Raped twice by the same cop

“Elizabeth had no expectations when she opened her email on a Monday morning in early February. But the words she read in the message received at 9:05am struck fear through her. As she stared at the screen, disbelief escalated into panic. ‘To date I have not heard back from you. After discussions with our Director, our investigation will be concluded, and the [rape] kits obtained for evidence will be destroyed.’ Elizabeth was raped not once, but twice, by the same man: a cop with Halifax Regional Police. In both incidents, the officer was on-duty.”

Maggie Rahr – Halifax Examiner – June 2019

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The Russian spies who raised us

“Ed was standing in that same bedroom on June 29, 2010, getting dressed for a treadmill run at the gym downstairs. Pauline was in the kitchen, eating breakfast with her morning newspaper. The top story on the front page that Tuesday was the stuff of Hollywood scripts: the FBI had busted a group of deep-cover Russian spies operating on U.S. soil—including some who had stolen the identities of dead Canadian children. Pauline froze as she read one of the names: Tracey Lee Ann Foley.”

Michael Friscolanti – Maclean’s – August 2017

Taking Back the Neighbourhood

“When he moved into a 1960s-era northside bungalow in Lethbridge six years ago, Clint Russnaik liked his new neighbourhood. It was a ‘great place,’ he says, somewhere where “nothing bad happened.” Indeed, the wartime houses and large elms on his street recall a time when people talked about the upcoming summer fair, not drug dealers.”

 

Jeff Doherty – Alberta Views – May 2019

When Terror Came to Canada

“That first surge of 1,200 provincial and Montreal city police dragged 238 suspects into custody within the first eight hours of the act’s proclamation. Nearly 500 were swept into detention and 4,600 searches were conducted for weapons and subversive materials in the weeks before authorities finally conceded an armed insurrection in Quebec was, in fact, unlikely. The dragnet, along with the dispatch of 10,000 combat-equipped troops to help guard Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa, remains one of the most controversial moments in modern Canadian ­history.”

Brian Stewart – Literary Review of Canada – January 2019

After the Fire

“You would have been able to see it well before dawn if you lived across those fields, or if you happened to be travelling one of those dark and deserted highways: a spot of fire burning bright on the horizon, hot orange flames licking upward to the sky, a house disintegrating into embers below. The first firefighters arrived around 7:30, when the family who lived in the house would usually have been up having breakfast, getting ready for work or chores.”

Jana G. Pruden – The Globe and Mail – October 2018

Their daughters vanished — and parents say police stopped looking. Now desperate families are searching on their own

“A bat flits around Denis Aubertin’s head in the darkness, its wings casting shadows on the underground tunnel’s soot-blackened walls. On hands and knees and wheezing with the effort, Aubertin presses forward, desperate for some sign of his missing daughter. After crawling through 45 metres of tunnel beneath what appears to be a former grow-op on a farm in British Columbia’s Interior, he comes to a windowless room and a locked steel door. Rising to his full height, Aubertin throws his body against it. Over and over again he tries to break it down, but despite his tradesman’s strength the door refuses to yield.”

 

Jesse Winter, Jeremy Nuttall – StarMetro Vancouver – October 2018

How a fraudster got $12 million out of a Canadian university: They just asked for it

“The email started with an innocent “Hiya,” but the words that followed set off a chain of events that would tarnish a university’s reputation and send investigators on a months-long chase across the ocean and back. It’s been just over a year since MacEwan University was blindsided by an $11.8-million fraud. While the ruse itself was simple, the case that followed was anything but. Police had to navigate a complex money-laundering scheme that funnelled some of the stolen public funds through various accounts in two continents before reinvesting it in a real-estate deal in Richmond, B.C.”

Claire Theobald – StarMetro Edmonton – October 2018