It is often said that a society should be judged by the way it treats its elderly and its less fortunate. If these are appropriate criteria, and I believe they are, than the case of Robert 'Willie' Picton is a blight on Canadian society. Ms. Cameron does meander, at times, through her 700 page account of this hellish, 15-year odyssey. Nonetheless, the picture that results from her thorough examination is damningly complete.
Robert 'Willie' Picton has the dubious distinction of being one of the most prolific serial killers in the known world. Only one of the dozens of vulnerable women he lured off of Vancouver's poorest streets escaped his suburban pig farm alive. The rest died helpless and alone: dismissed as itinerant prostitutes by the police empowered to protect them; neglected by the politicians who shrugged them off as an unhelpful constituency; and ignored by a society desperate to think of itself as better than that which could produce a killer of Picton's loathsomeness. They died in ways that defy description, in ways that have made painstakingly torturous the effort of authorities to tell his victims apart. Dozens, allowed to disappear and die because they weren't upstanding citizens, because they weren't worthy of a second thought...
On The Farm begins with Picton's antisocial childhood, growing up on a rural, Lower Mainland farm in the 1950s and 60s. It concludes with his lengthy and complicated trial which, late in 2007, returned a guilty verdict sufficient to sentence him to imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Between, it chronicles the life of a man who never integrated into society, a man who was allowed to live on the fringes, to butcher animals, to escape the kind of socialization necessary to understand the difference between a pig and a human. Family friends, such as they are, provide context for the lives of the young Picton, but more revealing are the portraits of the women he slaughtered. They are women who defy categorization but for one important commonality, the bad boyfriends who they allowed to send them spiraling down the drain of society, down to where only the unwanted live, to where sharks like Picton swim. Picton is a powerfully revolting figure throughout, a figure which forces Canadians to see him and to confront the truth that their society produced this monster. But for all the length of Picton's shadow across this chronicle, it's the empathy and the tragedy of his victims, combined with the tireless efforts of the RCMP to catch their killer, that give life to this difficult and gripping read.
The Vancouver Police have, and will continue to, find a way to excuse away their complicity in the murders of these women, but books like this one will help us to remember that the self-serving self-interest of powerful cops in the VPD allowed Picton to operate under their noses while refusing to heed the calls of the families and the experts who knew he was there. Their deafness has brought shame to our country and pain to families who deserved more from men who seem to have long ago forgotten that they are invested with extraordinary powers to protect the public, not to service their own egos. I don't know about others, but I certainly won't forget. (4/5 Stars)
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