chief needs to go.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: There's a systemic problem with the Thunder Bay Police Force, so I'm calling for Chief Levesque's resignation, and barring that I think the police board has to do their job and fire him.

AMT: Ontario's Independent Police Review Director has released a damning report into the police investigation of the death of an Indigenous man concluding it wasn't much of an investigation at all. We're looking at the implications in an hour. Also today, back in the Victorian era people would talk about Death but never about sex. Now it’s reversed.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We kind of think, 'if I don't think about it, and if I don't talk about it, then maybe it's not going to come to me if I just close my eyes long enough it might just go to everybody else.' But all of us will certainly have somebody in our lives who dies.

AMT: Julia Samuel spends her days immersed in the grief of others helping them confront it in ways that help them heal. She says unresolved grief accounts for 15 per cent of all psychiatric referrals. Hear her insights in half an hour. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

Back To Top »

Data-driven approach could have helped catch alleged Bruce McArthur earlier, says expert

Guests: Lorenda Reddekopp, Michael Arntfield

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: We have recovered the remains of at least seven individuals, from the planters seized at Mallory Crescent. Tests are ongoing in an attempt to continue to identify these victims.

AMT: There had been fears that the number of suspected victims was likely to grow and yesterday, Toronto police Detective Sergeant Hank Idsinga confirmed it: seven. That's how many men's remains have been found, decomposing in large planters on a Toronto property associated with alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur. McArthur was arrested in January and is now charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of six men who disappeared from or were connected with Toronto's gay village. His earliest known victim was first reported missing in 2010. With each newly revealed piece of information about the investigation, the questions begin again: could police have done more to stop this from happening? In a few minutes, I'll be joined by a criminologist who says better analysis of homicide data might have helped police connect those deaths earlier. But first, CBC reporter Lorenda Reddekopp has been following the story and joins me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: Hi Anna Maria.

AMT: What did police reveal about this seventh set of remains?

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: Well this wasn't actually something new. They always had that remains — that set of remains just like the others in those planters. All of the planters — these large planters — that were found outside that home that sort of became like Ground Zero for their investigation. And that is where Bruce McArthur — the accused — worked as a landscaper. He also stored his tools there. It's interesting that when you played that clip from the detective he referred still to it as being at least seven sets of remains that they have because they have these body parts — these aren't complete bodies. And so it's taken them a while to figure out exactly how many there are. These remains are at various stages of decomposition and forensic experts are still trying to figure everything out and what exactly they have.

AMT: Now they've released a photo of a man they believe is another unidentified victim. What did they tell you about that?

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: Yeah, that was an interesting one. It was something that police before that news conference started yesterday; they warned us that they were going to be showing a photo that was graphic. And then the detective sergeant also said, "I don't want to do this." And it turned out that he said — that photo — is a face of a man who they believe is dead in the photo. So it’s something that he has never done something like this ever in his career. But they haven't been able to identify who that person is.

AMT: Did they say where they got that picture?

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: They didn't say where they got it. But he did say that it's a piece of their evidence. So they have collected it somewhere during the course of their investigation. And we do know too that from the accused they have taken computers. They're going through all of that. They also did say with that photo that they cleaned it up. They said cleaned it up, retouched it, changed it. And so we don't know just how much that was changed. But what it did show was a face of a man with a dark bushy beard. His eyes were just barely open. And so they are just putting the call out to anyone who may know that man.

AMT: And I guess they just need somebody who might know them. It would be a terrible thing to have to realize and identify watching television.

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: For sure. And that's why he really didn't feel comfortable because he thought there could be family members or friends watching who might know that person and how upsetting that it would be. But he said that really it's necessary for their investigation.

AMT: What are you hearing in terms of reaction from the community after the latest discovery of more remains in this picture coming out?

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: So it was interesting that there was a friend of one of the people who has been named as a victim; he was actually there in the news conference which is unusual because usually it's just reporters. But he said when he saw that picture he thought like, 'man that person looks familiar'. He couldn't name you know who it was or where he might have seen him. But then I also heard that when I went to the gay village after that from someone else who works as an LGBT advocate and she said, "You know that it clicked something." She called it "eerily familiar" that the person's face looked. But she didn't know. She also though was critical because police said that this was their last means that they had to release the photo widely like this. They had gone to several organizations. They had sent the photo to them and said that this is someone who they're trying to identify. Well this person who is a well-known advocate said, "I've never seen that photo." And so she's criticizing police. We've heard this throughout this investigation that they haven't connected well enough with the community and so she still felt that.

AMT: That's really interesting. I was just going to ask you what the relationship is like right now because it's been rocky over the fact that members of that community have been calling for police to look into these disappearances.

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: So I think there's a mix because on the one hand some people feel that police still aren't doing enough. But on the other they feel like this is something. Like now they are hearing names. They're finding out what happened to these people. The detective not at this news conference but the previous one said that people would come up to him and say “thank you.” Like people do feel like something is being done. And also just in terms of reaction in the community I talked to some people yesterday who — it's hard for them every time a news conference happens that they kind of have to steel themselves up and wait for they don't know what they're going to hear. So it's hard. And then also in terms of dating that people do feel a bit nervous. It can't help it when all this news is coming out even though they know that this is so rare.

AMT: Well it keeps unfolding in chilling ways — very surprising ways. Has Toronto ever seen something like this?

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: No, they keep saying that this is like nothing they've ever seen before. And the other person who was at the news conference yesterday was the chief forensic pathologist for the province of Ontario and he said that every single person in his office is involved in some way in this case. And you know they're trying to figure out cause of death and trying to figure out all the victims because they have those seven sets of remains now, but four sets are still unidentified

AMT: And we don't know if they may find more. They are still looking.

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: That's right.

AMT: Lorenda Reddekopp, thanks for bringing us up to date.

LORENDA REDDEKOPP: You're welcome.

