Western Canada: The hunt for B.C. fugitives enters second week

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Dozens of RCMP officers – the exact number has not been released – surged into the tiny Manitoba community of York Landing on Sunday night. They came by boat and by air, bringing drones and dogs and firepower as they acted on a tip that a pair of B.C. teens wanted in the deaths of three people had been spotted near the community’s garbage dump.

Residents were advised to lock their doors and their windows and to stay inside. Some of them kept their firearms near, their tension heightened by the sound of aircraft overhead. Sunday was a sleepless night for many. Monday was a day of deflated hopes as officers scoured the community and the area around it and found nothing.

By Tuesday morning, a week after Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod were named as suspects in the murders, all of the officers had left York Landing, leaving behind the lingering question of what comes next.

The Incident commander, Inspector Kevin Lewis, seemed to be braced for a long haul:

“It’s not abnormal for us to have cases that go on for an extended period due to suspects being on the lam," he told reporter Ian Bailey in an interview. “We do have other investigative means under way, and it’s just a matter of time before luck is in our favour.”

Luck?

It’s been a week since the pair were last seen. They were spotted in Split Lake – across the water from York Landing – last Tuesday. That same day, the vehicle they were believed to have been driving was found on fire near Gillam,Man.

There hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of them since the tip Sunday from patrollers with the Indigenous safety group the Bear Clan was treated with the utmost urgency.

But York Landing is a four-hour-plus journey from Gillam, half by car and half by ferry. The area is thick with impenetrable bush, a pestilence of biting insects and frequent occurrences of black bears and potentially polar bears. Surviving the terrain for any length of time is difficult, especially on foot. So hoping for a bit of luck is part of a reasonable strategy for police.

Experience in Canada has shown that once fugitives disappear into the country’s wilderness, a manhunt can go on for a while: In 2006, Curtis Dagenais evaded RCMP for 12 days in northern Saskatchewan after he killed two police officers and injured another.

The search through the rugged brush and swampland around Spiritwood at times involved up to 250 officers, and concluded peacefully when Mr. Dagenais turned himself in to the Spiritwood RCMP detachment.

In July, 1997, Kevin Vermette disappeared with his dog into the woods outside Kitimat, B.C., after allegedly shooting and killing three young men and seriously injuring another at a campground outside Terrace.

He has never been found.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we’ll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think.

Around the West:

Bad marks: The B.C. Ministry of Education is reviewing the Grade 12 English marks it posted for graduating students across the province after a systems error threw the marks into question. The error has panicked students who worry the inaccurate results will have an impact on their acceptance to post-secondary institutions, to qualify for varsity teams and to win scholarships.

Calgary arena: Calgary city council voted Tuesday evening to build a new arena for its NHL team despite financial challenges facing the city. A tentative agreement for the deal that splits the cost of the $550-million sports and entertainment centre was reached only last week.

Justin Giovannetti reported Monday that Councillor Jeff Davison, who chaired the city committee responsible for the arena, attended none of the hundreds of the meetings during negotiations. Instead, the deal was agreed to by Ernst & Young executive Barry Munro, city manager Glenda Cole and the head of the city’s redevelopment arm, the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation.

Moshe Lander, sports economics professor at Concordia University in Montreal, said before the vote the deal isn’t a good one for Calgary: "This is by far the largest amount of public funds used to build any arena in Canada. No one has come close to that figure yet in direct public funds.”

Oil-slick science: The Experimental Lakes Area, an area east of Kenora that includes 58 small lakes, is serving as a natural laboratory for investigating environmental contamination. Scientists there are conducting much-needed studies on what happens to diluted bitumen in water. Despite years of controversy over what might happen in the event of an oil spill from the expanded Trans Mountain Pipeline, little is known about how the material might behave.

The ELA is one of the few places on Earth where aquatic ecosystems can be deliberately polluted for scientific study, Ivan Semeniuk writes.

“We want to establish thresholds of toxicity,” said researcher Dr. Jules Blais of the University of Ottawa. “At what point do we start to see the effects of an oil spill?”

Carbon tax: The Saskatchewan government is applying to have the Supreme Court push back a hearing on the constitutionality of the federal carbon tax. An e-mail from the Ministry of Justice says a delay would help Saskatchewan co-ordinate its legal challenges with similar ones coming from other provinces.

The top court was tentatively set to hear the case Dec. 5.

Opinion:

Finn Poschmann on the carbon tax: “Ottawa’s Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act has scored significant wins in two provincial courts. But the constitutional hurdles are hardly behind it.”

David P. Silcox on protecting the Arctic: “The Arctic leads one to a much humbler understanding about one’s own life and its meaning. The experience of seeing and travelling in the Arctic pushes one into thinking about the infinite eons that life here has endured, about the immensity of the universe, and the hope that the Arctic will endure for many eons still to come.”

Ethan Lou on paperless Alberta courts: “Court files are the world’s memories. Without them, as Archmaester Ebrose says in Game of Thrones, humanity ‘would be little better than dogs.’ And blockchain is the key to making sure that fate never befalls us.”