A Rock Fell on the Moon Read online

  A week earlier the Vancouver detachment had heard from the office of Angelo E. Branca, QC. The Vancouver lawyer knew an arrest warrant had been issued for one of his clients, a Mr. G.H. Priest.

  “So when you have the warrant in hand,” Branca’s assistant had said, “give our office a call. Mr. Branca will arrange for Mr. Priest to be in our office. You can formally arrest him then.”

  “You know who Branca is, don’t you?” Sergeant Sehl said.

  “Yeah, I heard of him,” McKiel said.

  “He’s one of the best. And you can be sure that if Priest hired him, Branca’s already told him not to say a goddamned word to you or anyone else, and to trash or hide anything that might look bad. You’ll get nothing out of Priest.”

  “What?” McKiel said. “Branca gets to say when, where and how we arrest him? That makes no sense. We may gain nothing by arresting him now. But maybe we will. Maybe he’ll be spooked without Branca there. Maybe he’ll talk.”

  “All I’m saying is Branca has rehearsed Priest. You’re going to get no more out of him tonight than you would tomorrow. Besides, it’s getting late and I don’t have backup. Call a cab. Go to your hotel. Have a beer. We’ll figure things out tomorrow.”

  McKiel knew when he was wasting good air. He called a taxi and headed downtown.

  Angelo Branca was one of the top criminal defence lawyers in British Columbia, and arguably in Canada. Of Italian descent, he was dark-eyed, dark-haired and intense. Known for his intellectual clarity, his tenacity and his temper, traits shaped in part by years spent in the ring, Branca was Canada’s 1934 amateur middleweight boxing champion. Oddly enough, he also had ties to the Yukon. After emigrating from Italy, his father Filipa Branca struck out for the Klondike and returned with $10,000 in his pocket (nearly $180,000 in today’s dollars), one of the few to strike it rich in the Dawson goldfields.

  Branca began his legal career in 1926, setting up shop in a second-floor office in the old Royal Bank building at the corner of Hastings and Main, not far from Vancouver’s present-day police headquarters and provincial courts. During the Depression, he became known for his generous (and often pro bono) defense of poverty-stricken clients. He went on to defend both rich and poor with equal élan, and became known as the “Gladiator of the Courts.” Of sixty-three murder suspects he defended, only four were convicted.

  But Branca was also well known as a defence lawyer and prosecutor in notable cases involving the police. In 1935, he successfully fought for seventeen Vancouver police officers who had lost their jobs in a purge led by Vancouver mayor and reformist Gerry McGeer. All seventeen were reinstated. Twenty years later, he would successfully prosecute Vancouver police chief Walter Mulligan, who was operating an extensive payoff scheme involving a criminal gang. Constable McKiel was familiar with the Vancouver lawyer’s formidable reputation, which only added to his agitation at the end of a long, frustrating day.

  After a restless night, McKiel met RCMP constable Barry Wallace, who had been assigned to help him. The two consulted with Sehl and decided that since there’d been no arrest the previous evening, and since Bobcik had probably called Dad, the two Mounties would search bank and moving company records first. Arresting Dad and searching his car and our home could wait. Once arrested, he would be en route to Whitehorse within twenty-four hours.

  The next day, Constable Wallace arranged for Dad to be in Branca’s office by ten the following morning. At 9:50 a.m. on August 9, McKiel and Wallace entered Branca’s office. Dad was there, sitting silently in a chair. Branca introduced himself, while Dad watched without saying a word. McKiel introduced himself and Wallace, then took out his RCMP badge and showed it to Branca and Dad.

  “I am here to arrest Gerald Henry Priest,” he said.

  Without talking to Branca any further, McKiel turned to the gentleman seated behind him.

  “Are you Gerald Priest?”

  Flushed and flustered, Dad said, “Yes, I am.”

  “Can you prove that for me with some identification?”

  Dad took out his wallet and showed McKiel his driver’s license.

  “Mr. Priest, you are under arrest.”

  As soon as the words left McKiel’s mouth, Branca came out of his chair like someone fired out of a cannon. He started to rant and rave and peel a strip off Constable Wallace, calling him every name except a gentleman.