AMT: CBC News reporter Lorenda Reddekopp has been covering the Bruce McArthur investigation. She was in our Toronto studio. Toronto police services say they received hundreds of tips from people regarding the case against alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur. One of them was from Sasha Reid, a criminologist and a PhD candidate in applied psychology at the University of Toronto. One night last summer she was compiling a missing person’s database and she noticed a pattern. Here she is describing what happened to CTV News.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I sat at my computer that night every night and I was looking for websites that talked about missing people and just so I can add their names to my database. And there were three people on that list who shared similarities that I couldn't ignore. And those people were Skanda, Basir, and Majeed. And I Google their names. I tried to get a sense of who these people were and one of the first things to pop up was the fact that people believe there was a serial killer in the village. So I wanted to see how much truth there was to that claim because it's quite a significant claim. And so I took all of that data from missing people and unsolved homicides in Toronto. I put it on a map; tried to get a sense of who was there. And I noticed, yes, this fear that people had in the community was legitimate. So I used a victim data in order to create a criminal profile for the police and armed with that data I gave them a call. So essentially I called 911 to start with because I never called the police before. I had no idea who to call. Fortunately they transferred me to a detective. It wasn't the detective working the case. But it was still a detective. So we just talked about the rumours going around the village. He explained he had heard these rumours before and they were aware that people were talking about it. I did say I have these databases and I can create a profile and do what I can to help. And he said, "Thank you very much. And if they need me, they will call again." So they were very receptive and we did talk for a significant period of time. And then that's it.

AMT: Sasha Reid is a PhD candidate in applied psychology at the University of Toronto, describing how she came up with a criminal profile of a possible serial killer. My next guest uses data to help identify when a serial killer might be at work. Michael Arntfield is a criminologist and an associate professor of criminology at Western university. He is the director of the Cold Case Society at Western. He is also on the board of the Murder Accountability Project in the U.S., a non-profit homicide databank. We reached him in London, Ontario. Hello.

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: Good morning Anna Maria.

AMT: What do you think of that story where you have somebody working on this on her own and maps something out and tries to go to the police with it and doesn't get very far?

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: Well I know Sasha Reid fairly well. I met her at a conference in Boston in the fall. I am a fan of her work. I believe there's some great merit to it and it's admirable what she did. It sounds like she's reported this as a reasonably amicable interaction with Toronto Police. Now at that point we know sort of retroactively the investigation was already sort of under way. Obviously no bodies had been recovered but that may end up being a tool down the road for them for sure.

AMT: We know the LGBTQ community had been saying for years they were worried about a serial killer. How could data analysis of the type that you do at the Murder Accountability Project have potentially helped police on something like this?

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: Well unfortunately there is no similar Murder Accountability Project in Canada yet that would have allowed that. I'm working on that as we speak. And in theory the software we use which scans nearly 800,000 murders since 1965 and more specific case level data since 1976 finds meaningful clusters among those hundreds of thousands of murders based on some very specific data points that we know statistically overwhelmingly point to a serial killer. From there couple of things happened. First of all, I should stress your listeners can go to murderdata.org and search these for themselves. This is completely publicly accessible data for free. They can search by city. They can search by year. They can search by type of victim. They can search by type of weapon. They can search by motive.

AMT: And this is in the United States, right?

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: This is only in the United States. That's right. Thus far, and that's in part because of how the founder Thomas Hargrove and the co-founder Eric Witzig, a former FBI analyst and special agent, obtained the information from the U.S. Justice Department. There's something called the Supplemental Homicide Report which is really a great data vehicle for us to populate this map of murder. And what it does is we can find these meaningful clusters that have eluded human detection in part because they may scan multiple jurisdictions or multiple years. And we know that unfortunately a lot of these investigators just don't share their notes. They don't talk. So the algorithm will sort of shore up that difference and we'll find patterns that thus far have not been detected.

AMT: Has it been used in finding a serial killer?

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: It has. Our successes are published right on the homepage when you go there. Just the patterns that we've uncovered are remarkably revelatory. I mean the largest cluster of unsolved strangulations in American history — over 130 of them in Atlanta. Fifteen per cent of all unsolved strangulation's across the entire United States occurring in an 11 square mile radius in Chicago since 2000, and two — we estimate — serial killers active in Cleveland. We brought this information to the Cleveland police and they quickly assembled a task force combined with the FBI and there was an arrest made in one of the cases and that is pending as we speak.

AMT: Serial killers are relatively rare, are they not?

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: They are. But what the data shows is when you run the cluster algorithm and even if you just go back to say 2000 and look at the last 16 years — we're up to 2016 now in terms of our data— - I mean ten times at least the number of active serial killers previously estimated by the FBI. Far more than I think people thought. And again for the same reason that McArthur was able to operate — again allegedly — for as long as he did and likely much, much longer across other jurisdictions in Ontario is that essentially what we call "linkage blindness." No one has connected cases that are compelling in terms of what they have in common and that could be murder cases or missing person’s cases where really they are not recognized as a series when they should be investigated as a series due to their statistical anomaly until proven otherwise.

AMT: Right. And when you talk about clusters, do they necessarily have to be geographically close?

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: At present we sort them by county or by census metropolitan area. We're working on a way to look at interstate killers who would maybe operate in a tri-state area or across a large time zone even in the U.S. So even just breaking them down by county, again, you can see in larger urban areas that — many of these crimes encompass six or seven different police agencies. Again that we know aren't sharing these records and are unaware that they're all investigating the same killer. What we're seeing in larger cities you've got two and three active at once and this is represented with the cluster analysis on our website as sort of a pie charting. If you hover over that and click on one of the colours in the pie chart it will then tell you the assigned cluster number, the number of victims, and the cause of death. And then from there you can get more specific information, including the age and race of the victims.

AMT: Ok. This is really important that the idea that there are so many different police forces that are looking at things you don't necessarily know they're related until you actually have the data that you can run through.

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: That's right. And I've been stressing this in the McArthur investigation from the outset. Right now Toronto Police is shouldering the entirety of this investigation because again all the confirmed victims or allegedly confirmed victims linked to him have occurred within their jurisdiction. We also know that he was active for many, many years in other parts of Ontario prior to arriving in Toronto. So this case as it expands may go on to take on I mean dimensions that require countless other police departments, including police services no longer in existence that may have been acquired by or sort of taken over by the OPP and from which there may not be any existing records.

AMT: That's why the other project in the States goes back 40 years.

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: Correct. And it reflects again amalgamated departments but the records persist. And this is why all agencies are required to report their murders to the FBI. When we go to the FBI for that data, it’s one stop shopping. We can get the entire country with one freedom of information request sort of annually or rolling requests as filed by our founder.

AMT: So this is what you'd like to see replicated in Canada?

