SYMBOL OF RURAL FIGHT
911 call made him a target
OKOTOKS, ALTA. • When the Mounties showed up at Edouard Maurice’s home just outside the town of Okotoks one morning last February, he figured they would tell him they’d caught the thieves he’d called them about, the ones he’d seen breaking into his vehicle earlier that morning. Perhaps they would help him search his place, to make sure the intruders hadn’t stuck around after he’d fired his rifle to warn them away.
He certainly didn’t expect the officers to arrive with their guns drawn, arrest him and lay charges against him.
To his fellow rural Albertans, the story Eddie Maurice tells about that morning seems to confirm their worst fears: that crime is out of control, that police are unable to do anything about it, and that, should they try to defend themselves, their family or their property, those same cops will drag them off in cuffs.
Maurice has become one of the foremost symbols of the deepening misgivings so many westerners have about the state of rural justice. When he phoned the RCMP that day in February, it was just weeks after a jury in Battleford, Sask., had acquitted farmer Gerald Stanley in the 2016 shooting death of Colten Boushie, a resident of the nearby Cree Red Pheasant First Nation.
While Boushie’s death and Stanley’s trial commanded national headlines for the racial tensions they highlighted, for some they also spoke to questions about the reliability of policing outside the West’s cities and towns.
A spokesman for the Alberta RCMP refused to answer the National Post’s questions about the Edouard Maurice case, and the force has declined to corroborate or contradict his account of that morning — including whether its officers drew their guns upon arriving at the Maurices’ property.
The Alberta justice ministry told the Post the Crown would not comment on the case.
But in June the Crown withdrew the three charges Maurice had faced, for careless use of a firearm, pointing a firearm and aggravated assault. On Thursday, four months later, Maurice and his wife Jessica were in Ottawa, testifying before the public safety committee of the House of Commons as part of its study of rural crime. But at their home a few weeks earlier, the couple gave their first sitdown interview to discuss the “nightmare” that began eight months ago with their call to the police for help.
The Maurices live just south of Okotoks, a bedroom community of roughly 30,000 down the highway from Calgary. He worked as a machinist and she runs a pet daycare, and they help Jessica’s family with their farm down the road.
“I love it,” Edouard told the Post in September. “Just the freedom to do whatever you want to do … you can walk outside your door, you just have open space.”
But, being outside of town, they’re a ways from streetlights or neighbours.
“You can’t 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.”
According to Edouard, around 5 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24 — a couple of hours before the sun comes up in an Alberta winter on what would be his 33rd birthday — he woke up to the sound of the dogs in a state of agitation. Not barking, he said, but worked up about something. That’s not unusual — there are deer and coyotes that wander through the yard and set off the dogs. But when he got up to take a look, he said he could see through the glass panelling on the front door that his vehicle lights were on, and there were people out there.
Alone in the house with their infant daughter — Jessica was in Las Vegas for a conference and their other daughter was with Jessica’s parents — Maurice retrieved a gun, opened the door and, when his demands for the trespassers to leave had no effect, he said, he fired what he said were two “warning shots” with what court documents identify as a .22-calibre rifle. The two people in the yard took off.
“It’s basically a splitsecond of fear just rushing through you, you don’t even know what’s happening, what’s going on,” Maurice told the Post.
The decision to fire the rifle was the first decision that would upend the Maurices’ lives; the second was the decision to phone the police.
Maurice dialed 911; he said the police took two hours to arrive — the RCMP declined to comment on this — during which time he set the gun aside, which he said he didn’t have it on him when the police arrived, and sat up on his living room couch to wait for them, adrenaline pumping.
Three RCMP cruisers eventually arrived, Maurice said, and the officers approached with their guns drawn. Somebody had been injured, he said they told him, and he was coming with them.
An RCMP ballistics report found one of the shots Maurice fired ricocheted, hitting a 41-year-old man named Ryan Watson in the arm. Watson faces several charges stemming from that morning — trespassing, theft from a motor vehicle, mischief, possession of methamphetamine and probation violation — and goes to trial in the new year.
Stephanie Martens also faced three charges from what occurred that night, but the Crown has since withdrawn trespassing and theft charges against her, and in September she was sentenced to a $200 fine and a $60 victim surcharge for mischief.
Meanwhile, Maurice said, he had “a million things” running through his head. His youngest daughter was still asleep in her crib — he needed to get someone to come watch her. Police took him into custody. Jessica’s birthday phone calls to her husband from Las Vegas went unanswered. It was her mother, watching the children, who eventually told her what had happened.
After four months, the Crown withdrew the three charges against Maurice. “Information came to light and as a result there’s not a reasonable chance of conviction at this time,” Crown attorney Jim Sawa told the court. When he announced the withdrawal of the charges, dozens of onlookers in the courtroom erupted in cheers.
For the Maurices, there is a clear link between the controversial acquittal of Gerald Stanley and their own treatment by the RCMP. “They wanted to make an example out of me,” Edouard told reporters in Ottawa after Thursday’s committee meeting. Jessica told the committee she believed the RCMP “jumped the gun” in charging her husband, the incident at their house coming just two weeks after Stanley’s acquittal in the fatal shooting of Boushie, which had prompted outrage across the country. In her testimony Thursday, she referred to Stanley as a victim.
Eddie told the committee that if he were in the same situation again, he would not call the RCMP. “The RCMP are losing the trust of the people they are supposed to protect,” Jessica said. The couple called on the government to implement stronger self-defence laws, so that people can protect themselves “without fear of prosecution.”
In one charged exchange, Toronto Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin questioned how the Maurices believe Canada’s self-defence laws should be altered, pointing out that the charges against them were dropped. “If you looked at a crime’s severity, presumably a gunshot wound is more severe than property crime, overall,” she said. The RCMP should review their policies to deal with such cases, Jessica Maurice replied.
As winter looms, the talk in some rural Alberta circles is still tough: shoot, shovel and shut up, and it’s good to have friends with backhoes. After all, if Edouard Maurice got arrested and charged, why should folks risk calling the cops and landing themselves in legal trouble?
“We know people who have had encounters with criminals, and the homeowners had guns and scared them off, and have not reported it to the police because they’re scared of what the police will do,” Jessica told the Post last month.
“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.”