Dead Ends

by Paul Willcocks

They came together in a communal one-and-a-half-storey house in Burnaby, a Vancouver suburb, in 1980. The house was a centre of anarchist and protest activity. They shoplifted or Dumpster-dived for food, organized protests, produced pamphlets and posters, and stole what they needed. Taylor, then twenty, had made the news when he hit then Conservative leader Joe Clark with a cream pie during a 1977 Vancouver visit.

  The ideology was fuzzy, but the goals were clear: Disrupt the established order; challenge all institutions; and fight a long list of wrongs, from pollution to prisons to poverty.

  And have fun. The fact was that being a revolutionary, risks and all, was exciting. Belmas liked buying second-hand clothes for disguises; Hansen revelled in the rush of crime.

  Hansen’s arrival from Toronto brought change to the group. They began to talk more about guns and false identities and robberies to fund real guerrilla acts, less about symbolic protests.

  It started small. They vandalized a mining company office in downtown Vancouver in April 1981 to protest marine pollution, throwing jars of paint and rotting fish through the windows in a nighttime raid. No one paid attention.

  Hannah and Belmas, then just eighteen, were involved in a second, slightly more effective, effort to vandalize the office. At least it rated a few paragraphs on an inside page of the newspaper.

  Then Belmas proposed travelling to Victoria to attack the Environment Ministry that approved the mine’s plans. A night attack would draw attention to the pollution on the north coast. “Plus it would be fun,” Belmas added.

  This time, they threw highway flares as well as paint through the windows. There was smoke and water damage and a front-page story in the Victoria Times Colonist. But the media called them “yahoos.” For people who wanted to be revolutionaries, that stung.

  They wanted to be taken seriously. If small actions don’t work, there are only two choices—go bigger, or give up on guerrilla acts as a tool of change. The five weren’t ready to give up.

  Over the next year, they prepared. Hansen got a firearms certificate and legally bought a rifle, a Ruger Mini-14. One gun was not enough; in November, a break-in at a gun collector’s home let them grab twelve handguns, semi-automatic rifles, and shotguns. They diligently practised shooting in the mountains near Squamish and stockpiled ammunition.

  Real actions took money, and robbery was the guerrilla way. Their first two attempts failed. But Hansen successfully pulled a gun and grabbed a bag of money from a grocery store manager on his way to the bank. They stockpiled fake IDs and studied bomb making.

  They picked targets. Litton Industries of Toronto made guidance systems for U.S. cruise missiles. The arms race, the group reasoned, threatened the world and enriched a few. BC Hydro was building a transmission line that damaged the environment and would lead to more industry on Vancouver Island. Both deserved to be attacked.

  Surprisingly easily, they stole hundreds of kilograms of dynamite from highway work sites. Idealism, naiveté, arrogance, thrill-seeking, fuzzy ideology, romance, both political and personal, and groupthink drove them on.

  A year after the attack on the Environment Ministry, the group was ready for another “action” on Vancouver Island.

  On May 30, 1982, a sunny afternoon, Hansen and Stewart cut the fence around an almost completed transformer substation, part of the controversial transmission line. The substation was in the woods near the island’s east coast; there was no security. They set up five explosive charges, detonators, and timers. At 1:30 a.m., when they were back in Vancouver drinking coffee, 160 kilograms of dynamite rocked the substation. Windows rattled kilometres away and the explosion was heard fifty kilometres away. The transformers, a crane, and other equipment were wrecked. The total damage was almost $4 million.

  Direct Action claimed credit and issued a statement to the media.

  But again, the response was disappointing. There was news coverage. BC Hydro offered a reward. Police launched a big investigation. But, Taylor noted days later, the public didn’t really pay much attention. (That can be partly explained by the group’s media statement linking the bombing to “the ecological destruction and the human oppression inherent in the industrial societies of the corporate machine in the West and the communist machine in the East” and “the sinister bonds that underlie … oppressive human relations.” And partly by the fact British Columbians rejected political violence.)

