An earlier Mountie massacre

By GERRY WARNER
Staff Writer, Cranbrook Daily Townsman
March 11/05
The flags around town have been at half-mast for several days and rightfully so as this has been a tragic week for law enforcement in a country supposedly dedicated to peace, order and good government. When I first heard the shocking news out of Mayerthrope I was stunned like everyone else and wondering how such a catastrophic event could overcome four trained police officers of one of the most famous police forces in the world.
A week later many questions remain unanswered, not the least of which is how someone with a history of violence and a criminal record like James Rosko was ever allowed loose on the street in the first place. No doubt, we will hear more about this in ensuing weeks as the tragedy is investigated and reviewed by the RCMP and others. I think "others" is important here because I think there's a real need for an independent investigation outside of the RCMP investigating itself. This is not meant to be a criticism of the RCMP because I think it's only appropriate that they review the tragedy in their own way. But surely a tragedy of this enormity calls out for more than just an internal investigation? There's a public interest here as well and a need to reassure people that if mistakes were made the mistakes will be rectified. Now, just one day after the four brave mounties were buried, is not the time to be arguing the what ifs and what fors. There will be time later for that, but that time must come.
On a strictly personal level, the Mayerthrope murders recalled to my mind a story I covered early in my journalistic career. I was covering the case of a young man that had gone bad and had turned against his family in a drug-fueled rage. Turns out the young man had inherited a lot of money from an insurance settlement when he turned 16. He had then gotten heavily into the drug culture and problems with the law and eventually struck back at his mother and step-father, terrorizing them and trying to burn their house down. That's how he ended up in court and that's how I ended up hearing the "rest of the story" as the famous newsman Paul Harvey is so inclined to say.
And the rest of the story in this case turned out to be quite a story. As related in court, the young man was the son of an RCMP officer murdered in 1962 in the next worst massacre of mounties to the calamity in Mayerthrope. The insurance settlement had came from his dead father's estate. His dad was one of three mounties killed in Peterson Creek Canyon in Kamloops, now a city park, in an incident that has starkly similar parallels to Mayerthrope. In the Kamloops case, the mounties were called after receiving a report of a man that had strolled into a government office and calmly laid a rifle across the counter as he picked up his government cheque. (I can't recall if it was a welfare or unemployment cheque or some other matter that saw him in the government office.)
Whatever the case, the gun-toting man, who was some sort of a hermit character that lived in a cabin on the edge of town, totally freaked out the government worker that dealt with him which resulted in the call to the police. By the time the police arrived, the man was well on his way up a trail that followed Peterson Creek into the steep-sided canyon. Apparently they kept yelling at him to stop and he just ignored them melting into the ponderosa pine forest that filled the gorge. Then tragedy struck. The three RCMP officers were on a small bridge part-way up the canyon when the hermit, an expert marksman, turned around from his cover in the forest and started firing. In a space of a few seconds, the three young officers were dead. The hermit continued on his way, but it wasn't long before a RCMP posse was hot on his tail, and as someone said to me after court that day, they weren't looking for prisoners. The hermit was shot dead by one of the officers the same day, and like James Rosko and like the "Mad Trapper" Albert Johnson, we'll never know what was going on in his twisted mind nor the twisted minds of the other mountie assailants.
The parallels between the Kamloops and Mayerthrope incidents are quite startling. In both cases, the RCMP officers involved were young and relatively inexperienced. They both had to deal with alien loners with a penchant for guns and violence. And in both incidents, the mountie forces walked unexpecting into an ambush. And, of course, both incidents resulted in grieving widows and children left behind. All the more reason for an independent investigation, don't you think.
By the way, if you're ever in Kamloops take a stroll behind the courthouse up the Peterson Creek Trail and you'll soon come across a crumbling stone monument to the slain officers. At least it was there when I left Kamloops 15 years ago.
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