The issues surrounding the deaths of three men in an illegal rooming house in Vancouver in 2010 were all put to rest this week when Vancouver’s city prosecutor dropped all charges against property owner Choi Leong.
The three men, Stephen Yellowquill, Dwayne Rasmussen and Garland McKay died when, according to fire inspectors, a faulty string of Christmas tree lights set the ramshackle house they rented on Pandora Street in Vancouver ablaze. I took an interest in the case when it came to light in 2010 because Garland McKay was once a student of mine.
I liked Garland when I taught him in grades 9 and 10. He was quiet and didn’t care much for homework, but he had a sense of humour and he was clever.
He could draw well too. Though I liked him, I have to admit that he was responsible for one of the three occasions when I lost my temper at school.
I caught him playing Tarzan on the stage curtains in the gym just before a drama production I was directing. I blew up, called him an idiot. I saw him in the hall after the production was over, apologized and extended my hand. He took it and smiled a little. I think that was the last time I spoke to him.
The coroner said Garland and the others had six to eight times the legal limit of alcohol in their bodies when they died. I don’t know what kind of a person Garland was in the end.
The newspaper stories never commented on that. Like so many people living in squalor in Vancouver and every other large city, Garland became anonymous, just another cipher, statistic, digit. The woman who owned the house that he rented didn’t really care what he was like either, as long as he paid the rent.
According to an article by Michael Mui at canoe.ca, landlord Choi Leong said she collected $1,400 to $1,600 a month from the five men who lived in the illegal rooming house. She admitted at the inquest that was held, that she had been instructed to make many repairs to the old, decrepit house in order to make it safe and habitable, but she had ignored them.
The city didn’t seem to really care much about McKay or the others either. The laws, bylaws, rules, policies and procedures that are supposed to prevent landlords like Leong from taking advantage of indigent tenants are rarely enforced.
Conflicting jurisdictions, levels of authority, agencies and bureaucrats cite all kinds of transgressions and infractions, but men and women like Garland are never really served.
The expression is that they “fall through the cracks,” which implies that only a very few, particularly thin individuals apparently end up being taken advantage of.
In truth, the cracks are crevasses and as usual, those with lots of money and power, and no conscience or character, find the weak and vulnerable easy and profitable targets. For the last couple of years, whenever I have heard politicians talk about how much better life would be if only government at all levels would just “get out of the way” so that free enterprise could make the nation prosper, I have thought of Garland and people like Choi Leong.
Garland and his friends no doubt had their reasons for drinking themselves into oblivion one last time, but no matter how dark and troubling those reasons may have been, the darkness wasn’t total – they had hung a string of Christmas lights. The irony that those faint lights caused their deaths is perhaps the saddest part of the story.
I wonder if Ms. Leong had any Christmas lights hanging in her house.
– Jim Holtz is columnist for the WEEKENDER and a former Gazette reporter.