  “You lying little shit! You said you wanted to interview my client—not arrest him! This is a fuckin’ set-up. And by God,” Branca continued, pointing at the two cops, “I will sue you and you before the next two weeks are out.”

  “I think, Mr. Branca, we can dispense with the theatrics,” McKiel replied. “You just be quiet because I’m here to deal with Mr. Priest, not you.”

  Branca was stunned. He looked like he’d taken a hard left hook. Nobody spoke to Angelo Branca like that.

  McKiel read Dad the charges: “One count of stealing ore concentrates worth more than fifty dollars and one count of stealing ore precipitates worth more than fifty dollars.” There was no mention of the ore.

  “Do you understand the charges, Mr. Priest?”

  “I do.”

  McKiel handed him a copy of the warrant to read and warned him that anything he said could be used as evidence against him in court.

  “Do you understand what that means?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you have anything to say?”

  Dad glanced at his lawyer. Branca rose slowly out of chair this time.

  “He doesn’t have a single goddamned thing to say.”

  “I asked Mr. Priest the question,” McKiel said. “I didn’t ask you.”

  “I don’t have anything to say,” Dad said.

  “Fine. Then if you’ll turn around, I will put these handcuffs on you and we’ll be on our way.”

  Dad cooperated while Branca resumed berating Wallace.

  “Nothing was said about a warrant for his arrest! Only warrants to search his house and car! You fellows came here under false pretences! You’ll pay for this!”

  On the way out to the police car, Dad turned to McKiel: “Guess you two fellows will be unemployed in a couple of weeks.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it,” McKiel replied. “I don’t know what you’re paying him, but whatever it is, you got a pretty good song and dance back there for your nickel.”

  For our family, that day was like no other before or since. In the morning Dad had left dressed in a suit and tie, telling us he had a meeting downtown. A few hours later, red-faced and perspiring, he rushed into the house calling Mom’s name. Two broad-shouldered men stood outside the back door—the only entrance to our suite. It was a warm August day and the sliding windows were half open in hopes of a cooling breeze. Vona and I watched as Dad and Mom hurriedly exchanged a few words, and then went into their bedroom where they chattered in agitated low voices and opened and closed dresser drawers. The two big men stayed put with their heads down and hands crossed.

  “Children, go to your room and stay there,” Dad said softly. From inside our room, we listened to shuffles, whispers and doors opening and closing for about five seconds before we sneaked out. Holding hands, we saw Mom and Dad clasped in an embrace as tight as a halter hitch. Mom had her back to us. Dad’s face was folded inwards on her neck. His shoulders shook and out of his mouth came a mewling sound. Was Dad crying? In our minds, such an act was physically impossible, but our eyes weren’t lying. Suddenly Dad pushed himself from her, grasped her shoulders and kissed her fiercely on the lips. Then he turned and walked away with the two men. Mom ran to her room and threw herself face down on the bed. We clamoured to know what had just happened but knew enough to let her be for a moment or three. Vona had pretty much figured it out anyhow.

  “Those were plainclothes policemen,” she said. “And Pappy’s been arrested!”

  Mom heard us and calle
d us into her room, where she hugged us and said the police had taken Dad back to the Yukon because there was trouble with his claim. But he would return soon and, most importantly, he had done nothing wrong. Nothing. Then she herded us to Little Mountain, as we called Queen Elizabeth Park, for a picnic of cheese sandwiches, pickles and apples. We stayed all afternoon. Later I learned that police officers searched our home and car while we were gone. The search yielded nothing. That night we all slept in one bed.

  On the journey to Whitehorse the next day, on a stopover in Watson Lake, policeman and prisoner got off the plane last, after all the other passengers had disembarked. Flight rules forbade handcuffs on the plane but as soon as a prisoner’s feet hit the ground, the cuffs went on. McKiel re-cuffed Dad and the two men walked back and forth on the tarmac behind the plane, out of view of the terminal. It was a cool August afternoon, under a blue, near-cloudless sky.

  As they strolled south in the direction of the town, Dad turned to McKiel and asked, “Do you have a gun?”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “What would you do if I started to run away?”

