The tragic suicide by car of a 24-year-old on the Pat Bay Highway on Sunday takes me back to another similar suicide back in 2000 that I wrote about for the Times Colonist. There's a whole other set of victims when people kill themselves in the manner that these two young men did, 19 years apart. Whoever is in the vehicle when a person randomly picks a moment to step into the road and be killed is almost certainly going to be haunted forever by that stranger's decision. Here's my column on Ian Davidson's suicide on the Malahat in 2000, and a wish that ICBC does not play rough with the people involved in Sunday's tragedy like it did with the Coopsie family 19 years ago. *** Jody Paterson column in TC, January 2000 Davidson settled on death a long time ago. The only question was who would be the killer. It turned out to be the Coopsie family, picked randomly from among the many travellers making their way north on the Malahat on that sunny af...
I'm a communications strategist and writer with a journalism background, a drifter's spirit, and a growing sense of alarm at where this world is going. I am happiest when writing pieces that identify, contextualize and background societal problems big and small in hopes of helping us at least slow our deepening crises.