  They were undeterred. Plans were already under way for the Litton bombing. Hansen, Taylor, and Belmas drove to Toronto in late September, conscious of the hundreds of kilograms of dynamite riding with them. That wasn’t the only reason the trip was tense. Ann Hansen and Brent Taylor were in a relationship, but she was convinced he was flirting, and maybe sleeping, with the much younger Belmas. Even revolutionaries get jealous.

  They prepared, casing the Litton plant, stealing the vehicles they would need. And on October 14, they struck.

  It was a disaster. The warning to Litton security wasn’t understood. The dynamite exploded eleven minutes ahead of schedule, before the building was cleared. The blast and shrapnel injured three police officers, five Litton employees, and three people driving on the nearby highway.

  Terry Chikowski, a thirty-four-year-old Litton employee, was trying to get staff out of the building when the bomb exploded. He found himself sprawled in the rubble, his back ripped open, ribs smashed, and organs shattered. Doctors worked seven hours to save him. Employee Barry Blunden’s skull was fractured.

  The three bombers were back in their apartment watching TV when the program was interrupted by a news bulletin, with horrific scenes of damage and a reporter talking to a victim with blood pouring from a head wound. Belmas started crying. Hansen contemplated suicide. Taylor talked about fleeing to the United States.

  The bombing was attacked by virtually everyone involved in the protest movement against Litton and the arms race. Two communiqués issued by Taylor and the group—each about 2,000 words long—did nothing to increase support. One attempted to blame Litton staff and the police for the injuries because they didn’t react quickly enough. It was seen as a pathetic attempt to avoid responsibility.

  Undaunted, the group reunited in Vancouver to plan their next steps.

  But by October 29, the massive police investigation had already identified Taylor as a suspect in the bombing. It wasn’t difficult. Taylor had been a high-profile activist since the Joe Clark pie incident, and there were obvious links between the BC Hydro and Litton bombings.

  And Canada’s community of potential bombers was small. It wasn’t hard to draw up a list of suspects, or surprising that Taylor was on it.

  They continued planning, working with an associated cell, the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade, on arson attacks on Red Hot Video stores that sold violent pornography.

  But as Hansen cased the stores, the RCMP were watching. The attacks went ahead—two stores were set on fire with gasoline bombs. Belmas failed in her attack on a third store when the Molotov cocktail wouldn’t ignite.

  She was luckier than Hansen. Her attempt to use gasoline to burn one of the stores worked, but a fireball engulfed her. “I vaguely remember my coat being on fire and the smell of singed hair,” she recalled. Her trip to the emergency room, hours after a high-profile arson attack, was hardly likely to go unnoticed.

  Wiretaps, listening devices, surveillance, secret searches. The net was tightening. The group’s plans for robbing a Brink’s truck and bombing an air base and new Coast Guard icebreakers were being monitored by police. The listening devices captured discussions of the past bombings that would be persuasive in court.

  And then the RCMP moved. The five—Hansen, Taylor, Stewart, Belmas, Hannah—left at dawn for Squamish, for their last gun practice before the Brink’s robbery. On a narrow, twisting part of the highway, traffic was stopped for construction, with a flagman letting cars through a few at a time. Their truck crept forward, until it was the lone vehicle left.

  But the construction workers were in fact heavily ar
med RCMP emergency response team officers. In barely a minute, the five were in handcuffs.

  Direct Action was done.

  Ultimately, Belmas was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, Taylor to twenty-two years, and Hansen to life. Stewart was sentenced to six years and Hannah to ten years.

  All are now free. None has fully renounced his or her actions.

  BOMB ON A TRAIN

  The Kettle Valley train was on its daily run west through the mountains from Nelson, on the leg from Brilliant to Grand Forks. It was only about 100 kilometres, but the steam engine hauled the train at less than thirty kilometres per hour—much less on the steep uphill grades.

  It was just before 1:00 a.m. on October 29, 1924. Passengers were dozing, or sleeping, the pine forests rolling by in the dark, a skiff of snow on the ground.

  “Lordly”—Peter Verigin, the powerful, charismatic head of a large Doukhobor community—was sitting halfway down Car 1586, a first-class coach, on the right side. Beside him, at the window, sat seventeen-year-old Mary Strelaeff, his constant travelling companion.

