(An unfinished draft of this Part was first posted on October 31, 2011)
A semester-long effort by me at the University of British Columbia to pursue a formal grievance with the university administration over the management style of my then boss, Head of Computer Science Maria Klawe, and to organize a meeting for Department members to air their opinions, was reaching a fruitless end in late June 1992 with my job there expiring.
As discussed in Part 4 of this article, the Department had a tradition that the university-appointed Head voluntarily step down after 4 years of a 5-year term, a tradition Klawe intended to break despite her controversial, hard-handed style of management causing disgruntlements among some faculty members. In pursuing my grievance I cited the instances of Klawe’s handling of my possible tenure-track employment prospect and that of former faculty candidate Pascal van Hentenryck.
Dean of Science Barry McBride had not only sided with Klawe – especially when learning of my interest in involving Department members on the issues in a democratic setting – but taken a high-level lead in efforts by some persons to frame me as abusive, potentially violent and mentally ill, so as to foil my peaceful attempts at democratic expressions to unravel wrongdoings. He now sent me a memo dated June 16 to remind me to vacate my office and turn over the keys by 4:30 pm on June 30.
During the last week of June senior faculty member James M. Kennedy became Acting Head, although I think Head Klawe wasn’t fully away. A former UBC vice president and founding director of UBC Computing Centre, Kennedy had an interesting past which at the time did not appear conspicuous: before UBC, he had been an established scientist at Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), where – as mentioned in Part 3 of this article – a year later in June 1993 Prime Minister Brian Mulroney would appoint his personal lawyer, Bruce Verchere, as chairman of the board, before Verchere died of a gun-inflicted, reported suicide in August.
To me, Jim was a nice and friendly senior with a proud and distinguished career, someone hard to argue with – the late Kennedy was around 64 years of age in 1992 (“Senate Memorial Tributes – “K”: JAMES MACOUN KENNEDY (1928-2004)”, University Archives, the University of British Columbia).
On June 30, Jim came over to my office several times to remind me to move out, including at 4:30 p.m. when the deadline came; the handwriting about this on Dean McBride’s memo was probably his. But I made the difficult decision to defy the Dean’s order with the reason that although President David Strangway had replied negatively to my grievance against Head Klawe on my employment dispute, he had not responded on Klawe’s handling of van Hentenryck’s job prospect, which I had formally submitted to Associate Vice President Albert McClean in President’s office, or on the general issue of Klawe’s headship.
I had learned from Department office staff that new faculty member Raymond Ng was coming soon and office space was needed, and my defiance of the Dean’s order was a political gesture only. I fully expected to vacate at some point or be evicted, if no compromise came from the administration.
It was important for me to have some peace of mind – I was receiving my Canadian citizenship on July 1. As mentioned in Part 3, I had attended July 1 Elementary School on the campus of Sun Yat-sen University in China, but that had been for the Chinese Communist Party’s birthday in my childhood and here it was Canada Day.
I was lucky to be able to receive Canadian citizenship just in time. My residency requirement was being fulfilled by the spring of 1992, but a friend, “Christine Fong”, had casually informed me that the waiting queue in Vancouver for citizenship applications was long and suggested that I try Surrey just south, given that my dispute with Maria Klawe at UBC was dragging on and who knew what could happen.
Surrey was the place my then Computer Science colleague and gay activist leader, Instructor Vince Manis had posted something unpleasant about on the internet – certain personality behavior of “largish men” there as quoted in Part 4.
I followed Christine’s suggestion, and at Citizenship Canada’s office on King George Highway in Surrey I was quickly processed and approved, in time to join Canada on her national day when I was about to be evicted from UBC.
In Part 3 I have mentioned Christine’s sponsorship of a Vancouver high school student Elaine Ng, my distant maternal cousin originally from China, for the 1990 Miss Asia Pageant in Hong Kong, which Elaine won. Elaine subsequently became an actress, and is known as the unwed mother of Kung Fu megastar Jackie Chan’s daughter, “Little Dragon Girl”.
Christine is the older sister of “Theresa”, a former UBC Computer Science staff member who had been the unofficial Apple Macintosh user specialist there, done word processing with incredible efficiency and helped faculty members – myself included – with document preparation. Originally part of the secretarial staff, Theresa’s skills were singled out for appreciation after Head Klawe’s arrival, receiving a proposal for promotion to management staff rank, which Theresa happily accepted. But then a year later Theresa was getting pressure from the Head, that with new secretarial staff coming her skills would be redundant – and she no longer had union job security.
