A
HUGE boar weighing 600lbs
patrols Robert “Willie”
Pickton’s pig farm at Port
Coquitlam, 20 miles east of Vancouver.
It lumbers round the perimeter with a
snarling pit-bull, lunging and snapping
at unwanted visitors. Locals say dog and
boar have AIDS.
A stink of mud, manure and offal
hangs over the 17-acre pork factory
where Pickton raises and butchers pigs.
By day it’s a bleak suburban wasteland
flanked by a McDonald’s restaurant
and supermarkets. By night, muffled
squeals and screams come from the
outbuildings, and people describe it as
“creepy.”
Pickton, his brother and sister have
sold off parcels of the farmland they
inherited from their parents in the
1970s, and grown wealthy from the
profits. But he still lives on site in a
trailer – a paunchy 52-year-old with
excellent manners and wisps of greasy
hair straggled across his baldness.
He never drinks booze or coffee;
never smokes or does drugs; he is at
times ploddingly slow and at others
cunning. Pork is his favourite meat. He
dislikes vegetables.
As a boy, he came home from school
one afternoon to find his pet calf
missing. He had played with the gentle
creature, cared for it, cuddled it, even
slept with it. Then he found it hanging
upside down in the barn, headless and
gutted, and wouldn’t speak for days.
Report by
FRANCESCA MORRISONhighest HIV infection rate in North
America.
Skeletal female addicts support their
habit with prostitution, some as young
as 11. Low Track’s “kiddy stroll” is
infamous. Some of the children work
the streets, while others are controlled
by pimps in special “trick pads.”
New people arrive here every day,
runaways dubbed “twinkies” by those
already trapped in Low Track’s hell.
Three-quarters of the girls who work
here started selling themselves as
children, and almost the same number
later give birth to two or three babies.
Very few know what happens to their
children.
But there are other dangers on the
street. In the early 1980s, Low Track
prostitutes began to vanish. By the time
the police had noticed the trend 14
years later, more than two dozen women
had disappeared.
But this is just another evening in
Low Track, and 26-year-old Monastruggle to survive here. Motorcycle
gangs and drug cartels stake out their
heroin/cocaine territory and defend it
bloodily. The neighbourhood has theNow a December dusk is falling
and Pickton is restless. He is familiar
with this feeling. It’s a hunger that
cramps into craving. He climbs into
his converted bus with the darkened
windows and drives to Vancouver’s
Downtown Eastside where he has driven
so many times before.
They call this district Low Track
because it’s the poorest 10 blocks in
the whole of Canada. No other slum or
ghetto matches the squalor of its sickly
hotels and pawnshops, alleyways and
gutters littered with garbage, condoms
and needles.
Half a mile away is the upmarket
tourist haven of Gastown, home to delis,
cafes, lofts and boutiques. Half a mile
in the other direction is Chinatown.
Guidebooks warn tourists to avoid
Eastside at all costs.
Low Track’s cold heart lies at the
intersection of two roads called Main
and Hastings, nicknamed “Pain and
Wastings” by the 10,000 junkies who
8 Murder Most Foul Horror On The Pig Farm
Pig farmer turned
serial killer Robert
“Willie” Pickton
at work in the
slaughterhouse.
Inset below,
murdered Mona
Wilson, one of
many women to
meet a gruesome
death at the farm in
Port Coquitlam