These have certainly been a couple of eventful weeks in Burns Lake (some weeks I think we need two more editors in our newspaper).
Just in the past couple of weeks we had four wildfires south of Burns Lake, a police-involved shooting in Granisle, a controversy over the appointment of the new Comfor board, and now we heard that the general open season for moose in the southern Skeena region may be called off.
But what has caught my attention the most over the past couple of weeks were the different reactions over the Granisle shooting.
At this point nobody really knows what happened in Granisle on April 21, 2016. The B.C. Independent Investigations Office (IIO) has taken the lead on the investigation and is not releasing any further information at this point. I guess we are all wondering what really happened and many questions are still up in the air.
What seems to be causing some controversy is the discussion on whether or not Shirley and Jovan Williams, both killed in the police-involved shooting, had unaddressed mental health issues.
Granisle fire chief and councillor Jim O’Farrell, who lives a couple houses down from where the shooting occurred, told Black Press he believed there were unaddressed mental health issues with the mother and son. However, two family members say their behaviour was nothing out of the ordinary. Pearl Williams Garcia, Jovan’s aunt and Shirley’s sister-in-law, said they were “withdrawn like everyone else.”
“Everybody else is withdrawn,” said Garcia. “You walk up and down the avenue in any city, and people stay in their houses.”
Jovan’s sister, Shonte Williams, also told Lakes District News that although Shirley and Jovan were not too social, their behaviour was nothing out of the ordinary.
Meanwhile Lake Babine Nation Chief Adam urged community members to be careful and not to jump to conclusions and say that Shirley or Jovan had mental health issues. Chief Adam knew Jovan personally and described him as a hard-working man.
And I agree with Chief Adam. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. However, it’s not wrong to ask questions and get all sides of the story.
Did police use excessive force? Were there really unaddressed mental health issues that contributed to this terrible outcome? And in that case, is there more that the community could have done to prevent this tragedy?
If the police used excessive force, then we need to have a discussion around that. If there were unaddressed mental health issues, then we need to have a discussion on how to identify potentially dangerous behaviour and ways to intervene.
There shouldn’t be such a stigma around mental health issues in the first place. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, approximately 20 per cent of Canadians will personally experience a mental illness in their lifetime.
While the IIO cannot say exactly how long the investigation will take, Lakes District News was told the investigation could take over a year. And even when the investigation is completed, it might still not be the end of it.
Chief Adam said leaders of the First Nations Summit are watching this investigation closely and they may push for an inquiry depending on the outcome of the investigation.
Meanwhile Granisle is left to deal with this horrible tragedy and all we can do is provide support for affected family members and the community.