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: Yes I would. There is an uphill battle in Canada in part because access to data in spite of platitudes offered by the government to the contrary is not that easy. The data vehicle that we use in U.S. Supplemental Homicide Report no really similar mechanism exists in Canada. I have found another good data vehicle but StatsCan has suggested it will not comply with FOI requests or access to information requests or federal requests to release that. So time will tell what the solution is to that. I mean at the Murder Accountability Project Illinois tried the same thing with us and we successfully sued them for that data, plus our costs, so we haven't ruled that out in Canada.

AMT: Ok, Michael Arntfield thanks for your insights into this today.

MICHAEL ARNTFIELD: Thank you. Anytime.

AMT: Michael Arntfield works with the Murder Accountability Project in the U.S. and is the director of the Cold Case Society at the Western University. We reached him in London, Ontario. Coming up later this week we have a story some of you might find…well viscerally satisfying.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Glass breaking]

VOICE 1: You going to grab your rage utensils, bat, crowbar, why have you. Focus all your rage on the items itself. Totally cool if it hits the wall. We've got electronic saved up for dessert. Have a smashing good time.

VOICE 2: Look at these baseball bats [laughs].

AMT: A Toronto rage room where people pay to get their frustrations out by smashing stuff and the pièce de résistance is a printer. Who among us has not been angry at a printer specifically at a paper jam. Engineers whose job it is to make sure paper jams do not happen say it's harder to prevent them than you would think. Here's Xerox's Vicki Warner.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Paper printing]

VOICE 1: So of course we've all been there with the frustration of experiencing a paper jam, right? And it always seems to come at the most inopportune time. You're already late for the presentation that you're heading to and you need these hard copies. So I can definitely sympathize with that. We've all been there. But the truth is that actually is a big part of what excites me about my job. New paper jams are particularly exciting especially to us engineers, right? We love the challenge of a difficult problem. There are motors. There are boards. It takes so much to get a piece of paper from one end of the machine to the other and still have a piece of paper that's legible and nice and flat and neat. Paper is processed. It's not manufactured which means every piece of paper is a little bit different, right? Think about human beings, right? We're all a little bit different. And you try to get this paper through a press without jamming. I don't think it's possible.

[Sound: Paper printing]

AMT: Well what the frustrations of paper jams tell us about the complexity of technology. We'll tell you more later this week. The CBC News is next. And then we’re talking to author and psychotherapist Julia Samuel about grief. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

Back To Top »

'Grief needs to be expressed': How facing death allows us to live more fully

Guest: Julia Samuel

AMT: Hello, I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AMT: Still to come, the death of Stacy DeBungee, an Indigenous man found in the river in Thunder Bay, in 2015, has always seemed suspicious to those who knew him as well as to a private investigator who looked into the case. Now a new report confirms what others have said that the Thunder Bay police were lax in their investigation. In part because of the man's race. Stacy DeBungee's brother joins me as part of our look into the situation, in about half an hour from now. But first, getting through grief, by talking through grief.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: My job is to protect my children. And I sent my kid to school.

VOICE 2: I just spent the last two hours putting [together] the burial arrangements for my daughter's funeral, who's 14!

VOICE 1: I don't know what I do next. My wife is home – we are broken.

AMT: Two parents — their raw grief broadcast across the country and the world after both lost 14-year-old daughters in last month's school shooting in Parkland, Florida. It's not often we see others' grief played out so publicly. Much more often, people are left to deal privately with the pain that comes from losing loved ones. For such a universal experience, death and the grief that follows it are subjects we don't talk about nearly enough, according to my next guest. Julia Samuel is a grief psychotherapist in the UK. Her new book is called Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving. And she's in our London, England studio. Hello.

JULIA SAMUEL: Hello. Gosh, what a devastating clip hearing the rawness of that pain.

AMT: In the voices — you can just…

JULIA SAMUEL: You can just hear the kind of scream inside how it's torn up their life. A child's death and a very brutal and sort of intentional murder of their child is the absolute opposite of everything you expect from your child’s life. You expect them to bury you. You expect to see them thrive, and as he said you know my job is to protect them and I just did something innocent and I send them to school. And so it tears up everything he believed in and she believed in. Everything they trusted. And the rebuilding of their life after devastation like that is, you know, that's a big mountain to climb.

AMT: It's interesting. We saw a number of those clips playing out and the anger and the pain was almost so intrusive to even watch at times after the Parkland shooting.

JULIA SAMUEL: And that's such a good point because that I think is part of the reason why we don't talk about grief and why we don't listen to people because it's embodied and we feel it viscerally in our own systems. And actually it's very uncomfortable. It puts us in death, in touch with our own mortality, and even the possibility that our own child could die or someone that we love could die is unbearable. So we'd much rather not listen to it or not know anything about it. But then of course it means when it happens which it will inevitably in our life at some point we're ignorant and we don't know how to cope with it and we don't know what to say and we don't know what's normal to feel.

AMT: So that's what you mean... when you say we're not very good at talking about death and the grief that follows.

JULIA SAMUEL: Absolutely, because it scares us. We kind of think, 'if I don't think about it, and if I don't talk about it, then maybe it's not going to come to me if I just close my eyes long enough it might just go to everybody else.' But all of us will certainly have somebody in our lives who dies. And in our own time will face our own death.

AMT: You point out that the Victorians were much more open about death but they couldn't talk about sex. And now it's the opposite. How do we get there?

JULIA SAMUEL: Well I think it's people like you who are prepared to put these difficult subjects on the radio and kind of put them in people's lives. I think we should be as able to examine death as we do life. And I think actually the other side of it is if we dare to do that we find that our life is enriched because we kind of recognize how precious it is. So I think it gives us gifts. And yes the Victorians barely showed an ankle but had all these incredible rituals around death and wore black and purple and then grey and had black armbands. And now our grief is invisible. We have no external signals. And one of the things I think we could do is wear a little black ribbon to show that we're mourning so that people are a bit nice to us when we leave a store or being pushed around on a train because we feel very vulnerable. It's like we've had a layer of skin taken off us when we're grieving.

AMT: And it's interesting too because a lot of people just don't know what to say, right? We always hear that: "I am sorry for your loss."

JULIA SAMUEL: Yes.

AMT: What do you think of that?

JULIA SAMUEL: I think it's a lot better than crossing the other side of the street or saying nothing. And I think acknowledging the loss is probably the simpler, most straightforward thing you can say. I think where people get tongue tied is when they try and say something to make it better or to fix it and then they normally say something wrong. But also I think it's the tone of your voice. The way you said it was how people say it which is a bit pattern and a bit mechanical. But if you really show sincerely that you really are sorry people appreciate it. What they find difficult is silence.

