FIRE & Gabriel Wortman : it hangs about it like a bad penny

For this one, I’m going to work my way backwards.

April 18-19th 2020 : So much has been said about Gabriel’s spree killings that involved fire , that it might appear that there is nothing more than I can add.

But I wish to add this : that even when Gabe was fleeing for his life, his disguise, as a mountie in a cop car, exposed for all to see —-he simply can’t resist thoroughly torching a few last cars.

His life or his fires : the guy simply couldn’t decide.

Earlier we all remember the neighbour whose storage hut Gabe thought dared to intrude on his Portapique property : Gabriel simply torched it and taunted the neighbour to call the mounties on The-Mounties-Biggest-Fan.

(Insert here : kid gloves treatment.)

But let us go back, way back, to April 22nd 2004 when a request was made to have HRM Council intervene to order Gabe to finally tear down the dangerous half-burnt building next to his denturist shop at 191 Portland Street Dartmouth ——or else.

We all know how the bureaucrats will issue demolition order upon order rather than bring it before their political masters.

Only the hardcore holdouts go before the full council.

But there was Gabe before the full council, ordered to tear the burnt hulk down in a month, or the council would do it for him and make him foot the bill.

Actually it was Gabe, his Dad and his Mom before the council : embarrassingly so for his parents, who had no part in blatantly ignoring the municipal bylaws.

Because just as I long suspected, Gabe was no more a self-made success than was Donald Trump : a huge dollop of private money (maybe as much as million dollars worth in today’s tiny dollars) from the bank of mom and dad made Gabe appear, publicly, as highly successful & self-made: but actually his parents were joint tenants on all of his properties.

How did he repay them —- other than by dragging their good names through the public mud ?

Hint : he threatened to kill them and later in Cuba he did beat the living shit out of his dad and sent him to hospital.

A lot of commenters on social media have thought Gabe himself may have deliberately torched the building next to his clinic, just because he liked to see things burn.

Well when I worked in mental hospitals, some of our patients actually were full blown fire starters, of the set fire and then masturbate variety, and I was skeptical at first that Gabe fit that bill.

But a  GOTTERDAMMERUNG-style fire starter who wanted to set the whole world on fire, just to watch everybody and everything burn to death , yes I now could see Wortman in that role ...