Lorimer Shenher is a Canadian writer and former police officer. [1] The former head of the Missing Persons Unit of the Vancouver Police Department, [2] he is most noted for his 2015 non-fiction book Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away, [3] [4] about the regulatory and bureaucratic failures that hampered his investigation of serial killer Robert Pickton. [5] The book was a shortlisted finalist for the Edna Staebler Award [5] and the City of Vancouver Book Award in 2015.
In his 2016 Literary Review of Canada review of They’re Still Missing, journalist Robert Matas wrote that the book was a scathing account of the lack of focus on the initial police investigations and Wally Oppal's $10 million inquiry, "Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry". [6] Shenher wrote when Oppal was Attorney General of British Columbia, he had ruled that a provincial inquiry was unnecessary. According to Shenher, the results of the inquiry continued to be "ignored" in 2015 and the Vancouver Metro police force was still a "patchwork of municipal police forces and RCMP detachments" in 2015". [4] [3]
During his time with the Vancouver Police, he served as a technical advisor for the television series Da Vinci's Inquest , [4] and received a writing credit on the Season 5 episode "For Just Bein' Indian".
His second book This One Looks Like a Boy, a personal memoir of his experience transitioning as a transgender man in 2015, was slated for publication in March 2019. In this non-fiction, Lorimer Shenher describes how he knew from the time he was a child, that he was a boy being raised as a girl. Shenher underwent surgery in his 50s and came out as transgender. [7]
Philip Walter Owen was the 36th mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia from 1993 to 2002, making him one of Vancouver's longest serving mayors. His father was Walter S. Owen, who was Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia from 1973 to 1978.
Davie Village is a neighbourhood in the West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is the home of the city's LGBT subculture, and, as such, is often considered a gay village, or gaybourhood. Davie Village is centred on Davie Street and roughly includes the area between Burrard and Jervis streets. Davie Street—and, by extension, the Village—is named in honour of A.E.B. Davie, eighth Premier of British Columbia from 1887 to 1889; A.E.B's brother Theodore was also Premier, from 1892 to 1895.
Stevie Cameron was a Canadian investigative journalist and author. She worked for various newspapers such as the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She co-hosted the investigative news television program, The Fifth Estate, on CBC-TV in the 1990s. She was also an author of non-fiction books, including On the Take (1994) about former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Her exposé on Mulroney and the Airbus Affair lead to many legal battles including a judicial hearing to determine if she was an RCMP confidential informant: she was not. The fact that Mulroney did take a substantial amount of money while still in government was confirmed in the 2010 Oliphant report. Her final books dealt with the disappearance and the killing of several Indigenous women in the Vancouver area in the mid-1990s to the turn of this century. These murders were ultimately attributed to convicted serial killer Robert Pickton. She won the 2011 Arthur Ellis Award for best non-fiction crime book for her work on the Pickton case. Besides being a journalist and author, she was also a humanitarian, helping start programs for the underprivileged and homeless such as Second Harvest and the Out of the Cold program. For her lifetime work as a writer and humanitarian, she was invested into the Order of Canada in 2013.
The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) is the police force in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several police departments within the Metro Vancouver Area and is the second largest police force in the province after RCMP "E" Division.
Wallace Taroo "Wally" Oppal, is a Canadian lawyer, former judge and provincial politician. Between 2005 and 2009, he served as British Columbia's Attorney General and Minister responsible for Multiculturalism, as well as Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia for the riding of Vancouver-Fraserview as part of the BC Liberals.
The Highway of Tears is a 719-kilometre (447 mi) corridor of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada, which has been the location of crimes against many women, beginning in 1970 when the highway was completed. The phrase was coined during a vigil held in Terrace, British Columbia in 1998, by Florence Naziel, who was thinking of the victims' families crying over their loved ones. There are a disproportionately high number of Indigenous women on the list of victims, hence the association with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement.
Robert William Pickton, also known as the Pig Farmer Killer or the Butcher, was a Canadian serial killer and pig farmer. After dropping out of school, he left a butcher's apprenticeship to begin working full-time at his family's pig farm, and inherited it in the early 1990s.
The Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was a commission in British Columbia ordered by the Lieutenant Governor in Council on September 27, 2010, to evaluate the response of law enforcement to reports of missing and murdered women. The commission concluded its Inquiry in December 2012, and outlined 63 recommendations to the Provincial government and relevant law enforcement. The Inquiry itself received criticism from various civil society group and Indigenous communities, regarding its investigative structure, as well as, the lack of government action after the Inquiry to fulfill its recommendations.
Finding Dawn is a 2006 documentary film by Métis filmmaker Christine Welsh looking into the fate of an estimated 500 Canadian Aboriginal women who have been murdered or have gone missing over the past 30 years.
The Women's Memorial March is an annual event which occurs on February 14 in honour of the lives of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) across Canada and the United States. This event is also a protest against class disparity, racism, inequality and violence.
Patrick Dohm was the Associate Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia for 15 years.
Kim Rossmo is a Canadian criminologist specializing in geographic profiling.
Catherine Galliford is a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal in British Columbia, Canada known for making sexual harassment allegations against the RCMP, and being a high-profile police spokesperson for the Missing Women's Task Force.
Brian McConaghy is the founder of Ratanak International and a former Canadian forensic scientist who left the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in order to dedicate all his energies to ending child abuse and human trafficking in Cambodia. He had already founded Ratanak International, in 1989, a Christian charity dedicated to helping the people of Cambodia rebuild their country that for decades had been torn apart by civil war, revolution and genocide. From 1990 onwards McConaghy and Ratanak partnered on projects that built clinics, hospitals and schools, opened orphanages, provided shelters for the elderly and AIDS victims and ran and initiated emergency food distribution programs in response to droughts and flooding in Cambodia. In 2004, these relief projects continued, yet Ratanak's work also took on a whole new dimension by beginning to work on the front lines in Cambodia on projects that rescue and rehabilitate children sold into sexual slavery.
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), also known as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and more broadly as Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR) or Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP), are instances of violence against Indigenous women in Canada and the United States, notably those in the First nations in Canada and Native American communities, but also amongst other Indigenous peoples such as in Australia and New Zealand, and the grassroots movement to raise awareness of MMIW through organizing marches; building databases of the missing; holding local community, city council, and tribal council meetings; and conducting domestic violence trainings and other informational sessions for police.
Unclaimed, released as On the Farm in some international markets, is a Canadian TV film starring Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Sara Canning, Patrick Gallagher, Kevin McNulty, Tantoo Cardinal, and Sarah Strange. It is a dramatic narrative adapted from journalist Stevie Cameron's 2010 book of the same name, examining the years leading to serial killer Robert Pickton's arrest and the court proceedings before his conviction.
Cold North Killers: Canadian Serial Murder is a 2012 Canadian non-fiction book written by Lee Mellor and published by Dundurn Press. It documents the lives of sixty Canadian serial killers, with the earliest being Edward H. Rulloff and the most recent being Russell Williams. The book uses Katherine Ramsland's interpretation of what constitutes a serial killer—someone who has killed at least two people on two occasions, and who attempted to or likely would have killed again—as outlined in her 2007 book The Human Predator. Cold North Killer's own definition of what constitutes a Canadian serial killer includes both Canadians who committed murder abroad and non-Canadians who committed murder in Canada.
Between 2010 and 2017, a total of eight men disappeared from the neighbourhood of Church and Wellesley, the LGBTQ village of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The investigation into the disappearances, taken up by two successive police task forces, eventually led to Bruce McArthur, a 66-year-old self-employed Toronto landscaper, whom they then arrested on January 18, 2018. On January 29, 2019, McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder in Ontario Superior Court and was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for twenty-five years. McArthur is the most prolific known serial killer to have been active in Toronto, and the oldest known serial killer in Canada.
The Exhibition is a 2013 Canadian documentary film, directed by Damon Vignale. The film profiles Pamela Masik, an artist from Vancouver, British Columbia, who faced resistance and controversy when she tried to mount a gallery show devoted to portraits of the victims of serial killer Robert Pickton and other missing women.
The Astoria Hotel is a historic hotel turned into single-room occupancy accommodations located at 769 East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver, Canada. The hotel was opened in 1913 as the Toronto House Apartments before becoming the Astoria Hotel in 1950. The main floor of the hotel serves as a bar and events space. The hotel is currently owned by the Sahota family.