Paul & Evelyn & the Trudeau-mania Election : where were they ?

Here’s is how journalistic digging (or history-writing) actually works.

Its slow and tedious.

I’ve confidently claimed that Paul & Evelyn Wortman, the parents of spree killer Gabriel Wortman, weren’t in Canada between at least May 1968 and September 1972 because why ?

Because, first I established not just when the federal elections those years were held but also when the writs were issued, to establish when the door-to-door enumerators came calling.

In those years, the poll voters lists were like a thorough if brief mini census , with the difference that they were immediately and permanently made highly public.

I next established the minimum voting age back then : in 1968, critically it was that you had to be 21 on election day June 25th 1968.

Paul was 21 on June 11 1968, based on his own words to an American reporter in 2010 and to Frank Magazine in April 2020 : critically just inside the deadline.

He says Evelyn is a little older, so she too qualifies.

Now it would be easy to miss Paul if he was always out working, but Evelyn at that point is heavily pregnant with  baby Gabe, who is due to be born two weeks after voting day. This is based upon a Dartmouth police blotter DOB for Gabe in 2001, which matches his high school graduation date.

I believe Evelyn was definitely was not at work, not at that late a date.

So she should have been home when the enumerators came calling (they also did call backs) and given her and Paul’s name and age for the voting lists.

But there doesn’t seem to be a sign of either of them, anywhere in Canada. Or in Canadian phone books or city directories for those years.

Significantly, Paul & Evelyn went to the graduation ceremonies of Paul’s youngest brother when he became RCMP in 1982. Paul did not go to his brother Alan’s RCMP graduation in 1973.

The first in your family ever to become RCMP seems more important to attend than the second one - by then, its bit old hat. So where were Evelyn and Paul that year ?

Using a false name while living in the USA ?

Interesting their December 16th 1967 marriage (based on the dates in an ad they put in the Moncton Times-Transcript to celebrate their 30th) is not recorded in the New Brunswick registry of marriages.

But the family seems to have remained constantly in the Moncton area all through Gabe’s schooling and university years, according to Gabe’s high school yearbook, Gabe’s youngest friends’ recollections, even newspaper reports.

Paul and Evelyn do talk about living in Fitchburg MA in 1970 and giving out false names and maybe false addresses, according to Teresa A Franco’s 2010 article in an American newspaper.

And Paul talked FRANK MAGAZINE about living in the rougher tougher parts of Cleveland and Phoenix.

These must have happened after Paul left high school in Moncton in 1966 and signed his name on his brother’s July 1966 NB wedding certificate and returned home permanently to an address in Bridgedale Riverview, according to that year’s federal voters lists in 1974.

If that is the case - that explains our failure to find them in Canada in those years.

Try to imagine the hours it took just to find even one of the many documents used to buttress my case.

And so, almost a month after he shot to infamy, the simplest bloody question that Wikipedia  biographers could ever hope to ask, still remains unanswered : where exactly was Gabriel Wortman born ?