No matter the outcome of the national manhunt for the two young Port Alberni men, charged with second-degree murder in the death of a UBC lecturer and wanted in connection with the deaths of two tourists for crimes committed in northern B.C., the whole affair is tragic.
The friends and families of the victims are left to live their lives in a before/after world, where every occurrence is assessed as either before or after their loved one was taken from them. Their suffering cannot be ignored, nor should it.
Yet a conversation is still needed about these two teenagers. Some media commentators have complained about why they are being referred to as teens instead of men or adults but both labels are true, in the same way someone over the age of 65 can be referred to as a senior or an elder without diminishing their adulthood. The two wanted men have been charged as adults for murder but they are also teenagers. That doesn't mean they should be treated differently when they are brought before the courts but their age is part of who they are.
For every parent with teenaged boys (present company included), the little glimpses of the personal and online lives of the two murder suspects are frightening because of how normal they and their upbringings sound. Broken homes and messed-up parents endlessly fighting? Who hasn't lived through that? Boys retreating into an insular world of games (both online and in reality) where they are the heroes packing guns, annihilating opponents for pleasure and satisfaction? Doesn't that sound like an entire generation of young men?
What happened to these two specifically to get them to this place?
So much we still don't know and might never understand.
Most young men somehow find their way into adulthood and a meaningful, peaceful life, in spite of the challenges of childhood. Some make stupid mistakes throughout their teens and into their 20s that leave them with a criminal record for petty crime or assault until they get on track. Others descend into addiction to escape reality.
And, fortunately for all of us, only a very small few become killers.
There is a long history in crime of duos killing together, from Bonnie and Clyde to Paul and Karla Homolka to the Columbine shooters. How does an understanding of their crimes and what led to them shape our understanding and distort our perceptions of these two?
So much we still don't know and might never understand.
If the Columbine massacre taught us one thing, it's how little the imagination, intelligence and persistence of young men is appreciated. In the hours and early days of the Columbine aftermath, it was portrayed as the spontaneous act of bullied antisocial boys who listened to Marilyn Manson and wore trench coats.
Weeks and months later, long after the TV crews drove the satellite trucks away and the investigative reporters left for bigger stories, did the real story come out - the methodical and careful planning, from the acquisition of weapons and the practice using them, to the planting of bombs (which mercifully never went off or hundreds would have died that afternoon 20 years ago) by two popular, well-liked boys from stable, middle-class homes.
The early reporting of the two current murder suspects, when their status went from missing and possibly victims themselves to wanted men, made it sound like they were two idiots boys, their brains rotted out by video games and social media, about to be caught.
Did the two accused sought today plan much or all of this out, even down to how to successfully elude police in multiple provinces?
So much we still don't know and might never understand.
The fact they remain at large might be outrageous luck, sophisticated cunning, careful preparation, sloppy police work, missed opportunities or a combination of all of the above.
In the end, whenever that may be, whether it's gunshots or a judge's gavel, tragedy will remain, along with our confusion (how? why?) and our delusion of incomplete and incorrect facts, along with fear of the next time and the terror that it could be our misguided and lost son, nephew, friend, neighbour, classmate, instead of someone else's.
-- Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
