A remote stretch of Highway 37 near the area where the body of Leonard Dyck was found outside of Dease Lake, is seen in Northern British Columbia on Wednesday, July 24, 2019. Teen fugitives Kam McLeod and Bryer Schmegelsky have been charged with second-degree murder in Mr. Dyck's death.Rafal Gerszak/The Globe and Mail
Good morning.
Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod have been best friends since grade school. They shared a love of online gaming, they found jobs together at the Port Alberni Walmart, they set out on a road trip together to find work in the Yukon.
This week, they were named together as suspects in the killings of Chynna Deese and her boyfriend, Lucas Fowler. They were charged with second-degree murder in the death of Leonard Dyck, a botany professor from the University of British Columbia.
Together, they were last seen in remote Gillam, Man., on Monday. Together they remain the subject of a Canada-wide manhunt, with police suggesting there’s a chance the two may have been inadvertently helped to escape Gillam by a motorist who may not have recognized them.
Almost a dozen Globe and Mail reporters worked on the story this week, with Jana G. Pruden writing the story from the Northern B.C. angle. As Jana retraced the pair’s journey through the forested remoteness of northern British Columbia, Mike Hager knocked on dozens of doors and spoke to even more sources in the Vancouver Island mill town where the pair are from, and Justin Ling plumbed social media and online gaming sites to understand the two teens.
What emerges is a story of contrasts between the two friends.
Mr. McLeod grew up on a comfortable acreage across from picturesque Sproat Lake. He has a sister and his tight-knit family, who all repeatedly declined media interviews, described him as a “kind, considerate, caring young man who has always been concerned about other people’s feelings.” Mr. McLeod, 19, graduated from an area high school and colleagues and friends described him as shy, calm and likeable.
The elder McLeod’s statement said the family hopes to have their son back home safely “so we can all get to the bottom of this story.”
Mr. Schmegelsky’s father, Alan, told a Canadian Press reporter this week he worries his son is on a “suicide mission.”
Bryer’s childhood appears to have been difficult. Alan Schmegelsky described a bitter divorce when his son was a boy. Court records indicate his father has a lengthy criminal record. Bryer split his time between the house where his mother and her boyfriend live and his grandmother’s house in Port Alberni, with some time spent in Victoria living with his father.
As Mike learned, gaming friends describe behaviour that prompted many of them to cut off contract from Bryer Schmegelsky. One friend said he was on a camping trip with Mr. Schmegelsky and Mr. McLeod. Mr. Schmegelsky was wearing a Nazi armband and military fatigues and using a replica Nazi knife to crush up Ritalin tablets and snort them.
“I’m so dumbfounded that Kam would be a part of this,” said the teen.
Another online gamer recalled Mr. Schmegelsky making jokes on SnapChat about cutting people’s heads off. When the friend jokingly told him “Don’t start killing people,” Mr. Schmegelsky replied: “I would never do that.”
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Around the West:
Plane crash: Four people were killed when the float plane they were travelling in crashed onto an uninhabited island off the northern tip of Vancouver Island.
Alberta power: Justin Giovannetti provides some context today to the decision this week by the Alberta government to scrap NDP plans to change the province’s electricity market and to stick to the deregulated power system created two decades ago. The government’s decision won’t affect power bills in the short term, because the shift to a partly regulated market was still two years away. But experts have warned more volatile power prices could return.
Alberta’s electrical market has been an outlier in Canada since the early 2000s. Most Canadians buy power from large Crown corporations that dam rivers or split the atom. Albertans get electricity from private companies that compete among themselves. The system has been credited with getting new power stations built without public funding as the provincial economy boomed. However, bills sometimes fluctuate wildly.
MLA charged: A member of the Saskatchewan legislature is stepping down from her role as provincial secretary after being charged with assault. Saskatoon police say Nadine Wilson, MLA for Saskatchewan Rivers, was arrested Thursday when she turned herself in to police in Prince Albert, Sask.
Premier Scott Moe says in a statement that the charges stem from a private family matter. He says Ms. Wilson – who says she is innocent – will remain in caucus, as the charges have not been proved in court.
Surrey transit: Frances Bula reports that Vancouver’s regional mayors voted, some grudgingly, to go ahead with a plan to build only the first, seven-kilometre phase of a SkyTrain line from Surrey to Langley, using the $1.63-billion that had previously been committed for more extensive light-rail lines.
But that leaves the future uncertain for many residents and businesses along two main routes in Surrey, the region’s fastest growing city, where there had been plans to have them served by light rail. It means residents will be getting less coverage for new transit than Mayor Doug McCallum promised during the last election campaign and fewer routes than were going to be built under the now-cancelled previous plan.
Opioids: The chief medical health officer of Vancouver Coastal Health is calling for the urgent regulation of illicit drugs so substances could be sold or provided free to those at high risk of overdose through a framework similar to policies on marijuana, alcohol and tobacco.
Dr. Patricia Daly said limits on who could access the drugs, with penalties for anyone trying to sell them to minors, would be part of a proposed regime to prevent overdose deaths of people who are accessing street drugs often containing the deadly opioid fentanyl.
Opinion:
Margaret Wente on a trans activist’s human-rights complaint: “Absurd as it seems, the case of the unwaxed testicles is simply the logical outcome of current gender ideology, which holds that you are who you say you are and physiology is irrelevant.”
Adrienne Tanner on Surrey’s crumbling coalition: “Instead of blaming the people around him, Mr. McCallum might want to take a little time for some self-reflection. If his coalition was weak from the beginning, it was his job to build consensus. On that front he is failing.”
Tony Alexis and Paul Poscente on getting Indigenous ownership of the Trans Mountain pipeline right: “We have an opportunity for transformational change in the way major infrastructure projects are conceived and completed. As members of Iron Coalition, an Alberta-based, Indigenous-driven organization with the sole purpose of achieving ownership in the Trans Mountain pipeline (TMX), we are encouraged to know the federal government is open to Indigenous ownership of this major project. We also know that in order for Indigenous ownership to be successful, the process must be methodical, systematic and reasoned. It is simply premature to present an offer on the TMX project.”
Alexandra Gill on breakfast in Vancouver: “Simple and small or big and fancy, breakfast in Vancouver is definitely no longer boring.”