By Amy Bell
On a hot night in June, 1966, 18-year-old Matthew Charles Lamb woke up from a beer-fueled evening nap at his uncle’s house in East Windsor, Ontario. Released from the Kingston Penitentiary only seventeen days earlier, Lamb was resentful about the conditions of his parole, and depressed about his future. He got up, grabbed his uncle’s gun and a box of ammunition from the closet, and walked out into the night. In a series of seemingly random encounters on Ford Boulevard, he shot twenty-year-old Edith Chaykoski, her older brother Kenneth, and their 21-year-old friend, Andrew Woloch. He ran across the street, shot and injured a girl he saw silhouetted in the doorway of her house, then walked two blocks, knocked on a random door, and told the elderly lady who lived there he was going to shoot her. After she threatened to call the police, he left out the back door, abandoning his gun, and returned to sleep in his uncle’s house, where he was arrested the next day. Edith Chaykoski and Andrew Woloch died of their injuries, and Lamb was charged with two counts of capital murder, which in 1966 carried a mandatory death sentence.
Who was Lamb, and why did he perform this act of seemingly senseless violence? Was this Canada’s first “spree killing”, a harbinger of a new kind of modern murder? So argues RCMP veteran and former history teacher, Will Toffan, the author of Watching the Devil Dance: How a Spree Killer Slipped Through the Cracks of the Criminal Justice System (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2020).
Toffan suggests that the increasing prevalence of spree killers, mass murderers and serial killers in the 1960s and 1970s reflected a profound social fracturing in North America, and the rise of a new type of personality: the criminal psychopath. In the book, Toffan combines extensive research into Lamb’s life and crimes with the stories of the more infamous psychopathic killers: Zodiac, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, etc. He also details the fascinating history of psychological research into psychopathy as a mental disorder, from the 1940s work of prison psychologist Hervey Cleckley to the later analyses of Robert Hare in British Columbia, whose checklist of psychopathic traits is widely used today.
Psychopathy is not recognized as a medical disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5), (unlike antisocial personality disorder, which shares many of the same traits), but is estimated to affect 1% of the population and up to 25% of incarcerated criminals. Continue reading
In 1935, a group of Ottawa social workers came together to form the Eastern Ontario Branch of the Canadian Association of Social Workers. Over the next 85 years, the group underwent a number of changes, including becoming part of the Ontario Association of Social Workers, but its role in representing the social work community never wavered. Whether it was organizing social events, pushing for professional recognition, or organizing social justice campaigns, social workers and their clients have benefited from the Eastern Branch’s work.
In what has been a most challenging year, any moments of fun and joy have been incredibly valuable. For me, musical soundtracks have offered a great respite from the real world. Not only can they offer some upbeat music and positive messages, but since most of them are about an hour long, they’re great for the work day. Once you get to the end of a soundtrack, it’s a reminder to get up and move around and take a short break. This year I learned that a lot of my colleagues at Parks Canada feel similarly about musical theatre, which has led to plenty of discussion and debate about the relative qualities of musicals.