AMT: What else do they find unhelpful?

JULIA SAMUEL: I think they lots of things helpful. I think in relation to themselves they often expect themselves to feel better and be myself again much quicker than is realistic. And I think they turn a lot of their anger and upset against themselves. So probably one of the most important things is self-compassion; being a bit kinder to yourself and you know ‘this takes longer than you want or hope’. Probably the single biggest thing that can help is the connection and love of others when we're missing someone that we love. So kind of be active and try not to hide yourself away because you think it's embarrassing or you think people are fed up with you but actually seek help as well as welcome the help that people offer.

AMT: What is the impact of the reluctance on the grieving for someone? If there's a reluctance to talk about it and someone is grieving, how does that affect the process if everyone around can't talk about it or about the person who they miss?

JULIA SAMUEL: It's sort of complicated because it's very individual. But we each have our own default mode of coping with difficulty. You know some people find it easy to express themselves and some people as you say here find it very difficult. And you can't fight against that. So you have to allow people to be who they are. But I would encourage them to allow that but also to find ways that fit with them of expressing our grief. Grief needs to be expressed. Pain is the agent of change and it's only through that that we adjust to this new reality that the person has died. So they could do it by writing or listening to music or going for a walk. I mean I always think it's better to do the walking or the music with someone because it can feel very lonely. But actually as long as they're doing something that is an active way of remembering the person that's died and they're finding a way of expressing what they feel that is some good steps towards adjusting to this painful reality.

AMT: How individual is the process of grief person-to-person?

JULIA SAMUEL: It's both. It's entirely unique. And so it will depend on your previous history of losses, your personality, the support that you have around you and the circumstances of the death and the relationship that you had with the person that died. All of that will be very unique. But some of the processes, although uniquely expressed in you, are universal. You know that we can't ignore grief. If you shut it down and don't think about it and don't talk about it, you will pay a price which is that your capacity to feel will be shortened or you may well have some sort of physiological expression of it. So it may come out physically. So we all need to find a way of expressing it.

AMT: And I guess if we don't then it comes back at us somewhere. Like at some point we do have to confront it.

JULIA SAMUEL: I think that's right. I mean a new loss will always bring back previous losses. But if those previous losses are completely unresolved grief, there gets a tipping point where then you really don't cope. And 15 per cent of all psychological disorders are unresolved grief. So you know that's quite a high statistic.

AMT: That is very high. It's interesting. In a lot of countries you know you can get maybe three days off if someone close to you dies.

JULIA SAMUEL: I mean I understand about businesses in particular small ones where it's very difficult for people to take time off. But I've been doing some research and 60 per cent of people who breathe don't feel supported at all work. And actually the company — I think their bottom line would do better in the end if they do let them have a proper amount of time off and work with them about how they can come back to work and what they're going to say to their colleagues and how they can support them because then they'll feel so grateful and so loyal. They'll work more effectively.

AMT: It really depends on the individual. Some people want to throw themselves into work.

JULIA SAMUEL: Yes and I think work has a really big part to play. I think having the structure of work and the familiarity of work and the distraction of work where you're potent; you know what you're doing. Whereas grief you feel completely alienated and you feel sort of lost. So I think it has a part to play. But three days — you haven't even begun to kind of recognize that the person has died. You're still absolutely in shock. And every grief is individual. There isn't a right or wrong way. But there are certainly damaging things that you can do. I mean a lot of people do anything they can to anesthetize the pain. One of which is work. But very, very commonly it's alcohol or drugs. And if you start developing that pattern of trying to block out the pain with alcohol or drugs that's a really difficult kind of system and dysfunction to then get back on track in your life.

AMT: Especially if there are other people involved and other relationships. I want to ask you specifically about different types of relationships. What do you see in your work with people who have lost a child?

JULIA SAMUEL: I see the devastation. And when the child dies it's your future as you expected it dies with them. And I also see the alienation because other people find it so distressing to be with them that often they are more alone than another death. And so it takes so much work and resilience and robustness and courage, really, to allow themselves both to feel the pain of their loss which is frightening. And one of the most difficult things is the sense of guilt as a parent whatever the circumstance is that in some way they failed. But also they feel that the pain connects them to the child that has died. So it's very hard for themselves to give themselves permission to be Ok. And that's real complicated that takes time to resolve.

AMT: Can you tell us the story of a family who went through this and how they coped?

JULIA SAMUEL: Yes. In my book there's a story of a couple whose daughter drowned. It was one of those awful everyday incidents where they were just putting the towels away and everyone was there. They had a lovely day. They were on holiday. And drowning is silent. That's the awful thing. And their five-year-old was at the end of the pool and they didn't realize that she'd gone in and the next thing they knew she was floating. And the father tried to resuscitate her and they called the ambulance. But it takes six minutes for your brain to stop from a drowning. And so she died. And it was incredibly traumatic. They at some level were responsible and certainly felt responsible although it was an accident that could happen to any of us. But for the grace of God go any of us. And working with them as a couple they grieve very differently. She unusually for a woman was much more — she wanted to get on and get on with her life and have another child. He was very preoccupied with their daughter that died and felt very absorbed in the guilt. He couldn't work because he was a teacher for about six months. So the work was sort of opening the lines of communication with them and allowing them to understand each other well enough that they didn't kind of fracture. Allowing them to keep parenting their other two children and over time what we talk about is that you accommodate the grief. It isn't that the pain gets smaller but you build your life around it and you learn to live. People talk about a "new me" and "my new life." So it isn't about forgetting and moving on but remembering the child that's died and finding a way of loving and living again. And that's actually what they did manage to do. It took about four years though. It took a long time.

AMT: Talk to me a little bit more about adults trying to help children cope with death?

JULIA SAMUEL: Well the instinct with adults is to protect children. Of course we want to protect them. But in this case the children were there. But very often adults don't want to tell the children the truth and they don't want them to see the child. But actually what children don't know they make up. And what they make up is limitless and is much more frightening than the truth. So our advice to families is children need as much truth as adults. Whether it's a child that's dying or has died or a parent or grandparent it can be told over time. You don't have to tell everything at once. And it's supporting them to know the truth and to let them be both happy children and bereaved children. So it's one of the metaphors I talk about in the book is like jumping in and out of puddles that they can be very sad and you need to allow them to grieve and be sad. But also let them be ordinary happy kids.

AMT: Are there things adults should not do when it comes to this?

