You Can Deny, Deny, Deny All Day Long

Saskatchewan still knows who and what you really are.

It struck me that the only two women I know who spell Joanne differently is JoAnn Balog and JoAnn Wilson.

The first JoAnn was killed one 1997 morning when Scott Moe failed to come to a complete stop and gently nudged, if his version of events is to be believed, the driver’s door of Balog’s eighties Buick, launching it into the air, rotating it three times before it landed back on its wheels.

Balog, who bore the impact of the truck’s grill, died tragically within minutes of the crash. Moe fled the scene immediately, without checking on Balog or her 16yo son Steve in the passenger’s seat.

Moe was given a traffic ticket the next day for failing to come to a complete stop. Steve Balog, the only witness to the crash, was never even interviewed by RCMP.

Yes, for those who are new around here, I’m serious. That really happened.

JoAnn Wilson was former Saskatchewan MLA Colin Thatcher’s ex-wife. She and Thatcher had been embroiled in a nasty custody battle for their oldest sons in the years leading up to her Regina murder in January of 1983. Until he resigned just a few days before murdering the mother of his children, Thatcher had been a short-lived Minister of Energy in Grant Devine’s newly-minted government.

Colin Thatcher was found guilty of his ex-wife’s murder within eighteen months.

On the afternoon of Wednesday October 26, 2022, as both men responsible for the death of a JoAnn sat metres apart in Saskatchewan’s Legislative Assembly, you have to wonder if she crossed their minds.

To this day, both Moe and Thatcher have refused personal accountability for their respective JoAnns’ deaths.