Fortunately for Theresa, in around 1989 she had met “Frank Kong”, a gentleman from Hong Kong whom Theresa introduced to me as a retired former Superintendent of the Hong Kong police training school, and the two had become like a couple. Frank was getting his American citizenship, living in Seattle nearby to be able to see Theresa often. So in 1991 Theresa made the decision to move down to Los Angeles with Frank, who went to work for a workers compensation board while Theresa joined a jewelry-gift merchandise business.
The Fong sisters’ parents had been wealthy business people from Hong Kong, the sisters had brother Paul locally and other siblings internationally, and when I first arrived Theresa was still involved in a downtown Vancouver karaoke-bar business as well as in the ownership of a local racehorse. What was really interesting is that they had connections running on ‘both sides of the track’, as the following passages from a 1990 newspaper article showed ‘the other side’, quite in sharp contrast to Theresa’s police-superintendent companionship (“The Bamboo Pipeline: Triads target Vancouver in dirty business using bribes, forgeries to sneak desperate people and criminals alike across international borders Series”, by Gordon Hamilton, November 10, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“One of the passports was initially queried, then accepted by Canadian authorities. Malaysians are allowed into Canada without visas; they were cleared on the basis of their passports alone.
…
It was Feb. 1. 1989.
The three men were, in fact, ethnic Chinese, suspected of being involved with a brutal Taiwanese triad: United Bamboo. Their passports had been altered, later forensic tests showed.
…
The incident is only one episode in a two-year-long joint investigation by the RCMP and U.S. immigration officials centred on the Vancouver-to-Seattle link in an alien pipeline run by Yeong Jih Charles Liu, a human smuggler known to his associates here as “The Taiwanese.” Liu had established an international smuggling network that reaches from the triads of Taiwan to the tree-lined streets of Kerrisdale.
…
Liu smuggled 60 people at about $10,000 per person before RCMP broke the ring. But he was ambitious. He had the means to smuggle 100 a month, he wrote in a note to one of his Vancouver associates. The note was later seized by the RCMP. Liu is still free. He is believed to be in Taiwan beyond the reach of a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest.
…
On Feb. 5, the trio was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol Special Agent Joel Hardin at SeaTac International Airport as they prepared to board a flight to Texas. Their route from Vancouver to the United States had been monitored from start to finish by the RCMP. The U.S. border patrol followed them to Seattle.
…
The Vancouver people-smuggling investigation began May 1, 1987, when a wiretap was authorized on Irene Cheung. Initially she was monitored because she was suspected of being involved in the sale of forged passports.
Two weeks later, on May 14, police listened while Cheung contacted Liu in Taiwan. During the conversation, Liu stated that he was still waiting for one visa and that 15 to 16 people were “coming over.”
…
The first indication of people-smuggling came five days later when Cheung telephoned Christine Fong, whose fashionable Trafalgar Street home in Kerrisdale often served as a meeting place for the gang.
Cheung mentioned the name of a suspected drug trafficker, “Fatman” Wu, who wanted to send somebody to Canada. She said he was willing to pay $1,000 for the visa. The listening RCMP believe Wu organizes heroin shipments and acts as a drug “overseer” – the individual who rides on the same aircraft as drug couriers to ensure they deliver their contraband once they have cleared customs and immigration at Vancouver.
…
Fong, a Crown witness at the trial of Cheung and Chan, was not charged.”
The Fong sisters’ Kerrisdale neighborhood home was where I reconnected with Elaine Ng (also known as Elaine Wu) and her mother, whom I had not seen since late 1970s. I also met the sisters’ friend, fashion buyer “Irene”, whom I presume was the individual in the human-smuggling case as reported in the above newspaper quote, but I knew nothing of the smuggling and had no idea gang members went there also.
In any case, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had everything under surveillance over a year before my 1988 arrival to be acquainted with colleague Theresa but they chose to crackdown only in 1989, after 60 persons had been smuggled and with the gang leader safely in Taiwan – you know what I mean.
At least when Christine told me about a long citizenship queue in Vancouver but not in Surrey, she knew what she was talking about.
On July 1, 1992, I went to Canada Day festivities in Langley, BC, and felt honored to briefly meet Member of Parliament Robert Lloyd Wenman who presided over the citizenship ceremony. A few years later in June 1995 Mr. Wenman died after contracting a difficult bacteria infection in Asia (“Robert Wenman”, Wikipedia).
In the morning of July 2, I returned to my (former) office at UBC Computer Science Department and everything was as it had been there, as was my colleague Norm Dadoun with whom I had shared an office during the last of my 4 UBC years.