JULIA SAMUEL: They should never lie because once the child finds out they can't trust that parent again and their trust in life is always ready kind of faulty because the person has died. So that can do real damage. This is particularly around deaths like suicide. I think the big thing is let them be sad children as well as happy children. Parents often want to say, "Don't worry. Get on. Be ok." And that suppresses their grief and that can come out later in life.

AMT: You say seeing the body can be important. Why is that?

JULIA SAMUEL: Yes, that's a good point. One of the most difficult tasks of morning because we're so shocked is accepting and living with the reality of the death. And if we have no images or no reality that can focus our grief it puts us and particularly children into magical thinking. So I worked with a child who was told about the body of his sister that had died and he imagined she'd been decapitated because children are very literal. But if he'd seen that she very much looked like herself and she looked like his sister but she was dead. So we talk about your sister looks like she's asleep but she's not asleep. Her body doesn't work anymore. And seeing them helps them do that task of facing the reality of the death. Does that make sense?

AMT: Yeah. Yeah, actually. It's very interesting. I come from a family where I always went to funerals. It was an open casket. Even as a child. But it is interesting because you don't...

JULIA SAMUEL: It doesn't scare you as much, does it?

AMT: There were always children at the funerals and there were always children at the funeral homes. I don't know if that's the case as much anymore.

JULIA SAMUEL: Often they're taken by the aunt or godparents or friends. Also, when they're older they look back at their 10-year-old or six-year-old self and they're furious that they've been excluded from their own parents or siblings funeral. It's like what made you think it was ok to take me away from it. Are you thinking that I don't matter? And they have no proper story. Children need a narrative: a beginning, middle, and the end that they can make sense of. That they can understand. And if they haven't got those pieces of the jigsaw it's very, very confusing and fragmenting for them.

AMT: You were friends with Princess Diana and her sons have spoken about their grief over her death. They have worked with you through Child Bereavement UK. How important was the fact that the princes spoke up in changing the conversation?

JULIA SAMUEL: I think in their Heads Together campaign talking about mental health and in their case talking about their own grief — they really turned the dial. I mean people listen to them because they're young and because they're men and they're men that have been in the military. So you know they've shown that they have quite a lot of courage and they do very difficult things and as a result there were many more calls particularly from young men seeking support in all the different support organizations. I mean that in itself is an amazing thing because the high suicide rate is young men from 18 to 25 and one of the causes of that suicide is unresolved grief. So they've really made a big difference.

AMT: How do the new ways of coping with death like online memorials change the face of grieving?

JULIA SAMUEL: I think the young are much better than say my parents’ generation or even my generation at being open about how they feel and even talking about death. And I think for families having a Facebook memorial page that people leave a message on can be incredibly supportive because you can feel like you're the only one in the world that misses the person that has died. And so seeing a message from a friend or a relative it can be incredibly supportive and they can do it globally in a way that was impossible even a few years ago. So I think that's incredibly supportive. My worry about it is that so much becomes viral and sort of digital that we lose this physiological contact and grief is embodied. We feel it in our bodies and we need that love and affection from people around us. You know we need those hugs. We need to feel loved not just by words on a page but by the love in someone's eyes looking at you in the eye. So I think that's where if it tips too far one way I'd be worried.

AMT: And I wanted to ask you as well about people who are facing their own death. How is that a process of grieving?

JULIA SAMUEL: Well by conversations like with you I hope that people begin to have conversations with those around them that they love way before they're likely to die so that you would talk to your partner or family or friends in a kind of not light way but in a conversational way about what you think about: Would you want to be cremated? Would you want to be buried? What's your greatest fear of dying? What's your ideal way of dying? What you think you'd need? You could listen to those around you and that you have these conversations. But the thing that I see is that when people really are dying and they've been given a terminal diagnosis everybody around them says, "You're going to be fine. The doctors are amazing. You're going to get cured." And so they get very isolated and they feel very fearful. But also there are great regrets for the family that survives them because they haven't had the important conversations about what their fear is about dying or what they thought or what they needed. And so often they don't know.

AMT: So because they're sort of afraid to go there they don't want to make the other person feel bad. Is that it, you think?

JULIA SAMUEL: I think it's absolutely that. I think they're frightened to go there in themselves. I think there's a kind of magical thinking is that if I'm really loving this person I have to have hope for their health and if I acknowledge the possibility of them dying I'm in some way failing them. So I have to kind of keep pushing the hope.

AMT: As you point out, it's fear. It's also if we have it then our own sense of mortality confronts us if we have that conversation with someone else.

JULIA SAMUEL: And I think particular in America too and I don't know if it's true in Canada, I think even more than here there is this kind of medical attitude which is that we have to do everything. We have to throw everything at it. You know science can win. And it doesn't acknowledge the reality of death and that there is a good death and there's a bad death. And what we need to be looking at is the quality of someone's life and how they might die.

AMT: You have said that every bereaved person leaves a mark on you. I'm wondering what affect it has had on you over the years?

JULIA SAMUEL: It's been a gift that I've been able to find something that I can do and that people talk to me feels an incredible privilege that I've travelled all over the world sitting in my chair and kind of visited their families with them. So that feels an extraordinary gift and has given me a huge mind. The price I pay is that I always think everyone I love is going to die. You know if they have a headache I think they've got a brain tumor and if they're late I think they've been run over. But that is because 20 hours a week I'm dealing with people's tragedies and I know that it's not true. But that is in my life so.

AMT: At the same time I'm guessing that you are reminded of how much people mean to each other?

JULIA SAMUEL: Yes. I mean I didn't say the most important thing which is it really gives me a proper perspective about what matters and what matters is our love for each other. Everything else falls away. And you know that from 9/11. The messages everybody sent was "I love you." It wasn't, "I'm sorry I didn't work harder or I'm sorry we didn't have enough money or I'm sorry." It was "I love you. I love you." That is the legacy everybody wants that they were someone that was loved and that they were someone that gave love.

AMT: I think that's a good place to end this conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your insights.

JULIA SAMUEL: And thank you so much for having me on your show.

AMT: Julia Samuel is a grief psychotherapist in the UK. Her new book is called Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving. And she joined us from London. Coming up in our next half hour, a new report confirms that the Thunder Bay police didn't do enough to investigate Stacy DeBungee's death in 2015. And it's met by calls for a shakeup in the force there. His brother, Brad, joins me, right after the break. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast, and on your radio app.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

What does the mishandling of Stacy DeBungee's death reveal about systemic racism in Canadian police forces?

