As I watched the evening news tonight, an interesting documentary appeared on the CBC news. Its focus was centered around two homocides in British Columbia that happened several years ago between two rural cities about 3 hours apart form each other. The common link between these cases were the fact that an RCMP officer was involved in the shooting.

Both these cases ended with the victim falling to the bullet of the officer. It’s an unfortunate scenario, however what is more unfortunate lies beneath the actual homocides. The problem stems from the fact that when RCMP officers are involved in any homocide cases, they are not questioned by any third party as to whether their actions were right or wrong. Moreover, if an investigation is issued for the case, an internal team audits the actions of their own officers.

This obviously negates the whole purpose of having an audit to begin with. Afterall, as the mother of one of the victim says, there will always be a bias towards what the officer states in his claims, and the findings will more than likely agree with the officer’s actions; afterall we’re only human.

Sure enough, both these cases ended with the officer shooting out of self-defense. The one case, however, seems so conflicted as 5 different witnesses account similar findings, and all disagree with what the officer claims. Furthermore, an investigation and autopsy on the victim clearly stated that what the officer said would not be possible. Still, the case remained as is.

These two cases merely bring out the fact that RCMP officials should not be the ones to audit their own homocide cases. Says one interviewer: If I shot somebody, would I be able to investigate this case?

As sad as it may seem, that is the Canadian law. Not much is heard of this as this issue is obviously overshadowed by much more seemingly important issues that the public is more aware of. i.e. health, education, taxes.

Fortunately for Ontarians though (or is this more of an unfortunate thing), the provincial police is what serves and protects the public. Should something happen with an OPP officer, there is another third party committee that audits and provides the inquest.

It was an interesting documentary that I saw myself watching until the very end, which is something that I rarely do now-a-days. To be on the safe side, just stay out of trouble.

End of story.

I just came back from Casinorama where I saw the Imperial Circus of China perform their little performance. It quite an interesting show tonight as it was my first time stepping foot in Casinorama and seeing these acrobats in action.

It was quite an impressive performance in my book as the show ran about 1.5 hours and was complete with acrobats doing all sorts of contortioning and bind boggling performances, with a little mixture of magic and Chinese singing.

Some of these performers were just the tiniest of things as they couldn’t be any more than 4 feet tall and weigh no more than 60lbs. They were so small, yet so elegant in their movements, and powerful in their actions. I couldn’t believe they actually did what they were doing without the aid of any external objects.

There were no flying, no animals, no flying objects except for the occasional batons. Instead, there were rice bowls, plates, and twirling cushions as they spun them like there was no tomorrow.

I can’t help but wonder how rigorous their training is back in China, or how early an age they start training. They must practice daily with strict diet and schedule to be able to do the things they do with such ease and elegance.

Although this was my first time seeing this type of performance, my friend had seen it several times before. She commented on how the costumes weren’t very pretty nor were some of the acts. The magically changing mask could have been done better she says.

It was a fun night out in Orillia – even with that freak power outage that took out the entire block. Being inside a casino you would have thought that I would start betting away, however I refrained from doing any of that. However, my friend bet $5 on Sic Bo and came out with $150 in less than 5 minutes. Now that’s a sweet turnaround! If only things could be that easy in life. If only.

That’s about all the gambling that was done tonight.

All in all, a fun experience… and to think I turned down an Air Supply concert at Fallsview Casino for next week! Oh well.

Maybe next time.

It was a gorgious feeling day today as it hit the double digit plus side for the first time in months. While I couldn’t thoroughly enjoy it during the day as I was at work, I made the best of it on my commute home as I sped along the 401, windows open, music blaring. It felt good. Really good. With that cool wind in your hair and carefee driving – the roads are awesomely empty this week due to March Break – you can’t ask for anything better. That’s the driving that I’ve always liked.

After coming home today I got call from a friend of mine.

Me: “Hey, how’s it going?”
Jay: “You can call me daddy!”
Me: “What? Oh, congratulations!”
Jay: “She gave birth at 5pm today. She’s sleeping right now, as is the baby.”

and so the conversation went.

I could only talk to him for all but 3-4 minutes as the baby started crying loudly. As I hung up the phone, I can only imagine how their life will be forever changed from this day on. I’m sure they probably won’t be getting much sleep in the next few months but at the same time I’m sure they’ll have some exciting moments with the newborn. They named him Jion as they had to find a suitable name that everybody could pronounce with ease in Japanese, Korean, and English. No doubt, English speakers will probably pronounce the name, “John” but the name will easily come out for Japanese and Koreans.

We were all supposed to meet this coming Friday but I suppose now the plan has cancelled. Regardless, I’m happy for them that they had a safe and problem-free labour.

Congratulations J&S!