“Give me your money or you’re dead.”

The man uttering those words while pointing a handgun had no idea he’d be the one to die that day, though Tim Smith at least enjoyed the momentary thrill of being handed $115 before being shot in the back as he left.

That would be the Crown’s strongest argument in why the person who’d fired that weapon, a middle-aged Calgary store owner, was guilty of second-degree murder. That Steven Kesler had shot the fleeing robber in the back. Instead, he should have let Smith escape, like those other criminals who’d stolen from him at gunpoint before.

Today, almost 39 years later, what happened on that cold Saturday afternoon in Kesler’s Marda Loop drugstore is as relevant as it was back then. Perhaps more so, given how Canada is increasingly embracing a cultur

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