  Two seats in front, newly elected Conservative MLA John McKie was heading to Victoria for his first legislative session.

  Another nineteen people were scattered around the car, taking occasional breaks in the small enclosed smoking cabin at the rear.

  Some of them stirred as the train stopped for eighteen minutes at the Farron Summit. It took on water and added a café car to the six-car train before starting the downhill run toward Grand Forks. It was a dark night, the moon a sliver.

  Four minutes after leaving Fallon, Car 1586 exploded. Bodies and debris flew into the night, and a fireball swept through the car. Brakes shrieked as the train shuddered to a halt.

  Conductor Joseph Turner had just passed through the coach and into the baggage car. The blast blew its door off, sending it hurtling almost the length of the car and showering him with broken glass.

  Verigin, McKie, and two others died instantly. Four people were grievously injured and loaded into the sleeper car and rushed to Castlegar, a jolting, nightmarish trip. Two died en route; the other two once they arrived. Another eleven people were treated for injuries.

  The blast was tremendous. Cst. G. F. Killam of the British Columbia Provincial Police was the first officer on the scene the next morning. The coach was still smouldering, “with nothing but charred embers and ironwork remaining.”

  One body burned almost beyond recognition rested against a rear wheel of the car.

  Hakim Singh, who had been sitting at the rear of the car, was found without his head, a chunk of his chest, and his right arm. His missing arm was found almost eleven metres away.

  Verigin was face down, “with a considerable number of wounds … but easily recognizable.” His body had been tossed about eight metres by the blast. McKie’s corpse was thrown seven or eight metres beyond Verigin.

  Pieces of the coach had been blasted ten metres up the mountainside, and clothes and baggage were strewn all around the area.

  Police and Canadian Pacific Railway investigators concluded almost immediately that a bomb had caused the explosion. As they picked through the wreckage, they found bits of a clock and dry cell batteries—a possible detonator.

  But who planted the powerful bomb? Peter Verigin was the obvious target, but he had a long list of enemies, inside and outside the Doukhobor community.

  To many Doukhobors, Verigin was saintly. He wielded immense personal power. He was six feet tall, good-looking, with a better education than most of the community. With his slicked-back dark hair and full black moustache, he was an imposing figure who accepted his right to rule over the faithful.

  But not everyone agreed. A small but fierce Doukhobor faction dubbed the Freedomites thought Verigin was embracing modern ways—like mechanized farming—and becoming too materialistic. At public protests, they stripped naked to show their disdain for possessions, a gesture not well received in small communities.

  More dangerously, the Freedomites had burned schools and the homes and barns of neighbours who they thought had strayed from the faith. Just six months earlier, Verigin’s summer house and office at Brilliant, just across the Columbia River from Castlegar, had been torched.

  Doukhobor communities were also having increasing conflicts with governments and their neighbours.

  About 7,500 Doukhobors had been welcomed into Canada in 1899, part of Interior Minister Clifford Sifton’s plan to populate the West.

  The Doukhobors needed somewhere to go. Their commitment to communal living and pacifism and their rejection of the authority of established churches and the state infuriated the Russian government. Their refusal to serve in the military was a particular irritant, and they faced increasing persecution. Advocates like writer Leo Tolstoy championed their cause.

  When Verigin suggested emigration as a solution, the Russian authorities were quick to agree.

  But the initial Canadian welcome had grown chilly. The First World War had brought suspicion of anyone not of British origin. The Doukhobors’ refusal to fight made them a particular target. Businesses in neighbouring communities feared competition from rapidly expanding Doukhobor enterprises. And there was simple prejudice.

  Governments were also becoming troubled by the independence of the Doukhobors—their refusal to swear allegiance to the Crown or to send their children to public schools (or often, to any schools). Public education was a tool of assimilation, and the Doukhobor boycott undermined the government’s agenda.

  Theories about the explosion abounded. Verigin had initially supported the revolutionary government in Russia, and even discussed the Doukhobors’ return. But he became increasingly critical of Vladimir Lenin. Some in the Doukhobor community saw a Russian plot behind the bomb.

