Episode 1: A Moment of Silence

It's becoming pretty clear that US President Donald Trump is ripping up the political playbook. And when it comes to what it all means for Canada, well as they say it's complicated. But our podcast, "Two Blocks From The White House" is a way to make sense of it all. Join me, Willie Lowry and senior Washington correspondence, Paul Hunter and Katie Simpson every week as we break down the headlines from Capitol Hill with a Canadian spin. Find and follow Two Blocks From The White House on your favorite podcast app, including YouTube. This is a CBC podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Please take care. Count to ten. You good? That's great. Yeah. You said count to twelve. You didn't say what language. That's my friend Evan. Evan Mead. This tape is from a couple of summers ago. Evan's in his bedroom at his parents' house in a neighborhood just north of Toronto. He's getting ready to move out and live on his own for the first time. And I'm there too. Ellie, are you watching a monitor of everything you see? Ellie, that's Evan's nickname for me. Evan is pretty much the only person aside from my dad who calls me Ellie. My name's Ellen Chloe Bateman. I'm a documentary filmmaker. I've been telling stories about finding self acceptance and the face of adversity for a long time. Now I was making a documentary with Evan. Okay. I put some of my courts in here too. Evan, want to keep saying that again? I just say that it's moving day. Yeah. It's moving day. And um. I'm standing in Evan's bedroom along with a small film crew and we're filming Evan packing. He's tall, he's handsome and he lights up a room. He's also autistic. He has aspergers. We're going to debunk all these stigmas and say here's where your hope comes in. This is your spark of hope. This is hope for anyone who wants to be not just people with autism or aspergers. This is hope for anyone who thinks that love is just a fairytale. This is film is for anyone. But the vehicle we're using is people with disabilities like aspergers and autism who find it difficult to get a date. We decided to call it Awkward Love. It was about the experiences of people on the autism spectrum as they're looking for love, relationships, romance. So I spent six months following Evan around filming him. To anyone who just got here, have you guys signed the waivers? Or okay. So we'll. how are we going to make this? They're all getting used to what I have. Things were feeling good like they were moving forward. Like we were working on something really positive. Evan was a great collaborator and I was having fun. But then that'll change. Breaking news out of Toronto police are reporting that between eight to ten people have been struck by a van in the north of the city. The corner was just littered with bodies and pedestrians. Today police confirmed the suspect they arrested as 25-year-old Alec Manassian. At least ten people are dead more than it doesn't wound it. An official say it was intentional. Well I got a call from a reporter who found me if you Facebook. And she asked me if I was friends with a guy named Alec Manassian. And I said, "Yeah, I am." So this isn't the story that Evan and I sit out to tell. It's the one we need to tell. It's about two young men who started life in a similar place. But ended up on two entirely different paths. It's a story about marginalization and radicalization. About a subculture of hate that started online. But has increasingly spilled over into the real world. I'm Ellie Chloe-Bateman. This is boys like me. I first met Evan in 2016 at the Toronto International Film Festival. We wound up at the same party. Evan was working the room pitching his idea about autism and dating. And it didn't take much to sell me on it. It sounded fun and optimistic. Mostly though I was sold on Evan. You know, college is a far more mature environment. He was this lightning bolt of charm and charisma. And he was on this amazing mission. So I signed right up. The idea for this film came from his own personal experience. After high school, Evan went to film school and looked forward to dating and meeting girls. I thought it would be a huge world of improvement over high school. And not as socially traumatic. Dating can be bewildering at the best of times for anyone. For Evan, it was that much harder. Do you feel like people discriminate against people with the SD? I know it's inevitable, but at the same time I like to try and convince myself that people are very open-minded. I'm not going to say no, but if I'm not going to date someone on the spectrum just because they're on the spectrum, I'll date them if I want to go out with them if I find them attractive. So Evan decided to approach his dating situation with the same attitude he approaches a lot of things. He went all in. He learned everything he could about dating and relationships. And then he did something really cool. He started organizing date camps, like workshops where he'd share what he'd learned with other folks on the spectrum. Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the bit of the wait, but I just wanted to welcome you all to the fourth consecutive autism social camp. Again. So this is just a little background about myself and about us. Throughout elementary school, making friends was difficult. In high school, it was even more difficult. In college it got easier, but as someone who is growing to learn more and more about my condition, there is always much more to discover. He bring in experts to speak. So a little bit about me is I am a dating and relationship coach. These camps were a hit. They were really popular and media picked up on the story. Evan became sort of a minor celeb for a time. Today, we are talking to people who are finding the courage to put themselves out there in the search for love. Evan Meade is a 24-year-old Toronto filmmaker who is diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when he was just five years old. And now he facilitates dating baking. As far as I knew, I'd never really known anyone with autism before meeting Evan. And I'd never had a professional relationship with someone on the spectrum either. Once Evan and I started working together, I began to notice that he seemed to feel things bigger than I did. A common stereotype is that we're very emotionally guarded, but the reality is like we have amplified emotions or I have amplified emotions at least. When I was a kid, if I got angry, I got really angry. If I was sad, I got really sad. If I was happy, I was you for. These were the kinds of things Evan wanted people to know about autism. Yeah, his enthusiasm occasionally sidetracked him eating, and his impulsiveness could be a little hard to reign in sometimes. But I was constantly impressed by him. He's a great writer and he's just fantastic with people. And that over-the-top enthusiasm of his, it helps him make good things happen. And that's sort of the magic ingredient in a good producer. How you doing Evan? Doing okay. So I had to rush the car to his bus. Yeah, so we'll just go through some of the questions from that. Evan and I are sitting in a bus headed north on Young Street. We're almost at our destination. Finch Station is the last stop on the Young Street subway line. It's a major hub for commuters. This is the neighborhood where the vanotactic place. Almost exactly three years ago, on April 23rd, 2018, we're retracing Evan's steps that day. I don't really know the neighborhood, but Evan does. He grew up nearby. We're just south of Old Thornville. Like a lot of areas in Toronto, North York's East and West sides are divided by Young Street. It's basically the backbone of the city. One of the main arterial roots into the downtown core. Back in 2018, while we were working on our film, Evan was picking up gigs as a freelance videographer. He spent a lot of time traveling back and forth between Finch Station and downtown. One of his clients was an organization called Mo Mundays. Mo Mundays hosts these open mic nights for folks who want to build their confidence in front of a crowd. Back then Evan didn't have his own lighting kit. I needed to borrow a light from a friend and we were going to meet at Fenton station to pick it up. The day of the attack he comes out of the station and here's the siren. He doesn't think much of it at first. Young and Fenton is a major intersection. There are always sirens here but pretty quickly it's clear something's going on. By the time my friend Mike came to drop off a light I heard what had to have been like 20 sirens and the fact that they were helicopters circling around the intersection and like something really big went down here. Evan gets the gear from his friend says goodbye and then heads back into the station. Still not sure what's going on. Meanwhile once I was stopped south on Young Tiffany Jeffkins is sitting outside with a friend and there are two infant daughters. We decided to have lunch outdoors at my last one square and because it was so beautiful the square was packed you know it was kind of the first really nice day of spring. It was a beautiful day it was one of the nice niceest days we've had it was early spring and it was just glorious and everybody was out on the street. Kathy Rdell is out running errands making her way south down Young Street. I know I had gone to the bank at Fenton Young and I was heading down to the library. I remember coming out of the bank and getting to Fenton Young and really I don't remember anything after that. We laid out some picnic blankets we took the girls out and literally as we finished lunch we stood up and we were chatting and heard a crash and all we could hear were you know people screaming and yelling and someone I distinctly remember hearing someone yell stop that van and we didn't even hear him coming because there's so much noise on young and the last thing you would expect is somebody barreling down the sidewalk at 50 kilometers an hour in a truck. You just would never have expected it so I didn't hear it becoming. The van strikes Kathy from behind. It throws her into a glass best shelter and as we turned around to look we saw the van barreling down the sidewalk. Less than 20 meters from where we were. At the time Tiffany's working in critical care as a respiratory therapist. She's trained to help stabilize people in emergency situations. She tells her friend to watch the girls and she said of course absolutely do what you need to do. I got my keys and I ran towards the first nearest victim and started doing CPR. People screaming running by a woman running by on her phone screaming into it which I can only describe as I think she was probably trying to describe the scene to EMS but she was extremely distraught and while I was doing CPR and trying to ask the crowd if anybody knew how to do CPR and if anybody could help and people just were staring at me just like completely shocked obviously. I don't remember people coming to me on the street I don't remember the police don't remember the first responders don't remember being in an ambulance or going to St. Mike's Hospital. I guess at the beginning they had me on medication and I guess you know it's probably in a lot of pain which I don't remember either thank heavens. And I really had no idea how how many times I was going to do this at this point because I guess somebody felt it was important to walk by and tell