Guests: Brad DeBungee, Tanya Talaga, Jonathan Rudin

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current. Stacy DeBungee was 41-years-old in 2015, when his body was found in the river in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Within hours, police concluded it was not murder, and that his death was not a crime. In a story first reported by the CBC’s The Fifth Estate, a report now confirms what many have said in the years since then that the local police failed to properly investigate his death because he was Indigenous.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: When I first heard of this my first thought was why am I not surprised? Our communities continue to be treated like they don't matter. Like our people don't matter. This report brings those things to light that we suffered through during every interaction with the police that we just don't matter enough for them to care.

AMT: That was Grand Chief Francis Kavanaugh, reacting in Thunder Bay to the report. He joined with other First Nations leaders in demanding that the Thunder Bay police chief, J.P. Levesque, resign his position. Stacy DeBungee's brother, Brad DeBungee, has long said he didn't believe the police's theory of what happened to his brother. And Brad DeBungee is on the line from Thunder Bay. Hello.

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Hello.

AMT: How do you react to this report?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: I'm kind of relieved in a way because it deals with like what we've been trying to figure out from the police like they got to be held accountable for their actions.

AMT: Do you think they are being held accountable though?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Once the action is taken and the first step towards dealing with it.

AMT: So you see the report as vindicating your beliefs.

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Yeah.

AMT: Yeah. When you were trying to get them to look into your brother's death how did you try to convince them? What did you tell them?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: By asking them questions how they found him and why wasn't I allowed to view his body? And what kind of gave me suspicion; when the funeral happened I took pictures that came to light that he had bruising and marks on his face that wasn't normal. And just how they conducted their interview at the first time I went to the police station and talked with them; how they tried to deny me whenever I asked if I could get legal advice and they suggested that I didn't.

AMT: Is there anything in the findings that surprised you?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Just the way the one guy was trying to explain himself; trying to back himself up or whatever, like backtrack and defending himself saying that it wasn't true to what my suspicion was.

AMT: You had fought for your brother's case to be investigated. What made you believe or know that police had mishandled that case?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Just the way they tried to put everything aside and stonewall me like I came to a dead end. Like they tried to say it was an ongoing investigation when they weren't really looking into the matter.

AMT: What have the past three years been like for your family since he died?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: We're just up in the air. Like we haven't had a sense of what's going on. We're always wondering what it's going to become of the matter.

AMT: And now that we know this, what would you like to see happen now in the police force?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: I would like to see changes. People like that shouldn't be on the force. They're there to serve and protect the community. And what do they mean by serve and protect? Is that just to serve and protect their own?

AMT: How would you describe the relationship between police and the Indigenous community in Thunder Bay?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: There are two different types of police. There are the good ones and there are the not so good ones. And there are just a few bad apples that got to be taken care of. If they did their job right in the first place I wouldn't be doing this if everything was handled properly and we had closure in the beginning.

AMT: And so what happens now do you think?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: I'm looking at the judicial system that handled this in the proper way in the way it's supposed to be handled.

AMT: Do you think someone else above the police needs to weigh in now on this?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Oh yeah. They got to have some higher authority to look into it to make sure that they do their jobs correctly and how they do investigations into Indigenous matters.

AMT: I know there's been a call for the police chief to resign and he has said he is not going to resign over this. Do you think people should lose their jobs over this?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Oh yeah. Most definitely. Just the way they handled the situation because he's the one that has the authority over the other officers and how things are handled properly.

AMT: Do you think there will ever be justice for your brother?

BRAD DEBUNGEE: I don't doubt there will ever be justice for him. But like I said the judicial system will have to take care of those members of the law enforcement.

AMT: Mr. DeBungee, thank you for speaking with me today.

BRAD DEBUNGEE: Thank you.

AMT: That is Brad DeBungee. His brother Stacy DeBungee was found dead in Thunder Bay in 2015. I misspoke there. Thunder Bay Police have not publicly responded to the report. They say ongoing issues of confidentiality and privacy interests of all parties involved. A spokesperson told CBC News Monday that Mr. Levesque is not expected to comment on calls for his resignation, while the Police Services Board says it has to review the report and formally meet.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The chief of police has to go and if he doesn't resign then it's up to the board to remove him. So I'm asking for this process to begin because this cannot continue.

AMT: That's another reaction to this latest report — this time from Jim Leonard, a former Chief of the Rainy River First Nation in Northern Ontario. For more on just what's inside the report, and what it means to the community, I'm joined by Tanya Talaga. She is a Toronto Star reporter. She is of Anishinaabe descent. Her grandmother is a member of Fort William First Nation. Tanya Talaga is also the author of Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City. She joins me in our Toronto studio. Welcome.

TANYA TALAGA: Boozhoo.

AMT: What was your reaction to this report?

TANYA TALAGA: I wish I could say that I was surprised. But I wasn't surprised at all when I heard about the findings in the report. You know reading the findings too is rather devastating. I'm of course thinking of the deaths of the seven students that occurred between 2000 and 2011 in Thunder Bay. And as most people probably know by now the students had come into Thunder Bay to go to high school because there were no high schools for them in their home communities. And many of the similarities that we saw with Stacy DeBungee and how the police didn't investigate into his death you could see those same circumstances in the deaths of some of the kids. So it was a mirror of what we have already seen in Thunder Bay and sadly that came as no surprise.

AMT: The actual investigation... What stuck out for you and what the Office of the Independent Police Review Director actually said?

TANYA TALAGA: The first thing that really stuck in my mind was that this death should have been treated right from the get go as a potential homicide and it wasn't. I mean it was treated as a I guess a sudden death instead. And so since it didn't get treated as a potential homicide from the very beginning everything that fell from there — all the mistakes or allegations of mistakes that were made — came from that particular point. I mean — this was also in that report — witnesses that were the last ones to see Stacy were not interviewed. Somebody came forward to say that she saw an Indigenous man having an altercation with someone down by the water and that sort of got missed as well. I mean there was no lead investigator. No one seemed to really understand who the lead investigator of the Stacy DeBungee death was. There was confusion it seemed as to how was this case going to be handled and who was going to handle it. And so what ended up happening was according to the report really nothing

AMT: And even things like this someone had a credit card of his or that they were using after he died.

