Stevie Cameron (1943–2024)

This book was amazing and amazingly heartbreaking. Where the book Butcher by Gary C. King tried to find Robert 'Willie' Pickton's past, this book takes an extensive look at every single victim and humanizes them to the reader. It was touching and all the more heart wrenching to read. But these kinds of books are NECESSARY to read. Evil exists in our world. This time some kind of unrelenting evil took over the Pickton farm. The Pickton Farm is an evil unto itself. And the reason we must look show more at places like these is to warn our daughters and sisters of the evils that lurk behind the supposed most harmless of looking people. show less

I am a true crime junkie and this was a tough read - not, it turns out, for the grisly details (although there are a few of those, too) but for the relentless, depressing litany of women's lives falling apart and then being taken from them, and the police doing nothing about it. I found the trial almost worse than all the rest of it, though. The verdict the jury handed down is embarrassing.

But this is an outstanding book - detailed, meticulous, unceasingly sympathetic. With more than sixty show more missing women connected to the case, it could have been painfully dull, but Cameron treats each of those women with respect and paints a vivid picture of their lives and personalities. And, despite the outcome of the legal case, she gives a pretty good picture of Pickton, too (as unappealing as it is). show less

I started reading this book almost two years ago and finished on Thursday night, after a lengthy pause. The problem wasn't boredom; the problem was the small font, since it was published in 1995.

For anyone interested in recent Canadian political history I highly recommend this book. The book details just how rapacious was the corruption during the Mulroney era. Apparently a large majority in Parliament creates a sense of impunity. The government controls all of the levers of power, with show more frighteningly few checks. People try to get in the way of obvious wrong at their peril.

As we saw more recently with the "Sponsorship" scandal that became publicly known in 2003 from the Auditor General's report, the Tories did not have a monopoly on gross corruption. I have the book four stars because despite a few references to Chretien and Trudeau era corruption it seemed solidly aimed at one party.

Notwithstanding the content was gripping and at time gruesome. There were deaths under mysterious circumstances. Helpless widows reduced to poverty. Fraudulent bankruptcies. It has all the thrill of a true crime novel, but it's non-fiction. show less

With everything in the news about Robert "Willy" Pickton, I decided it was time to read a definitive account of what happened. I've read "Missing Sarah" which I highly recommend - she was the niece of Jean Little, one of my favourite all-time authors and Sarah's sister used Sarah's writings to help tell her story. This book was broad and sometimes I couldn't figure out why the author drifted into rabbit holes at times but I really liked the way she fleshed out the stories of the women who show more went missing in Vancouver because they are the ones that should be remembered. show less