Fall guys

Christmas lights on Stevenson Street, Dec. 18.

"I think it sends a sharp and clear message that if you are employed in an occupation of any kind where public safety is affected, that if you don't perform your legal duties according to law, there's a real risk that you can be sentenced to jail."

~Crown Attorney David Foulds, as reported in the Globe and Mail, on the sentencing today of Stan Koebel, former manager of the Walkerton utilities commission.

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When news of the tainted water scandal broke in May 2000, I followed with personal interest. Between September 1989 and April 1991, as a reporter for the Hanover Post, I covered municipal news for the nearby town of Walkerton. On the course of my town hall beat I met Stan Koebel and his brother Frank. As Stan's lawyer suggested in the Globe and Mail article, he seemed like a decent person. I can't accept that this tragedy resulted from a mere blip, a brief lapse in judgment. To fake water test results over a period of time constitutes serious fraud and irresponsibility.

Seven people died as a result of that blip, and 2,500 others fell ill. Some of the survivors will continue to suffer health problems for the rest of their lives as a result of liver and kidney damage and other effects.

But to this quote, "If you are employed in an occupation of any kind where public safety is affected," I would add, and if the higher powers who behave just as irresponsibly but are harder to pin with a conviction, you will bear the full brunt of public wrath. Stan Koebel was sentenced to a year in jail and his brother to nine months house arrest. But the conditions that led to the tragedy were endemic in Ontario. The tragedy led to an overhaul of the way water systems across the province are tested and approved for drinking. Extensive fraud and negligence were uncovered elsewhere. It is clear that the Koebel brothers were not the only guilty ones, but they'll be the only ones who end up with a criminal record. Just a couple quiet, small town guys who I barely remember.

I wonder, if sufficient evidence were recovered to convict people in higher office, whether we would ever know about it.

That was on the news today as I drove to Lindsay and back. The girls and I are home, safely ensconced, trying to get the apartment warmed up. After such a mild, pleasant fall, this cold comes as a surprise. Last night it went down to -16°C, so cold that the nylon shell of my winter coat sounded crinkly like plastic wrapper.

Tomorrow it's supposed to bounce back up to freezing; we might even get rain. What strange weather.

And tomorrow is the solstice, longest night of the year. I'll spend it cooking and baking, preparing for my own family's festival of the return. At least that's how I think of it.

The sun remembering us, turning its face, starting the journey back.