me that there are more people injured up the street and I said I can't go there. You know in my mind I think I may have said it in my head and I was like I can't I can't keep going I don't know how far this this stretches. Tiffany tries to save four people but none of them survive. Back at Malasmen Square paramedics arrive please secure the area there are blankets covering the bodies of victims for a two kilometer stretch. One of the busiest streets in the city is eerily silent. The Toronto fan attack as it's become known killed 11 people and injured 15 others. Evan had arrived at the station just after the attack 24 hour news channels were playing everywhere so by the time he catches the bus back home he knows what happened though he doesn't know any details not yet. Hi everyone I was in the area of the attack if that's what some people are calling it now or incident at Evan gets back home and notices people checking in on his social media feeds letting friends and family know they're okay so he decides to do the same. So I just I'm making this broad guys just just let you know that I'm safe and just pray for those who have been affected by this horrible tragedy because this is absolutely yeah just traumatizing as I'm kind of shaken up a little bit so I'm going live just let you know I'm okay and that's all I wanted to say. Evan checks the time and realizes he has to head out again as far as he knows momenta is still happening and he still needs to film it. I just made a quick bite to eat and at this point it's like 4/30 in the afternoon and I got to be there at 5/30 in at the venue to set up my camera and stuff. Evan keeps checking his phone he sees that the driver is being taken into custody no one really knows much beyond that. More details on that we are seeing details and rumors kind of float around on social media but we haven't been able to confirm who this driver is what if any with their motivation behind this. Naturally the media starts hunting for clues and one of those clues leads straight to Evan. Out of nowhere I get a message request from someone named Nora Ibrahim. Evan notices they have a few mutual Facebook friends so he accepts a request and Nora messages him right away. She said "do you have a minute to talk about someone on your Facebook friend's list?" and I said "Sure." So then she called me over Facebook messenger and she asked me "Evan do you know a guy named Alec Minesyan?" Nora Ibrahim is a reporter with ABC News. She's investigating the Vanotock. Nora was based in New York City and a lot of American reporters mispronounced his name but I corrected her and said his name is Alec Minesyan and then she's like okay thank you she said it looks like he was connected to the incident in Gerato earlier today and he only had 10 friends on his Facebook page something like that and you were one of them. I immediately had questions for Nora I was like how do you know he is connected to this? What's your source and then she said I can't give that information I'm not at liberty to give that information. But she does tell Evan that his friend's name has been used to rent the van. Evan has a hard time believing that Alec could have done this. Maybe a shady friend of his bribed him to giving his name to put on like a rental agreement maybe this was a completely different Alec Minesyan? Nora keeps pressing Evan for information but he hasn't really been in touch with Alec since they graduated seven years ago. And then I said Alec was in the same special in these classes I am he was very quiet he was never a violent guy he had aspergers just like the rest of us. Evan gets off the phone with Nora and heads to moment days shaken up even more. If journalism is the first draft of history what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999 four Russian apartment buildings were bombed hundreds killed but even now we still don't know for sure who did it it's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman and in a new BBC series I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The history bureau Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a big night for Evan aside from filming he's going to be getting up on stage for the first time. April is an important month for him. So for those of you who don't know April is autism awareness month and we have a really special speaker. Evan hands camera duty over to a friend and notices he's missed a call. Nora calls me back and leaves a message saying I can now confirm that Alec Menacian did drive the van. and he was arrested. Do you have anything you want to say? I just texted her back and said, "No comment." - Our videographer, our beloved Evan Hewitt. (audience applauding) Up all the crowds I speak to about this, you guys, I have never seen more awareness and appreciation, hopefully, for autism than I have in this crowd. So you should guys give yourself a hand for that. - Evan's projecting a lot of confidence here and it's really impressive considering this is his first time speaking in front of a crowd this big. His poises even more impressive considering what he's just learned about the attack. - So I gave my talk at Mo Mondays, knowing that he was responsible for the van attack. I just knew I had a job to do. My job at Mo Mondays is to give a talk that was all about the positives of autism, knowing that a shit storm of bad publicity for autism was on the way if Alec was really connected to the attack. - And I will always love what I do as long as the people I love keep me grounded and passionate. Thank you for having me on your show tonight. (audience applauding) - And before I do this song, I just wanted to have a few moments of quiet for the people who died