As the handwritten notes on Barry McBride’s memo indicate someone (Acting Head James Kennedy) came for the last time, at 10:30 a.m., to request me to move out. As I recall this time Jim came with Head Maria Klawe – an interesting setup in hindsight as Kennedy was a former UBC Vice President and Klawe not only was defeating my challenge of her management style but unbeknown to me was to be a future Vice President.
I didn’t budge so UBC security guards were called to persuade me, and when I again refused they told me the police would come.
About 15-20 minutes later, two female and one male RCMP officers walked in, with one of the females in the lead, who immediately came up to me and after a brief conversation placed her right hand on my left shoulder and declared me under arrest. The quick episode, entirely peaceful without any intent of physical resistance on my part, is better told by the police report from the lead officer, Corporal N. E. McKerry:
“11:55
Gao arrested after I explained that he had been given notice of his service no longer required. He had been approached on the 30th 3 times to obtain his keys and he refused.
I advised him that if he did not give his keys over, remove his things at once he would be arrested for trespassing, and if he put up and force he would be charged for resist arrest. He stated he would not put up any physical force. He would not return the keys because he had a grievance with the university.
11:56 Arrested – searched by Cst. Bangloy, note prior to search – given const. rights and police warning.”
In RCMP custody I was pressured to give a statement by the male officer, Constable A. M. Bangloy, but refused at the advice of Legal Aid lawyer over the phone. Cpl. McKerry also tried another tactic, ordering the other female officer, Constable C. L. Dinham-Jones, to check my immigration background, but ‘lucky me’:
“12:35
Legal aid called and spoke with subject in Booking area.
12:45 With Cst Bangloy in Booking area 2nd warning given – No statement you haven’t got a charge – response.
I had Cst Dinham-Jones call immigration for a check on subject – just sworn in on July 1st as a Canadian citizen.”
In the end, McKerry warned me that next time I would be charged, then released me with the courtesy of giving me a ride to the Mathematics building across from Computer Science building so I could have colleagues sign a form for my passport application, before escorting me to my car to see me leave:
“ I explained to GAO that if I was called again for him charges would be laid. If convicted he would have a great deal of problems getting a green card – USA or in some part of the govt service. He seemed to care about that.
13:00 I took GAO to the Math BLDG – He wanted to get a Professor to vouch for him on a passport.
13:30 Escort him to his car, escorted away from computer science/UBC”
Sometime after this July 2 incident, Cpl. N. E. McKerry produced another statement – undated but made to look like a typed version of the July 2 report – that altered the facts to emphasize mental instability and violence to come, none of which had been in the original report:
“11:54
At the computer science building, members of Parking and Security escorted myself and two Csts. to the office of Dr. GAO.
Dr. GAO’s body language caused me to believe that he could become violent. I spoke with Dr. GAO. He moved away from me moving his back towards the far wall. His eyes seemed to be blank – no emotion and just staring. His body was ridged and both facial cheeks twitched. I tried to reason with him that the university didn’t want him in the office. I explained that I thought it would be best if he left and dealt with things in a legal manner. He did not seem to want to co-operate, he appeared to me that further action would be of a physical manner. We were at a stale mate. Dr. GAO refused to leave, he had a grievance.
11:56 To keep the peace I arrested Dr. GAO.”
McKerry’s original report recorded my clear promise of not putting up physical resistance, so there really wasn’t any confrontational staring or violence to come, and I was put under arrest without any problem. The entire process took only 1 or 2 minutes according to either of her reports, how could that be called a “stale mate”?
In the typed version McKerry omitted my promise of non-violence as if the conversation hadn’t happened, and added her impression of odd personality, presenting it as her judgment call predicting that I would act in “a physical manner”.
McKerry also omitted the original facts that she also had Cst. Bangloy and Cst. Dinham-Jones exert pressure on me to back down.
With this falsified account of what happened as the lead RCMP officer saw it during the police intervention, the two institutions now became on the same page, i.e., consistent with each other in their descriptions of me as mentally unstable and potentially violent, the type of allegations UBC Dean of Science Barry McBride had wanted in April and graduate student Andrew Martin then made in a June letter to Associate Vice President Albert McClean, as discussed in Part 4.
My UBC dispute now became a problem with the law enforcement as well along the same line.
What was also "’contradictory’ is that this altered ‘report’ discloses that Cpl. McKerry had been in telephone contact with UBC security guards prior to the intervention and told there might be “some trouble”, yet she brought a police team that were not “physical”: two females and one Asian male.
