Living Rurally in Western Canada

"I love it [living rurally in Alberta]. Just the freedom to do whatever you want to do ... you can walk outside your door, you just have open space."
"You can't [though] yell for help if you need help -- the neighbours won't hear you. So I guess in a way you're your own first responder for anything."
"It's basically a split-second of fear just rushing through you [confronting the reality of a night-time intruder],  you don't even know what's happening, what's going on."
"They [RCMP police] wanted to make an example out of me."
Edouard Maurice, Okotoks, Alberta

Edouard Maurice leaves court in Okotoks, Alta. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

"The RCMP are losing the trust of the people they are supposed to protect."
"We know people who have had encounters with criminals, and the home-owners had guns and scared them off, and have not reported it to the police because they're scared of what the police will do."
"I don't think we'll ever go back to normal. I think we have a new normal. It changed us as people, and as a family, and so we're getting back into a new normal for us."
Jessica Maurice, Okotoks, Alberta

"There’s been a lot of discussion about rural property crime given the recent court case in Saskatchewan."
“It would be obvious that if you’re living in a rural location the RCMP response is a little bit slower than a municipal city’s response, and every property owner knows how far away their detachment of jurisdiction is,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that the RCMP supports property owners … taking matters into their own hands."
"I understand that property owners may want to protect their property, but there are limits to what people can do to protect their property. We will consistently encourage people to call the RCMP, let us do the investigation, let us manage the situation."
RCMP Cpl. Laurel Scott

An increase in rural crime rates in Alberta and long distances from police services can put landowners in a precarious situation. | Getty Image

According to the experience of the Maurices, and that of other farmers and rural dwellers in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, the new normal is that protection of property, home and family is a complicated affair. Police must be called. The homeowner must not take too emphatic steps to protect themselves. Passivity in the face of dangerous aggression. On numerous occasions when a homeowner has used a firearm to warn and occasionally shoot to injure an intruder convinced that they are themselves in danger and must act to protect themselves, it is the homeowner that is charged with violence.

In 2015 a young man, resident of a Cree Red Pheasant First Nation who had been out with friends for an afternoon of swimming at a local beach, where they had also consumed alcohol and were fairly inebriated, abruptly lost his life. The group had driven into a nearby farmyard where they attempted to steal a vehicle, managing only to break the windshield. They had a firearm with them, and one of the tires of their own vehicle had blown. The second farmyard they entered with a similar intention also unsuccessful, ended in the farmer, Gerald Stanley shooting Colten Boushie fatally.

A Battleford, Saskatchewan jury assembled to hear the criminal lawsuit the Crown had brought against Mr. Stanley acquitted him of murder a few months ago, a result that aside from monopolizing national headlines for several days, saw First Nations communities up in arms protesting the unfairness of Canadian justice that had acquitted a farmer of protecting his property (actually protecting his wife in a confusion of swift, chaotic circumstances and panic on both sides) as though finding property rights triumphed over the life of a person.

When Mr. Maurice woke during the night, hearing intruders and venturing outdoors called for them to leave, firing his rifle in their general direction, he was concerned for his safety and that of his infant daughter asleep in her crib. He immediately called police, and waited for them to arrive. It took them an hour and when they did get to his property, he was approached by the responding police with their handguns drawn, and he was taken into custody and charged. The episode at his property was coincidental with the Stanley-Boushey event.

Mr. Maurice was charged on three counts: for careless use of a firearm, pointing a firearm and aggravated assault. The entire episode represented a "nightmare" for the Maurice family. His wife had been out of town on business when the event had occurred, but telephoned to wish her husband a happy 33rd birthday after he had been taken into custody thus failing to reach him. Jessica Maurice operates a pet daycare out of their property, and her husband is a machinist; both on occasion help out on her parents' farm located nearby.

It was their dogs barking that had awakened Edouard around five in the morning. When he looked out through the front door's glass panelling he was able to see his vehicle lights on, and people there. Their older child was staying over with his in-laws while their infant daughter was asleep at home. When he called out for the intruders to leave, they ignored him. And that's when he fired two warning shots with his .22-calibre rifle, inspiring the two people milling about his vehicle to suddenly decide to leave.

When three RCMP cruisers drove into his yard eventually, with drawn guns, he was informed that someone had been injured, and as a result they were taking him into custody. One of the shots that Mr. Maurice had fired ricocheted to hit a 41-year-old man in the arm. That man was charged with trespassing, theft from a motor vehicle, mischief, possession of methamphetamines and probation violation, while the woman with him originally faced three charges, but the trespassing and theft charges against her were withdrawn. She was sentenced to a $200 fine and victim surcharge.

Ultimately the Crown withdrew charges levelled against Mr. Maurice: "Information came to light and as a result there's not a reasonable chance of conviction at this time", explained the Crown attorney to the court. Possibly the kind of information that highlights the outrage of rural dwellers and farmers resulting from the increased phenomenon of property thefts that go unsolved, along with the reality that many of these incursions on private property and resulting thefts take place at the hands of bored and unemployed youth from nearby reserves as well as home invasions by drug users.

An increasing threat that boils over into unintended violence from time to time through the sheer expression of frustration that police appear incapable of taking action that would diminish and solve the episodes of intrusion, threat and theft that is responsible for increasing the level of tensions between the two communities; First Nations reserves and local farmers. And the realization that rural living is now appealing to law-breakers as well as those obeying the law.

A young boy and girl play with homemade stocks as people gather in support of Edouard Maurice, who faces three charges after police allege the rural homeowner confronted two people rummaging through his vehicles and shots were fired, outside court in Okotoks, Alta., Friday, March 9, 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh