In Ontario today, as in so many other places no doubt, the rule of law often seems to move at what can only strike we ordinary citizens and taxpayers as an astoundingly glacial pace. It was more than 16 months ago now that  the 57-year-old Dr. Henry Janssen was found shot to death in his “red Chevy pickup truck ... on Scenic Caves Road,” in the idyllic Bruce Peninsula community of Jackson’s Cove. And Dr. Janssen’s friend and neighbour, retired corporate executive Allan Wayne Powney, was charged with his murder only two days later — on January 24, 2008. Mr. Powney subsequently spent more than three months in jail “before being granted bail in May last year.” (More exactly: “Murder suspect Allan Wayne Powney literally sprinted to freedom Monday [May 5, 2008] —  to a waiting car from a side door at the courthouse — after a Superior Court justice released him on strict terms into the care of six family members who posted $300,000 bail.”) Then a  “hearing into the fate of Dr. Janssen’s alleged murderer, Wayne Powney, was held on Thursday, September 11, 2008 at the Ontario Court of Justice in Owen Sound.”  At that point there was talk of setting a date for a preliminary hearing, “to determine if enough evidence exists to go to trial.” Now, at last, we know that this inquiry will start on Monday, June 8, 2009. And it “is scheduled for 14 days, concluding July 9.”

So says a lady from Saint John, New Brunswick, who calls herself "upset mom." And she goes on: "could someone tell me how a family can sell drugs and guns, steal cars ... do anything they want for so long? ... you can say they are good people and dont break the law but WHY DID THEY SELL MY SON AND HIS FRIENDS COCAINE ? my son is in a rehab program now, he is only 16!" The Tingleys are the family in question. Their headquarters is a rural compound near Salisbury, New Brunswick (not far from Moncton). In some quarters they are known as the "Sopranos of Salisbury." Others might just see them as Trailer Park Boys in real life (except that they live in New Brunswick, and not Nova Scotia next door). However you see them, at some point soon enough eight Tingleys — five men and three women — are going on trial, on "a total of 57 charges of operating an organized crime ring that allegedly peddled drugs, weapons and firearms." It has been claimed that the "next court date is on FEB 2 to see when the Trial starts." Other sources just say: "The trial date will be set in February." Many questions remain. All we know for certain right now is that the Tingleys’ trial, whenever it comes, will be followed with great interest in the Moncton region — and beyond.

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The day after the inspirational election of Barack Obama, four US Marines ("including one known as ‘Psycho,’") were charged "with the execution-style slayings" of a young mixed-race couple "in Winchester, in Riverside County southeast of Los Angeles" (aka "an exurb of San Diego"). Like others, no doubt, I was having trouble understanding the grisly murders of Jan Pietrzak and Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak here — until I caught up with Paul Haggis’s 2007 movie In the Valley of Elah on TV. Or so I thought. One of the movie’s gripping messages seems to be that the long Iraq War, in a dusty burnt-out centre of ancient civilization, has hideously brutalized the US military. Yet even up in Canada, in what used to be called Toronto the Good, we have now had the release of a long-awaited government report on youth violence. It was commissioned after the death of Jordan Manners, who was shot last year at "C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, where a serious stabbing also occurred this week." This was only "the latest in a series of recent school-related violent incidents in Toronto." It is apparently not just the US military that has been brutalized in the early 21st century. And it isn’t just the Iraq War that lies at the bottom of disturbing new waves of domestic violence in both the United States and Canada.

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