what happened in Vegas and Portapique mustn’t just stay in Vegas and Portapique

Comparing a video and a photo taken of the Portapique spree killer GW on the last day of the shootings with photos taken just four years earlier, I am inclined to agree with his father Paul : he noticed that GW the life-long wiry muscled-tone guy had suddenly put on a lot of unhealthy weight.

To GW, he had too to have noticed that one of his most prized possessions - prized even above his homes, bikes and cars - his self-made ruddy good health and mountains of energy - was declining.

And at least since Covid, though it probably began years before, his second most prized possession, his self-made wealth, was also declining.

I mention this because I believe it allows us to make some illuminating comparisons to SP, the Vegas spree killer, and to a certain fairly common type of individual, particularly among men.

We, all of us, society, our male-distorted culture, we still impose ultra high informal burdens on males to be, and to be seen as being the breadwinner, the protector, the breeder of children, tough, strong, not-a-complainer.

“Self reliant and self sustaining”, to use SP’s words in explaining his life-long behaviour to one of his wives.

With his father away, SP’s mom was effectively a single mom with a fairly large family to support and the resulting early years of constant uncertainty and financial insecurity never left SP.

He resolved to forever forsake the un-reliant support of others and to make his own way, under his own steam.

Starting out as an mere employee in low paying working class jobs,  he quickly became self-employed, master-of-his-own-destiny guy ; a large landlord and investor, driven by his single-minded determination to be fully, totally, independent.

His good health gave him the strength to put in the hours, formal and informal, to succeed at what he did.

That and his good wealth put him on the top of the maximum pinnacle he felt he could achieve — unfortunately with no place to go but downhill.

Because there is no kidding yourself : when we reach our fifties, we all know we aren’t kids anymore.

A few people I know can probably shrug this off - they’ve being doing so all their lives.

For their’s is not a mere surface veneer appearance of self confidence and self reliance : its the pure them , all the way through. Some of us are just born lucky with the right balance of physical and mental traits, raised in the right environment.

But for most of us, males particularly, it can be a constant struggle to carry off the degree of mental and physical strength we are supposed to have in us, as innate.

Ask any ex-athelete, ex-combat soldier or aging construction worker :  our bones constantly remind us we aren’t the he-man or breadwinner we used to be.

Some of us are at peace with declining bones, because we used our good health and high energy, rather than our muscles, to succeed and exceed in admin and planning : I am thinking of the self-made businessman.

But for them, declining wealth can be at least as threatening : because they no longer are confident that if they return again into the marketplace they will re-coup their fortune.

The new marketplace seems so much faster and harder than the old, so different, and they no longer have the energy or the mental agility to re-teach their dog to do new tricks.

The percentage of suicides among males solely because of their fears of future declining health and wealth, of no longer being the provider and protector, is always quite high.

Reading the Wikipedia biography of SP the Vegas killer this morning and comparing it to what we think we know about GW, the Portapique killer, I am struck by so many shared characteristics around their total need to always be in control, to surmount the deep frightful memories of the chaos and uncertainty of their earliest childhood years.

And of the consequences resulting when in their late middle age, they realize they no longer have the health and wealth to keep up that self reliance and self sustaining.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah : we all know both men drank heavily in the months before their shootings, that they appeared heavily depressed.

The media - God Bless ‘Em - at least told us that.

But why the depression, why the drink, why now ?

Well in this blog I have offered up one possible explanation - my speculation ,based on the best current knowledge we have of the facts.

Because that is what historians - even very amateur ones - should do.

But now - what do you think ?