TANYA TALAGA: That's right. Hours after he died. And this was something it was found by actually a former Toronto Police detective — homicide detective — Sergeant Dave Perry who was hired by the family. The family of Stacy DeBungee, Brad, he hired Dave Perry to come help out and to look at what was happening because Brad was just not happy with the results he was seeing with the investigation. And one of the things that Dave found was that Stacy's bank card was used hours after his death and that of course is an alarm bell right off the get go. And Dave investigated, made a whole bunch of findings, and he attempted to go with Brad to the police to say, “Look these are all the things we found.” And when they went for that first time the police wouldn't meet with them and talk to them about Dave Perry's finding. And this is someone who has significant, significant experience in Toronto. I mean he was the lead investigator in the Cecilia Zhang kidnapping and death case here, among other cases. I mean he knew what he was doing and his report found many inconsistencies and they were just not looked at whatsoever by Thunder Bay.

AMT: You mentioned the inquest into the deaths of the seven young people that you wrote about. The timing of Stacy DaBungee's death — his body was actually found right when that inquest was underway. Was it not?

TANYA TALAGA: That's right. That's right. It's quite remarkable actually. I mean the inquest had been just started weeks before and his body was found. Stacy's body was found two weeks after it started. This is one of the issues — the main issues — that the inquest was hearing time and time again. You know why is it the Thunder Bay police were putting out press releases that said “No foul play suspected,” you know, this is not a criminal matter before post-mortems were done. That was something that was seen in the deaths of the seven. It was seen in the case of Reggie Bushie; with Jethro Anderson — the first boy to go missing in 2000. The Thunder Bay police waited six days to even actually look for him — a 15-year-old boy. There are so many examples of Indigenous people in Thunder Bay going to the Thunder Bay Police — this was all heard in the inquest — and having their calls ignored and having their problems sort of brushed aside. And so all of these things came to light — were coming to light — at the inquest and were being brought up. Meanwhile down the street at the riverbank you have the same thing seemingly happening again. No investigation was happening. A press release was put out three hours after the discovery of Stacy DeBungee's body. And at that point they actually did not say this was Stacy DeBungee. They just said that a man has been found and they did not believe that any foul play was suspected at this point.

AMT: You've reported on all of this. But you spent a lot of time there because of your family. How would you describe then the relationship between Indigenous people and the local police force?

TANYA TALAGA: You know I write about this as well in Seven Fallen Feathers, Thunder Bay's always seemed to me a city of two faces — sort of the white face and the red face. You know I wish I could say that things were better but they really aren't. I mean like you can look at the fact that almost every single Indigenous teen that you speak to in Thunder Bay has had an incident – a racist incident — happen where garbage has been thrown at them by passing cars. They've had eggs thrown at them. This is something that you hear from every single Indigenous teen in Thunder Bay. It's not just a story of someone or someone heard something. This is a fact of what life is like up there. And you also see insensitive things happening all the time in the daily newspaper.

AMT: Well the headline about the egg. They said police were scrambling.

TANYA TALAGA: That's right. And that is incredibly insensitive especially when you look at the fact that Barbara Kentner, an Ojibway woman, she was hit by a metal trailer hitch in the stomach and she died — by a passing car. And of course news reports at the time said that her sister who was standing right beside her heard that someone yelled out of the car, "Oh I got one of them."

AMT: The office of the Independent Police Review Director is now looking at the wider issue of systemic racism, is it not?

TANYA TALAGA: That's true. I mean the case of Stacy DeBungee was the initial complaint that touched off the wider systemic review into the Thunder Bay Police Service regarding racism. And it's my understanding that about 30 cases have now been reopened and are being looked at. Those are 30 Indigenous death cases. Some of those are also non-Indigenous people because their notes are basically being compared of how police handled Indigenous cases — death cases — and non-Indigenous cases. And on top of that there are another nine cases of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls who are also being investigated.

AMT: Well this just raises more questions further up the chain. I will bring my next guest in for that. Tanya Talaga, thank you.

TANYA TALAGA: Thank you.

AMT: Tanya Talaga is the author of Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City. She is a reporter with the Toronto Star, and is on leave right now on a journalism fellowship. Jonathan Rudin is a lawyer who's represented families at the inquest into the deaths of the seven indigenous students. He has worked on several landmark Indigenous legal issues in Canada, including work on the Ipperwash Inquiry in Ontario. About 20 years ago, he co-authored the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples' report on Justice, Bridging the Cultural Divide. Jonathan Rudin is currently Program Director at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto. And he's with me in Toronto. Hello.

JONATHAN RUDIN: Hi.

AMT: I want to pick up on the last point. This is a bigger story than one man.

JONATHAN RUDIN: Yes. This is the latest instalment in a long history of Indigenous people being treated as less worthy victims by police services across the country.

AMT: And so 20 years ago you were looking at this — more than 20 years ago I think — what did you say then that no one has heard yet?

JONATHAN RUDIN: Well... that's a really good question [laughs]. I mean there are two issues. The Royal Commission recommended more Indigenous control over justice issues and policing. The current system has to change but there have to be real moves to change the way the system works to give control back to Indigenous people over justice issues and really nothing has happened in that regard. And the reforms within the system have been very slow if they've been happening at all.

AMT: And so we're in a moment in time here — we have the MMIWG inquiry, we have the death of Colten Boushie and a verdict that has upset many people. We have a number of things happening. What do you think as you see this unfolding?

JONATHAN RUDIN: I think that I'm tired of seeing this. That's what I think because while these things obviously [unintelligible] the broader issues are not anything that we haven't known for 20 or 30 years. So the issues with the jury; we've known that since now Senator Murray Sinclair and Justice Alvin Hamilton wrote their Aboriginal Justice Inquiry report. That Indigenous people are treated as less worthy victims by the police came up in the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry report; it came up in Wally Oppal’s report about the women in the Downtown Eastside after the Pickton murders. We have the murdered and missing Indigenous woman inquiry which is going to tell us things but many of the things we already know. So these studies and these commissions and these reviews are important but it becomes frustrating because they don't tell us anything new. They just tell us that things remain — apparently in the macro level — stuck. And it's hard to see what will move things along because none of the other reports of move things along. And so I am pessimistic on the macro level. You know I'm waiting to see this federal government which promised many things when they were elected and have delivered on none of them in the area of justice and there is no idea when they're going to deliver anything on justice. So yeah it's a frustrating and difficult time.

AMT: What do you think has to happen in Thunder Bay?