She either knew that I was not physically aggressive, or had another thinking.
Although it may not have happened in my case, sometimes less physical strength on the part of the police could be basis for more lethal force, as the Vancouver-area RCMP’s handling of Robert Dziekanski has shown, when the Polish immigrant newly arriving at Vancouver International Airport on October 14, 2007, was repeatedly tasered, unfortunately to death, by RCMP officers due to his erratic behavior causing concerns.
The incident was captured on cellphone video by onlooker Paul Pritchard (“Taser video shows RCMP shocked immigrant within 25 seconds of their arrival”, November 15, 2007, CBC News).
A major difference was that Dziekanski had become physically agitating, holding up a small, folding wooden stool like a combat tool though not toward anyone, and methodically throwing a metal object on the floor and the stool at the plexiglass wall, before abandoning more attempt at physical commotion at the persuasion of a female onlooker. But for such, death was a harsh term.
In the afternoon of July 2, 1992 when McKerry gave me a ride back to campus in her cruiser, she let me sit in the front passenger seat and told me her name was Nancy, she lived in Surrey and had been with the RCMP Surrey detachment. I told her I was pleased to have my citizenship application approved in Surrey.
For female police officers, using lethal force could be more warranted, as shown in the following passage from a book about RCMP women, citing a Nancy McKerry whom I have no reason to think was not the same person (Jane Hall, The Red Wall: A Woman in the RCMP, 2007, General Store Publishing House):
“Six weeks after we graduated, the unthinkable happened: a shooting involving several RCMP members, an ambush followed by one of the longest and bloodiest police shootouts in Canadian history. One member, Dennis Onofrey, was dead, one had lost an eye, and Candy Smith was in critical condition in a Brandon, Manitoba, hospital.
Candy had been one of the top members of our troop. Everyone in Troop 9 knew that by disposition and skill, she would have performed better than most of us under fire.
…
The day after the tragedy, Nancy McKerry, a member of 20 Troop, the only female troop at Depot at the time, recalls that an instructor burst into her class and accusingly announced: “Anyone in this troop who doesn’t feel they can shoot someone can leave now!” No male troop was given that ultimatum.”
Come to think of what my former colleague Vince Manis had rumbled about “largish men” in Surrey, Cpl. McKerry happened to be the only one of stocky build among the trio of RCMP officers on July 2, 1992, whereas in the onlooker video at the Vancouver airport on October 14, 2007, none of the RCMP officers were “largish” but ironically Dziekanski was.
The other female officer, Cst. Dinham-Jones who checked on my immigration status (and in later incidents also transported me alone while I was in custody), was a petite; interestingly and surprisingly her name was Christine and she has now done a lot of neighborhood patrolling in Langley, where I had received my Canadian citizenship after approval in Surrey! (“Award Winners: B.C Citizen Patrol Network BOB SHIELLS Memorial Innovation AWARD 2005”, B.C. Crime Prevention Association)
The male officer, Cst. A. M. Bangloy, was fit but slim, and with a personality reminding me of my elementary and middle school friend “Ling” mentioned in Parts 2, 3 & 4.
A question is whether McKerry’s altering of report and fabrication of evidence have been part of the RCMP standard practice back then, or even today, because Bangloy later attended law school and since late 2008 has been the Inspector in charge of the Professional Standards Unit for the entire Royal Canadian Mounted Police (“Winnipeg’s Alfredo Bangloy Jr., LL.B. promoted to Inspector with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Officer In Charge Professional Standards Unit”, by Marjorie Soldevilla, November 20 - December 5, 2008, Volume 22, Number 22, Filipino Journal).
And when I review this history I kind of get a sense that Inspector Alfredo Bangloy is like Maria Aragon, 10-year-old Filipino-Canadian girl from Winnipeg, Canada’s Little Lady Gaga and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s favorite child musician – they sang John Lennon’s song “Imagine” together (“Harper performs campaign-trail duet with young Gaga fan”, by Steven Chase, March 29, 2011, The Globe and Mail).
More clues will be presented later as to when McKerry began to alter her police statement, and why.
In the afternoon of July 2, 1992, Acting Head Jim Kennedy and another professor, Richard Rosenberg, came out of Computer Science building and signed for my passport application, and I was seen off by RCMP Cpl N. E. (Nancy Elizabeth) McKerry. My office belongings were later packed by staff and sent to my apartment, and I have not been back to that building since – McKerry warned me not to! A few years later the Department moved to a new building and I dropped by for several hours in 2002.
