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When did it become risky to walk home in North Burnaby?

On Novem­ber 8th, 2008, at 3:30am.

Well, maybe that’s not the exact moment that it became risky, but it was the exact moment I real­ized it was. Ever since I can remem­ber, I’ve never had a moments hes­i­ta­tion walk­ing any­where in Burn­aby. Hell, I’ve waited for a bus in the mid­dle of East Hast­ings and have always felt safe enough. I’m sure that was never a good idea, but I’ve never had a run in with a junkie before, so I fig­ured I was safe. Clearly, I’m too trusting.

Fri­day night was like any other, we drank and went to go down­town to a club. We danced, talked, laughed, hung out, and had a great time. Then, we decided to go home, and who but the really cheap guy decides that he doesn’t want to take the taxi, he wants to take the 135 down Hast­ings (hint: he writes this blog). So, along with me is my cousin Peter and my friend Laura, and we take the bus and get off at Kens­ing­ton Plaza and walk down to Peters house. This is a neigh­bor­hood that I’ve never thought twice about, I have always felt safe in it no mat­ter what time it was. I have walked down it in the mid­dle of the night on mul­ti­ple occa­sions, but unfor­tu­nate this time I was not as fortunate.

We turned left on Park­dale, obliv­i­ous as to what was to come next, right up to the moment it hap­pened and not a sec­ond before. A red hatch­back passes us, and it from what I can recall, seemed like a very old Honda, although my cousin claims it was a Volvo, but in any case it turns back the other way. Even at this point, I thought noth­ing of it, think­ing to myself “he must have just taken the wrong turn”. Even as this car pulled over, I fig­ured he went down the street and turned around because he likes his car fac­ing that par­tic­u­lar direc­tion when he gets to his house. I was wrong.

The man jumped out of his car, weld­ing a large machete, and bolted towards our direc­tion. I can still remem­ber his face, his body shape, what he was wear­ing, even though I saw him for only a split sec­ond before I turned around and ran for my life. He was a large man, Cau­casian, chunky, with a ban­danna across his mouth, who yelled a cou­ple of things that I can’t remem­ber, but I’m sure they were irrel­e­vant. As the man con­tin­ued our away, all I can remem­ber think­ing about was get­ting as far away as fast as pos­si­ble, and I regret to say, I wasn’t think­ing about any­one else. That is, until I heard a large scream from Laura, and at that point, my brain was strug­gling between sur­vival mode and the mode that would make me go back in a sec­ond. Thank­fully, my brain didn’t have to make that deci­sion, because while the man had grabbed Laura, she man­aged to escape right away, as appar­ently she had looked him in the eye, and all she saw was a con­fused and pos­si­bly drugged up man who didn’t seem one hun­dred per­cent there. When she ran towards us, it was the sin­gle great­est feel­ing of relieve I have ever expe­ri­enced in my entire life. We grabbed her and kept head­ing towards my cousins house. They did not con­tinue in pur­suit. Finally, we got there, and we called the police.

It gave me a lot to think about; it made me ques­tion the level of trust I have for peo­ple, it made me won­der what kind of sick indi­vid­ual would do some­thing like that, and I also couldn’t stop think­ing about there motives. Laura said that when he caught up to her and grabbed her, there was so much he could have done, but instead, he did noth­ing. There was also another man in the car, he was a black man, fairly skinny, but he didn’t chase us. I con­tin­u­ously won­der what their inten­tions were, did they do it to scare us, did they do it to rob us, or were truly have the inten­tion of killing, but because they were too messed up on drugs, sim­ply couldn’t “pull the trig­ger”. But if some­thing hap­pened to her, we would have undoubt­edly gone to help, and all of our lives could have poten­tially ended that night.

You always see the ter­ri­ble things that hap­pen to peo­ple in the news, and I’m sure most peo­ple fig­ure “Wow, that’s ter­ri­ble! But I’m sure it will never hap­pen to me”. That night made me real­ize that I’m not invis­i­ble, your life is as frag­ile as the mos­qui­tos. Any­thing can hap­pen, and so, I just hope that if any­thing, I can learn from this, and change in a pos­i­tive way. In the end, I just hope that this expe­ri­ence doesn’t effect my abil­ity to walk the streets with­out feel­ing fear, although I’m sure it will for a period of time. In my opin­ion, the best thing to do in a sit­u­a­tion like this is to come out stronger, with more cau­tion, and a greater appre­ci­a­tion of life. Know­ing life could be over in a sec­ond makes me appre­ci­ate what I have at least a lit­tle bit more, but a lit­tle could go a long way.

So, I found out from my devel­op­ment man­ager at EA that I was going to be in the Fifa 09 cred­its (I was sup­pose to be in NHL 09, which is what I care about more, but appar­ently there was a mix up and all of the Online team was for­got­ten…). Any­ways, here I am (I’m under Pro­gram­mers in the EA Online section):

You can click on it to see it in more detail, I’m sec­ond from the bot­tom. Now, this would be fan­tas­tic, except for one lit­tle prob­lem… The qual­ity of this iPhone pic­ture might be too blurry to see, but try and really look at my name. It says “Shawn Janes­par”. My name has been con­stantly mis­spelled this way my entire life, but out of all the times for it to hap­pen, this is the worst! But, I’ll admit, its pretty funny =D.

–Shawn J