  “I’d shoot you,” McKiel replied with a straight face.

  “You would?” Dad replied, startled.

  Shooting an unarmed, handcuffed prisoner was about the last thing McKiel would ever do. But Dad didn’t know that. The two men kept strolling for a while, neither saying a word.

  “Guess we better turn around and head back,” McKiel said.

  On the plane, the handcuffs came off and the rest of the long flight north continued without incident. In Whitehorse, a plainclothes detective met the two men and escorted them to the courthouse. Angelo Branca had arranged for a local lawyer to represent Dad. Bail was quickly granted, not contested by Crown counsel, and paid by Mayo MLA Raphael (Ray) McKamey.

  Once the arraignment was completed, Dad and McKiel went to the Whitehorse RCMP detachment, where Dad was photographed, fingerprinted and released. “It was all very cordial,” McKiel said later.

  Cordiality, I’m certain, was the furthest thing from Dad’s mind. Head held high, he strode to Whitehorse’s Capital Hotel, downed a beer and rolled a smoke, then checked in and scrawled Mom a letter. He’d stay in the Yukon “until this is all settled” and try to find work. With lawyer’s fees, moving expenses, storage expenses, car payments and hotel bills, not to mention money for our day-to-day existence, his bank account was dwindling.

  “Believe nothing you read in the newspapers or hear on the radio—there has been so much falsity already,” Dad wrote. “The investigation is grabbing at any silly thing it can. I know I must stand trial in the future but I am confident it will turn out just fine in the end.”

  Not long afterward, though, Dad’s hope that McKiel and Wallace would be “sliced, diced and julienned” by Branca fizzled. And while Dad said Branca would “never drop me,” within weeks the sixty-year-old legal legend was appointed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. His days as a lawyer were over.

  “The guy was truly brilliant,” McKiel reminisced. “We respected his legal ability. He was a formidable lawyer. Your Dad picked the crème de la crème.”

  The stage was now set for one of the longest preliminary hearings in Yukon history, and over the next two years there would be not one, but two trials. It’s hard not to be fatalistic about what’s done and gone. And yet, forever etched in my mind is the question: Would Dad’s fate—and ours—have been different had Angelo Branca stayed in the legal ring on his behalf?

  Chapter 11

  Up and Down—But Not Out!

  Why join the restless, roving crew Of trail and tent?Why grimly take the roads of rue To doom hell-bent?

  Three weeks after Dad’s arrest, I started grade five and Vona grade six at our new school, Van Horne Elementary, located on Ontario Street, a couple of blocks west of Main Street. On the first day, my teacher, Miss Hildebrandt, told me to come to the front blackboard and write the name of the place I came from and the place I lived now. Proudly, I wrote “Elsa, Yukon Territory,” which no one had ever heard of, but then misspelled Vancouver (omitted the “o”) and everyone guffawed. After school, a boy asked me if my father was “the thief from the Yukon” he’d heard about in the news.

  All in all, grade five was a year of firsts: the first time I routinely and repeatedly lied; the first time I failed anything (spelling and math); the first time I missed weeks of lessons due to chronic sore throats, swollen glands, fevers, stomach flu and the unfortunately named fungal skin infection ringworm; the first time food, even Omi’s borscht, tasted like glue; and the first time I fell asleep at night scratching mould off a cold, clammy bedroom wall.

  We asked about our father every day, and about Caesar every other. And mom would do her best to calm us. Immediately after the arrest and during the plane ride to Whitehorse, Dad wrote Mom that he was engulfed in “a haze of pain and sorrow” and could not bear parting with her “that way” again. But once he was out on bail and circulating among sympathizers, Dad’s dark clouds lifted and his spirits revived. His initial letters to Mom were full of buoyancy and bravado. Given widespread animosity toward UKHM throughout the Mayo–Elsa district, many people supported Dad, viewing the affair as a David and Goliath struggle. One of the most surprising people in Dad’s corner was the man who paid Dad’s bail, MLA Ray McKamey. A respected mineral exploration man from Mayo, McKamey had previously spoken out in the Yukon legislature about conditions at the Elsa mine, describing it as “a very dangerous mine to work in.” Later, McKamey would win the federal Liberal nomination and run, unsuccessfully, against incumbent Conservative MP Erik Nielsen.

