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A bug’s life
Canada Day
The Strange Nature exhibit, which opened last week in Richmond, may have your skin crawling.
The vast array of colour on show at the Salmon Festival parade in Steveston brightened up an otherwise dull weather Canada Day.
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Garden City Lands 5
City files law suit defence.
Surplus fight
Council squabbles over $2 million.
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.RICHMOND-NEWS.COM JUSTICE
Kembo’s lawyer queries tactics Step-daughter could’ve been alive today, he claims BY NELSON BENNETT
nbennett@richmond-news.com
HEALTH
Disease expert dismisses Lyme diagnosis BY ALAN CAMPBELL
acampbell@richmond-news.com
The sick Richmond family featured in a News’ series and dozens of letter writers from around B.C. and across Canada do not have Lyme disease. That’s the professional opinion of the province’s top disease expert, Dr. Bonnie Henry. Three members of the Goertzen family — mom Shannon and sons Taylor, 17, and Parker, 10, have all been diagnosed in the U.S. with Lyme or Lyme-related diseases.
Goertzens are suffering from something else, top doc says The Goertzens, and almost everyone else who felt compelled to write to the News after the family’s struggle was featured last month, have had to travel to the U.S. to be diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease, accusing the B.C. and Canadian medical profession of being unable or unwilling to deal with the condition. While Henry — director of Public Health Emergency Services at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) and assistant professor, School of
Population & Public Health at UBC — acknowledged that the Goertzens and the people who contacted the News are suffering from some kind of condition, she’s adamant it’s not Lyme. “I think it’s the view of a small number of people that are particularly unhappy with their relationship with their physicians here,” Henry said, referring to the Goertzens and the people who contacted the News about their experiences with Lyme, a tick-borne dis-
ease that can, over time, ravage both body and mind if left untreated. “When people don’t hear what they want from their physician, they get frustrated and go looking for the answer they want to hear. It’s also very frustrating for our physicians. But I think it’s because of a dysfunctional relationship with their healthcare provider. “There are lots of pain and fatigue issues that we simply don’t have the answers to.” see Henry page 4
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CHUNG CHOW/RICHMOND NEWS
Summer’ s here ... Grandad Nick Sorokin flies his grandkids’ kite at Garry Point Park, as the warm weather finally arrived.
The lawyer who defended convicted serial killer Charles Kembo has written to a parliamentary committee demanding to know what went wrong during a police investigation that he says might have prevented the death of one of Kembo’s victims, had something not gone wrong. Don Morrison — a former police complaints commissioner — has written to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and Intelligence to formally request a review of the investigation by the RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team that led to Kembo’s arrest and conviction on four counts of murder. He admits it’s an unusual thing for a defence lawyer to do. “The fact that I would raise it is a bit strange,” Morrison told the News. “I’m Kembo’s lawyer. Usually the family or a third party should raise it. But I was so upset by it, someone has to raise it.” The eight-month-long trial was unusual in its almost total absence of surviving family members attending it. Morrison feels Kembo’s last victim — his step-daughter, Rita Yeung — might still be alive, if police had dispatched a live surveillance team to tail Kembo the night Yeung died in Richmond. Kembo was under audio surveillance, his phone was tapped and police had planted a GPS tracking system in his vehicle. They were aware that Yeung was in Kembo’s Land Rover from about noon till after midnight on the night she died, Morrison said. He said investigators had placed Kembo under live surveillance before and can’t understand why they didn’t scramble an undercover team when they realized he was driving around with vulnerable young woman in his vehicle. see Lawyer page 3