A rural Saskatchewan man turned to his neighbours for help.

They killed him instead.

I’ve been working on an upcoming series about the Saskatchewan Marshals and the myriad of unsettling changes the Sask Party has been quietly making, over the last few years, to the Saskatchewan Police Act

Coming across this story, however, I set the Marshals stuff aside.

We need to talk about what happened on a farm just outside Melfort, Saskatchewan in August 2022. What was known about this incident was already disturbing.

However, the whole story is worse than what we knew and it hasn’t been told.

At the least, the story of Chris Hawkins death is not just about the potential lack of humanity in rural Saskatchewan, but also one of RCMP corruption, white privilege and more questionable conduct from Saskatchewan courts.

More backwater, regressive bullshit.

The facts related to what happened to an innocent, unarmed Saskatchewan man on that warm August afternoon are heinous:

• before he could even open his mouth, he was beaten senseless by two rabid Saskatchewan farmers, after he pulled into their yard looking for help;

• there was a personal connection and long-standing relationship between the farmers, their families and the local RCMP detachment;

• because of that relationship, there had been concerns raised, historically and publicly, about local RCMP investigations (or lack thereof) into those farmers;

• in 2022, unequivocally, the local RCMP detachment did not properly investigate those farmers;

• the local RCMP detachment lied to Hawkins’ family to coverup their botched investigation, while still refusing to investigate it;

• after finally being convicted, no thanks to local RCMP, those farmers received no jail time, despite one of them already having a violent criminal record.

That story has not been told publicly, so let’s get into it.

I have so much respect for Shanda Tansowny, a Calgary woman who put her life and her grief aside to fight an uphill battle against a toxic, corrupt system, in order to secure justice for her brother’s brutal and unjust death.

Shanda Tansowny and her brother Chris Hawkins, deceased.

To Tansowny and the late Chris Hawkins’ entire family, I extend my deepest sympathies and heartfelt condolences. This shouldn’t have happened. I’m so sorry that it did.

With the sentencing hearing complete, a video of the farmyard beating of Hawkins has been released to the public. CBC Saskatchewan has published a portion of it here. I suggest you watch, making sure to listen to the audio.

We love to shake our heads over atrocities in far away countries, or watching the United States become a place where a once unthinkable second civil war now seems feasible.

Of course, none of that could ever happen in Saskatchewan, right?

Wrong.

Watch the video and bear witness to the violence your own Saskatchewan neighbors have the capacity to inflict on another human being.

But be warned, it’ll sicken you.