JONATHAN RUDIN: Well I think in Thunder Bay — to pick up on Tanya's point — Thunder Bay the city has to address the realities that are going on in Thunder Bay. And there is this divide in Thunder Bay and Thunder Bay is not the only city where there's a divide. There was a study after the death of Neil Stonechild in Saskatoon and the commissioner there said there's a divide. There are many divides in our cities across the country between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people where non-Indigenous people see the police as the people who are there to keep order and protect them and Indigenous people see the police as people who aren't there when they need them and are only there when they're not needed. So part of this has to be the City of Thunder Bay has to come to grips with this reality. They have to come to grips with the fact that there is a culture that has built up over who knows how many years where abusing, throwing things at kids who are walking down the street is a common thing. When we did the inquest we had evidence going back 20 or 30 years that this behaviour was going on and so the first thing is the city has to own up to this. And then if you take responsibility then you can move beyond. But if you deny responsibility, if you pretend it doesn't happen, it's very hard to get movement forward.

AMT: So in one sense you talk about what needs to go on at a federal and provincial level. But it's also about hearts and minds in some ways.

JONATHAN RUDIN: Very much so and that's why I think for me I'm not as frustrated overall because in the justice system we see across Ontario and across the country small examples of changes being made that are making differences. You know I wouldn't be doing this work if all it was failure and you get too depressed and you can't continue. But there are lots of victories. There are small victories. They're found on the micro level. They're found in in courts every day. They're found where judges and lawyers understand more about the people that are coming before them. So you see these small victories and they're important.

AMT: Give me an example of a small victory that makes you stop.

JONATHAN RUDIN: Sure. So in Ontario — thanks to funding largely from the Ministry Attorney General and Legal Aid Ontario we now can produce what are called Gladue reports for Indigenous people who are being sentenced. And that gives everyone in the court a real sense of the lives of people and what we see when crowns and defence counsel and judges get that information they go, "Oh you're a real person. I understand something about your life and I'm going to treat you differently now because I understand more about you." We see courts in Ontario and other parts of the country looking at other ways of sentencing so Indigenous people feel that they're being heard in a sentencing context. So we see these small steps which are very real for the individuals who are involved and help re-establish — maybe re-establish would be wrong because that would suggest anyone had trust. But they establish some sense of trust in the justice system not in the system as a whole but individuals go, “Here in this place.” For example there are number of courts in Toronto called Gladue courts — courts for Indigenous people. And a number of studies have shown that Indigenous accused people will often wait a couple days for a bail hearing. They'll wait in custody a couple of days for a bail hearing because they would rather have it in the Gladue Court which they see as a court that listens to them than in the normal court.

AMT: Is that right?

JONATHAN RUDIN: Yeah and so that speaks to the fact that they feel in that place they feel heard and they feel comfortable. They don't feel comfortable in the justice system but they feel comfortable that a place has been carved out for them.

AMT: And so should more things go to that court and why do they have to wait? Is it just backlogged?

JONATHAN RUDIN: Well so what has to happen is these initiatives have to be supported more broadly and that support to some extent has to come federally and provincially. But it also again as in Thunder Bay it has to come locally. These initiatives — these court initiatives — in Ontario and there are some in B.C. that spring from local judges and Indigenous leaders and Indigenous organizations saying, "Here's a problem. Let's see if we can solve it.”

AMT: And of course you're still talking about Indigenous people who are charged with a crime but you have made the point that Indigenous people who are victims of crime are still not seen as worthy of investigation.

JONATHAN RUDIN: That's right and that's that is a huge problem. Again one of the pluses at the moment just starting in Ontario is a recognition that there need to be victim services and programs for Indigenous people. And so there are more of those coming out so that people can come forward with their concerns because many of these individuals — they're victimized at the time the court sees them but they have a whole history of victimization where people who've been going back to residential school where people were abused in the schools and no one did anything at that time. So the idea of being ignored by the police is a longstanding history for Indigenous people in this country.

AMT: Jonathan Rudin, thanks for giving us some perspective.

JONATHAN RUDIN: Thanks for asking.

AMT: Jonathan Rudin is Program Director at Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto. He joined me in our Toronto studio. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Musical theatre composer Andrew Lloyd Webber joins Tom Power to talk about his memoir, Unmasked, and to share a playlist of songs that have influenced him. And a reminder that tonight Duncan McCue is hosting the next town hall in our series Facing Race. The event is fully booked, but there will be a few rush seats available for the first arrivals. If you can't be there in person, watch the show on Facebook Live and we'll be airing it, here on The Current, on Friday. Details are on our website cbc.ca/thecurrent. Finally today, a former Russian double agent is fighting for his life after being found unconscious from exposure to an "unknown substance." This incident is reminiscent of other poisonings of Russian dissidents who have been labeled persona non grata by the Kremlin. One story in particular is that of Vladimir Kara-Murza who was poisoned on two occasions in 2015 and again in 2017. Here he is describing in an interview on the program what happened and who might have been responsible. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: I was at a work meeting. And suddenly I began to feel very, very sick for no apparent reason. And within a space of under an hour, I went from feeling completely normal like I am now to basically being incapacitated. You know my heart started racing. I suddenly had difficulty breathing. Began to vomit and to sweat. And after about a couple of hours I lost consciousness and I do not remember anything else. So what I'm going to say next is what I know from my wife, my friends, my colleagues, and the doctors. Basically within a couple of days all of my major body organs shut down in a cascade, one after another. Multiple organ failure. The lungs, the liver, the kidneys, the heart, everything. And I was in a coma, on artificial life support, hooked up to cables and machines. And the doctors told my wife that I had about a five per cent chance to survive. So I'm very, very happy and very fortunate to be sitting here today.

AMT: They were moving you around from hospital to hospital trying to figure out what was wrong with you.

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: They did because they didn't understand what was happening because the organs would fail one after another. So they would deal something then something else would give up. They would go to deal with that and then a third thing would collapse. And then finally after about a couple days they realized this was a central issue. It wasn’t to do with any particular organ. And so of course the diagnosis both times — the first time and a second time — was "toxic action by an unidentified substance," which translated from medical into human language is poisoning.

AMT: How did you get poisoned? Do you know?

VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA: This bears the signature of the Russian Domestic Security Services or at least of people connected to them. And as we well know the Soviet and then Russian Domestic Security Services have perfected this practice of poisoning people for decades. They've had this lapse since the 1930s, developing these powerful toxins that are not only strong but also many of them untraceable.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

March 6, 2018 Episode Transcript

More Stories Like This