Less than a day after a community task force met to outline ways to deal with substance abuse in Pemberton and Mount Currie, a 61-year-old man lay dead in a notorious local party area.
Matthew Pierre’s death came almost two years to the day that 15-year-old Ross Leo died late at night in the same area.
In both cases, a fellow community member (or members in the case of Leo) was charged with murder.
"For it to happen again, people are really starting to question what’s really going on in there," said Brandon Hestdalen, co-ordinator of the Pemberton/Mount Currie Drug and Alcohol Task Force.
Police are still investigating what happened in the wooded area behind the Signal Hill Elementary School where Pierre died late on the night of Wednesday, April 28 or early the following morning.
The RCMP got a phone call about the death at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning.
Later as they were heading back to the office, they picked up 38-year-old Gary Duane Jim and charged him with second degree murder.
"We picked him up in Pemberton," said Whistler RCMP Staff Sergeant Hilton Haider.
"He more or less presented himself.… They just happened to see him walking down the road and picked him up."
Police suspect alcohol is involved in the death though they cannot confirm that until the toxicology report comes back.
Pierre’s death has highlighted the need to address drug and alcohol issues in the neighbouring communities of Pemberton and Mount Currie.
"What happened with Matthew over in Pemberton just stresses the urgency of the work that we’re doing and let’s us know how prudent it is to continue to move on," said Hestdalen, who was hired at the beginning of the year as the co-ordinator of the task force.
Two years ago when Leo was murdered the two communities started to come together and talk about drug and alcohol issues.
After a period of healing, the drug and alcohol task force was formed, focusing its efforts on the ill-famed wooded area behind the Pemberton elementary school.
"(The task force) quickly realized that the problem (was) bigger that just a few guys drinking in the woods, kind of thing," said Hestdalen.
"Drug and alcohol abuse is a broad issue and it can’t be handled haphazardly. You can’t just start doing things randomly and expect change to happen. You need to do some proper consultation."
Their next step was to apply for a grant from the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse, which allowed them to hire Hestdalen as a co-ordinator.
Now they are in the process of tackling a four-stage plan to deal with the issues in the communities. This approach starts off with data collection and then moves on to strategic planning, implementation and then evaluation.
Just before Pierre’s murder the task force met to discuss the focus on data collecting which will be Hestdalen’s primary work over the next month.
He has been asked to collect hard data, like how much alcohol is sold through the local liquor store, as well as soft data like what the perception of drug use is in the community and how normal is it for people to see others abusing drugs. He admits the soft data will be harder to collect.
Hestdalen, however, has more than a decade of experience working in the field.
He said the drinking in the local secluded areas, like the one behind the school, is just a symptom of a bigger problem.
"You need to treat what’s under the symptom," he said.
"You can’t just haphazardly start doing things in a reactionary fashion, otherwise it’s just band-aiding the problem."
The problem runs deep he said, and it’s no easy task.
"We’re really fortunate because here in Pemberton and Mount Currie the two councils are so willing to work together and that’s not the case across Canada," said Hestdalen.
"Very few native and non-native communities will come together and deal with it together."
The task force is a 12-member body made up of members of Mount Currie and Pemberton, including the Mayor, Elinor Warner.
She expressed sadness that Pemberton’s neighbour had to deal with another terrible tragedy.
"We were shocked with Ross Leo’s death because we’d never had a murder in Pemberton," said Warner.
"Now two years later we have a second incident."
She said she was surprised the death was in the same spot. B.C. Rail, which owns that stretch of land, had done a tremendous amount of cleaning it up after Leo’s murder she said.
"My understanding was that the traffic had slowed down considerably in that area," she said.
"We understood if it leaves one place, it goes somewhere else... (but) we really felt that that area was well cleared out and that we weren’t having incidents there."
Phone calls to the Mount Currie band office were not returned this week.
Hestdalen and Warner said they are now focused on a meeting in mid-June where the task force will engage in a strategic planning workshop and begin formulating a plan to address the issues.
Gary Duane Jim was charged with second degree murder and was scheduled to appear in a North Vancouver court on Monday, May 3.
Two men were charged with second degree murder in the death of Ross Leo.
The Crown stayed the charge against one man.
The second man, Wade Calvin Peters, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. He will be sentenced on Friday May 14 in B.C. Supreme Court.