today in Young Street. So I don't know whether it's Tara or Stjett, nobody's saying. So just give her just a few seconds of quiet, just close your eyes for a few seconds and we'll go on with the show. - That was one of the most surreal moments of silence I had ever experienced in my entire life. It's different when you know the person who is responsible for a tragedy. It's very, very different when you know someone who'd killed people. - Okay, thank you. Thank you for doing that for me. I really appreciate it. Thank you. (birds chirping) I guess we're fortunate. He only got the number of people he did 'cause the streets were full. Kathy Rangel was 67 at the time of the attack. She spent two months in hospital. I've had a hip replacement and knee replacement. And a major wound. So I had treatment for about, I don't know, five or six months to recover from that. So yeah, he did a lot of damage. I met Kathy at a park close to the scene of the attack. She insisted on walking to meet me even though three years later, she still hasn't fully recovered. It's a long, slow process and recognizing and admitting the psychological impact of it was the hardest part. It would take you to really dark places at times. There were times at the, especially the first year 'cause it was extreme pain and extreme discomfort and a lot of frustration and still not truly knowing when it happened that I wish he had just done a better job and ended it. I still have a ways to go and I just assumed I was gonna get there and I'm kind of not so sure that I'm going to. And that's not an easy thing to accept. I'm gonna keep trying. I have to keep trying. I can't give up. But it, it, it, it, get you down sometimes realizing that the way you had thought your life was gonna turn out isn't gonna turn out that way. I spent April 23rd unpacking. My husband and I had just moved and we were settling in. We just hooked up the TV and the first thing we saw was news of the attack. It brought back memories. I have a lot of family in France and you'll probably remember in the few years leading up to 2018, France experienced a wave of domestic terror attacks including an eerily similar track attack in Nice. It's awful, but calling my relatives to check in afterwards had become a thing that was, if not actually normal, then regular at least. Now I was the one getting calls. Evan called me to the night of the attack. I didn't pick up though. I was overwhelmed with the move, with work. And I was pretty shaken up by what I had seen on the news. I remember exactly my messages said, "Hey, Ellie, I hope you're doing okay." Listen, there was a van attack in Toronto. I have to talk to you about it. Please call me back and you did and I told you everything. He was shocked and he was having trouble processing things. Evan and I started talking about the attack and we've been having that conversation pretty much nonstop ever since. In the weeks that followed, he'd stopped talking to the media but he was talking to me more than ever. Opening up about his relationship with Alec Manassian. One of the things Evan eventually told me was that on the night of the attack, he'd been in touch with a group of guys he went to high school with. Guys who were in the same special needs class, the same class as Alec. They were all watching the news and messaging one another. When Norieberham called Evan, she said that Alec only had a few friends on Facebook. Evan was already talking to those friends. On April 23rd at 5.09pm, someone in our group chat messages, hey has everyone heard the news? And then another guy replies about the van hitting those people. Yeah, I heard. Evan's reading me some of that conversation. They've supposedly named a suspect. You guys are seeing that name, right? Somebody please tell me this is just a big coincidence. Another guy says, I can't find the name, what's the name? Alec Manassian. No, I am not making any of that up. And then another guy responds, the fuck, like with multiple question marks, our friend says there has to be more than one person with that name. And then another guy comes and says, anyone else got a Facebook request from him a few weeks back though? I can't have been the only one who got a request from Alec. And then another guy says, I did. I didn't accept the request. And then one guy says, yeah, I accepted a friend request. Have you talked to him at all in the last few years? Most of us had not spoken to him. Evan got a friend request from Alec around the same time as the rest of his friends about a month before the attack. He and Alec messaged back and forth a bit. On March 11, 2018, at 11.08am, Alec says to me, hey, man, how's it going? Long time no see. And then I replied, hey, Alec, I'm great. How about you? And then later that afternoon, he says, I've been doing good. Things are going well, just finishing up my last semester so I can finally get out of college. Then I can start looking for jobs. What have you been up to lately? I responded later that evening. That sounds cool. I've been into filmmaking over the past five years. Then he says, oh, that's cool. What kind of films have you been involved in lately? I was a little stressed in my life at that time. So I didn't really want, I didn't feel like talking to him about what I was up to 'cause I didn't, myself confidence was a little low so I didn't really respond to him. I took you a while for you to tell me this too, right? I mean, you usually tell me everything. And you kept this from me for a while. I was worried about how would that make me look if someone found out that he was in conversation with me before he did what he did. I honestly, I don't know. I just feel like I didn't want people knowing that he was talking to me. Do you feel shame for having known him? More, I felt more shock than I did shame. And the shock numbed my body when it occurred to me that I knew this guy for a long time. Have you ever felt guilty for not responding? Yep, I have felt guilty for not responding. 