  Although Dad had not found work—he would accept just about anything but hard labour—he was living rent-free in Whitehorse lawyer Henry Regehr’s house and “working off” his meals at a local café. Regehr had expressed sympathy with Dad’s case and was initially both Dad’s and Poncho’s lawyer. On the home front, Mom drew on our savings for bus fare and household essentials like toothpaste and soap, and Omi often filled our fridge.

  “My lawyer is confident and so am I,” Dad wrote at the time. “My head is high and will stay so. I came back from Mayo this morning and am cheered to find that all the people are on my side. Everything is fine here with me—remember that I’ll always be the same person to you and the girls. So, chin up and as you told me once, we’re down but we are sure not out!”

  In another missive written in mid-September, he said, “We will fight—99.9 per cent of the people are for me and people in Whitehorse from Elsa stop me and wish me luck… They [the police] still hope to break someone but that isn’t going to happen.”

  When attorney Angelo Branca withdrew from Dad’s case, however, he was devastated. While his new lawyer, John Molson, came recommended, he lacked Branca’s impressive track record and pit-bull aggression.

  Shortly after Dad’s arrest, Poncho was arrested at his new home in Duncan on Vancouver Island and faced the same charges as Dad. No one stepped up to pay his bail though, so he languished for weeks in the Whitehorse Guardhouse. Then, on September 26, both men’s charges increased to include “conspiracy to sell a substance containing a precious metal.” This was legalese for trying to sell something that wasn’t theirs. It was an odd charge, and as time rolled on it would prove to have its challenges for the Crown, UKHM and the accused.

  Finally, the Mounties felt they had the evidence to charge Poncho and Dad not only with stealing precipitates and concentrates from UKHM, but 70 tons of silver ore. The trick would be proving it. All they needed was someone to squeal or an expert who could positively link the stolen ore with the Elsa mine. As they expanded their search, interrogating a range of miners, mine managers, mill workers, assay office employees, prospectors and geologists, the date for the preliminary hearing kept getting pushed back. It was originally slated for late Septe
mber, then officials changed the date to sometime in October and finally inked it in for November 19.

  By mid-October, Dad’s letters bore a darker stamp, the late-night mutterings of a homeless, humiliated and frightened man.

  Oh dearest, you are the only one who can ever know the depths of my loneliness and longing—which seem to exceed anything I have ever known or thought I could experience. You and the children are my whole life, my whole reason for being or having lived. And my sorrow, shame and regret for having brought this situation onto us is unspeakable.

  Those words were as close to an admission of guilt as he could muster. A confession, however, they were not. For in the same letter he wrote that no matter the evidence and witnesses mounted against him, “Fight I shall and go down if I must, bravely, with the knowledge that these difficult times have bound me to you with a strength that could never have come any other way. However this thing turns out, I must maintain a plea of not guilty. And that is as it shall be. That is better for you and the children—and for all our friends.”

  Nor could Dad divulge the deep disgrace he felt in the eyes of his father, who had always held him in high esteem and to whom he had sworn complete innocence. His parents wanted to attend the hearing and the trial, as did Mom, but with a dramatic touch Dad vetoed the idea, saying, “No one of my family must be there for I could not stand to see them suffer so.”

  By late October, Dad could bear his separation from us no longer, and came down by car with his friend Angus MacDonald, who worked as a geologist in Keno. Now that the preliminary hearing date was set, he had two weeks to spare before his legal battle began. He arrived on a Sunday. Mom had made a roast beast, as Dad called it, with Yorkshire pudding and gravy, and baked a lemon meringue pie. We were giddy beyond containment and for the first time since Dad left, I finished my plate and asked for more. After dinner, we bombarded Dad with questions: Had he been to Elsa? Who was living in our house? Who had he given Mitzi to? How was Caesar? And when would we all be together again in our own home? He answered every question to our satisfaction except the last.