by Robin Tarnowetzki
Journal Staff Writer
[email protected]
Before Sheila Bautz's husband, Dean, died in a work-related accident, she promised that if she had any suspicions about his death, she wouldn't rest until the company was held accountable.
Shortly after that, he died while working on the rigs in Alberta, and thus began a four-year journey of gathering evidence to prove that his company was to blame for shoddy work practices.
Despite managing to obtain a smoking gun - an admonition on company letterhead of wrongdoing - Bautz couldn't get the company in a courtroom, and so compiled the whole story in a book - "Walking the Cutline - When Companies Kill: A Memoir" that was released in Humboldt on Sept. 22.
"It was a fulfilling of a promise to Dean, it was also exposing the corruption of what happens, and there were two out of three of the things they told me were impossible to do," she said. "They said it would be impossible for me to charge with the criminal code, I did. They said it would be impossible to obtain the smoking gun, and I did. The third was to get them into a courtroom. Two out of three ain't bad. The book is the courtroom."
Other than the smoking gun, other evidence she gathered included engineer reports, witness accounts, and interviews with company executives.
"I just followed my gut instincts on it, did the research, and I started piecing things together, then the truth started to surface and I started questioning agencies like Occupational Healthy & Safety (OH&S) and the Workers' Compensation Board (WCB), the companies, that sort of thing to try to get them held accountable," Bautz said. "The more of it I got, the more things showed they were negligent."
She found that some equipment hadn't gotten certified a water tank was over capacity, which both contributed to Dean's death.
The smoking gun came about through pure persistence with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) Act. She didn't stop trying to get the document until they finally gave up and gave it to her. FOIP's reasoning for not releasing the information to her was that it would hurt the business interest.
"So basically it was 'To hell with you, let men die, we just don't want to harm the business interests,'" she said. "Protect the company, protect the company, protect the company. The more I got into it, it was not about human rights or protecting people, it was about the company; protecting the company."
Bautz largely investigated alone. The only person who was on her side from beginning to end was her best friend Wanda.
"She stuck with me. She went with me. She stuck with me right to the end, through thick and thin."
Still, Bautz admits that there were nights when she was sifting through evidence alone that she could feel her resolve waning.
"I did say I was going to give it up, I was going to drop it, and my best friend Wanda started laughing and she said, 'That's not you, you're just saying that. Yeah right'," Bautz laughed. So she kept going.
Although the book could have benefited from another round of editing, it still gives the reader an accessible look at workplace safety laws through the personable voice of Bautz, who doesn't sugarcoat any of the events.
Bautz has lived in Middle Lake and Pilger, and now lives in Saskatoon. While several publishing houses were interested in her compilation of events, she chose to self-publish instead.
"I felt I started alone, I did it alone, I'll finish it alone and do it my way," she said. "I'm 100% in control of it this way, and I'm accountable for it."
Bautz said people asked if she was worried that the company at fault would come after her, and while she was prepared, she wasn't scared because she felt they couldn't do anything to her, due to her holding nothing back.
"I found being very transparent protects you. Because when you have nothing to hide, you hide nothing, what are they going to come at you with?" she said. "When I was doing the investigation, that's the attitude I had. What have I got to lose? What are they going to say or do to me that hasn't already been said or done?"
Bautz is currently working on several other projects, such as a fantasy book for possible U.S. representation, a book of poetic prose, and a book of wildlife artwork.