'Cause like I said before, maybe if I did respond, I could have helped him. I could have unpacked what he was doing. But that's the thing, I had no earthly idea that he would do something so drastic. 'Cause that wasn't him. That was so, so, that was so completely out of character for Alec. I just wanted to know why it happened. We all did. Everyone was. was looking for answers. Bits and pieces about him started to emerge. And one of those things that came out was that he was on the spectrum. - When I heard he was autistic, I could have had a small amount of sympathy. You know, I'm virtually impaired. I was born blind. So I had some surgeries when I was very young, but I didn't have a lot of sight. And I went to an able-bodied school in the '50s. And they really didn't want me at the school. And they made that very clear. I know what that's like to be an outsider and to struggle to be accepted. So I could have some sympathy for him, someone who had autism and really didn't fit in. And I could understand that a bit. And which would give me a little bit of empathy towards him until I got to know the situation more. And then that was done. - The more that came out about Alec Menassian, the more malicious and specific his motivation seemed. As police searched for a motive, one possible explanation is circulating online, suggesting Menassian was angry over being rebuffed by women. - While investigators search for hard evidence, Menassian's digital footprint is being scrutinized too. On Facebook, police say he wrote "The in-sell rebellion has already begun. In-sell is a term meaning involuntary celibate." - Evan actually saw the post go live on his Facebook feed, just before the attack. But it didn't mean anything to him at the time. - What's an in-sell? Like, what is an in-sell? I thought in-sells was like related to a video game of some kind. I thought it's just Alec being a nerd. - In-sell, in voluntary celibate, most of us hadn't heard the term until the van attack, but it's a word that had been circulating the dark corners of the internet for a while. And it had grown into an ideology. An ideology that could motivate you to kill. - Evan and I talked almost daily in the weeks after the attack, and it became obvious our film just wasn't going to work anymore. - A guy killed in the name of not getting love and not being able to have relationships or get laid. So, I'm like, we have to find a way to include this in the autism and dating project we just have to. - The challenges of dating on the spectrum now seemed less important than the question we kept circling back to. How is it that two boys who started off in a similar place could grow into such drastically different young men? Evan took his struggles with romance and relationships and transformed them into something positive. He chose to help himself and in turn, ended up helping other people too. Alec Menassian, he made a different set of choices. A set of choices that seems to be appealing to more and more young men. - Hey, world, anyone who's watching this a couple days ago, to my producer, Ellen, asks me to think about what I would say if I were to write a letter to Alec Menassian. - We knew our film would have to change somehow. - We weren't sure exactly how just then. So I asked Evan to start recording a video diary just to capture his thoughts and feelings as they were unfolding. - I'm making this video because I'm honestly a little frustrated. I've never really thought about if I were to write a letter to a mass murderer or any criminal or any terrorist, what I would say to them because there truly are no words. And I'm having trouble finding them. Alec, do you understand the damage you've done to the spirit of this country, to the spirit of people on the autism spectrum who are now terrified of being stigmatized because of what you did? There is a child who is an orphan because you killed his mom. And you also killed friends. You killed mothers, daughters, wives, sons. Do you comprehend that? What happens? Like, what happened, Alec? (soft music) 'Cause right now a lot of people hate you. It probably me hates you too. (soft music) (soft music) Next time on, boys like me. How do you feel now knowing that he was looking at mass attacks? He's got a lot of cool school shootings. It makes my skin crawl to be honest, to know that he wanted to do that to us. Even from the very day that I met him, he seemed to be rather afraid of me. Now all there is to do is just understand what led him to do this. And that's been the question that's been kind of, you know, on my mind for the past year. A special thanks to all of the survivors of "Willowdale," who generously share their stories with us. Boys like me was created by me, Ellen Chloe Bapin. The series is produced by me, Chris McEnroe, Scott Dopson, and Michael Coutano. Michael Coutano is her head writer, "Additional Writing by Scott Dopson." "Additional Production by Evan Meade." Unis Kimazar, associate producer. Emily Canal is our digital producer. It's sound designed by Michael Coutano. Chris Oak is our story editor, Damon Fairlis is our senior producer, and the executive producer of CBC Podcasts is RF Nurene. "Additional Audio courtesy of KTVU." If you like the series, we'd really appreciate it. If you'd take the time to braid it and review it, it really helps others find it. Thank you. [music] For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.