  Others suspected Verigin’s son, Peter P. Verigin, of masterminding the blast to clear the way for his own ascension to power. He did eventually succeed his father.

  And still others remain convinced the blast was simply an accident. Rail safety standards were low, and people in rural communities thought nothing of boarding a train with the explosives bought to clear their land or explore a claim.

  The bomber—and it was almost certainly a bomb—was never identified. But the loss of Verigin dealt a major blow to the Doukhobors. The community was weakened by leadership disputes, and government pressure intensified. The Freedomites attracted more supporters, and became enmeshed in decades-long conflicts with government and neighbouring communities.

  And the deaths of Peter Verigin and seven other people on that October night remain unsolved.

  ESCAPE TO THE WILD

  Simon Gunanoot walked into the vast wilderness near Hazelton on June 19, 1906, as an accused “murdering Indian.”

  He walked out thirteen years later a folk hero.

  Gunanoot was Gitksan, handsome and successful, a skilled and respected trapper and rancher and businessman. He had a lot to leave behind.

  But a long drunken night in a sleazy frontier bar had ended with two men shot dead. White men. Gunanoot knew he would be the prime suspect.

  So he headed home and told his wife and family to gather what they could and be ready to flee into the woods. The family would hide out for more than a decade, eluding a series of massive, costly manhunts.

  Gunanoot was born in Kispiox, a Native village about thirteen kilometres up the Skeena River from Hazelton. He had grown up learning to live in the woods, trapping, hunting, fishing.

  But Gunanoot—or Simon Johnson, as he was christened—had also gone to a mission school and could read and write, though not well.

  He was a big, handsome guy of thirty-one in 1906, with thick dark hair, a generous mouth, and a frankly appraising and open gaze. And, by all accounts, he was hard-working and smart. Gunanoot trapped in the winter, but instead of selling his furs to local intermediaries, he travelled to Victoria or Seattle to get a better price. Then he would buy goods there to sell in his store in Kispiox, again cutting out the middlem
en.

  Hazelton wasn’t much to look at. Main Street was a wide wagon track with wooden boardwalks, frozen in the winter and a muddy mire when it rained. There were a handful of wood-plank businesses with soaring false fronts and big hopes.

  But the outpost had a run of good fortune. It was the prime launching place for prospectors trying to cash in on the 1869 Omineca gold rush.

  And in 1891, the first sternwheeler fought its way up the Skeena from the Pacific, and freight service was launched. Hazelton was as far as the boats could go, and they pulled up on the riverbank to unload just metres away from drying fishing nets. Packers were needed to take the goods on to their destinations. Gunanoot used a fine riverside ranch as the base for his pack operation.

  On June 18, 1906, a warm Monday, Gunanoot’s nineteen-year-old wife, Sarah, sent him to another village to buy some fish.

  Gunanoot decided to stop for a drink and pulled his stallion up at the Two Mile Hotel. Two Mile—named for its distance from Hazelton—was notorious for its bar and red-light district. The hotel was disreputable, a place for drunkenness, gambling, and prostitution, according to the local police.

  The smoky, dark interior was inviting. Gunanoot stayed until dawn, drinking with a rough crowd that included Alex MacIntosh, a short, powerful packer with a rival outfit who had just finished time in jail for bootlegging.

  Then things went bad, as they will in bars. It’s not clear what started the fight. Some say MacIntosh insulted Gunanoot’s young wife, or said she had sex with his friend Max Leclair. Others blame Gunanoot. What’s not disputed is that he and MacIntosh fought, and that MacIntosh slashed Gunanoot’s cheek open with a knife and bloodied his nose. MacIntosh cut his own finger.

  MacIntosh’s employer halted the brawl and made the men shake hands. But witnesses said they heard Gunanoot threaten revenge as he left the saloon.

  The next morning, MacIntosh’s body was found sprawled beside the trail from the Two Mile, a bullet hole in his back. He had been shot off his horse. A few hours later, Leclair’s body was found.