I spent time exploring various venues to pursue my grievance outside of UBC, and in August 1992 filed a complaint with the RCMP Complaints Commission. I telephoned its Vancouver office and was told that an investigator would call me back. On August 11, investigator Lorraine J. Holland phoned and took my complaint as made on that day, on August 13 it was sent by the Commission’s regional director George Johnson to Inspector W. B. Vye, officer in charge of complaints and internal investigation at RCMP “E” Division in British Columbia, and was received on August 13-14.
On September 3 – as indicated by a line of fax marking on the copy released to me in 2003 by RCMP – my complaint was forwarded to RCMP Vancouver Subdivision which supervised the University Detachment at UBC.
At the halfway mark of this 20/21-day duration with my complaint sitting on the desk of the RCMP “E” Division section under Insp. Vye, a tragedy on the other side of Canada produced an international shock. On August 24 at Montreal’s Concordia University, engineering professor Valery Fabrikant brought a handgun to campus, fatally shot 4 of his male colleagues and wounded a female secretary. Originally from Belarus in Soviet Union, Fabrikant had been in disputes with colleagues over research credits and with university administration over his tenure application.
As mentioned in Part 1, the Concordia University multiple murders were one of the examples cited by journalist Jan Wong in her September 2006 article criticizing the French Quebec society’s “pure laine” attitude that alienated minorities and immigrants.
Prior to the murders, Fabrikant had launched lawsuits and an e-mail campaign against the university and some colleagues, and was sent a letter of notice dated August 21 from the university’s external legal counsel, Richard Beaulieu of the law firm McCarthy Tetrault, basically threatened with firing.
In his independent review for Concordia University, respected academic John Scott Cowan has offered the opinion that Beaulieu’s letter to Fabrikant may have contributed to stimulating the latter’s violent urge (“Lessons from the Fabrikant File: A Report to the Board of Governors of Concordia University”, by John Scott Cowan, May 1994, Concordia University Records Management & Archives):
“On August 17, the University's external legal counsel, Me R. Beaulieu at McCarthy Tétrault, sent a draft of a strong letter about the E-mail campaign to Me M. Gamache, the University internal legal counsel. … The final version was dated August 21, signed by Richard Beaulieu, and sent by registered mail. The Rector's office received a copy in the mail on or before August 24, as it bears a receipt stamp dated August 24. …
…
The letter is problematic, in that I find it to be a very strong letter. … Predicted dismissal just before the season in which he would be considered for tenure was not what he had in mind as a University response to his grievances and accusations, and could be viewed as giving him little to lose.”
I would have to agree with Prof. John Scott Cowan on this point, given my UBC experience as described in Part 4, i.e., when I was attempting to pursue matters in a peaceful and democratic manner, some others agitated me and tried to make things worse and possibly violent in order to frame me as violent or mentally unstable.
Coincidentally like me, Fabrikant was not only from a former Communist country but also an applied mathematician who twice applied for a UBC job, to the Mathematics Department in 1988 and 1990 – the same year I got my fixed-term Computer Science job and then the same year I tried unsuccessfully to get a tenure-track position as in Part 4 – but was turned down. Days before his killings Fabrikant also sent e-mail letters to a UBC Math professor to spread his complaints. (“Montreal suspect twice sought position at UBC”, by Mary Lynn Young, August 26, 1992, The Vancouver Sun)
The local ‘spin’ machines immediately began to turn upon the shocking news from Montreal. The next day August 25, Staff Sergeant J. B. (Bern) Jansen, officer in charge at RCMP University Detachment, gave an order to Cpl. Nancy McKerry to send the “original” statements about my case to “Key Materials”, “copy” some specific pages and place them “on File” and forward the “Files” to him for review:
“File Review
Cpl McKerry
(1) Statements
- Original to Key Materials
- Copy pages #’d & places on File
(2) Please forward your Files for NCO i/c review as the supervisor.”
Was this the start of Cpl. McKerry’s altering of statement and fabricating of facts for my case? Possibly, with the following clues.
S/Sgt. Jansen said in his notes that some UBC local persons expressed fear about me:
“- File surfaced for review as became topical with a “Professor shooting staff” at Concordia University.
- Local staff surfaced fear GAO would return, advised to call A.S.A.P. we would intervene, however we could not re-initiate contact based solely on an unrelated incident.”
S/Sgt. Jansen also explained that local media asked if there was a local incident and he needed to respond:
“[…] – Kitsilano News […] called to query if a local incident had occurred.
No names released.
Advised. “Situation early July – Police intervention to keep peace. Subject in custody less than one hour.””
(Contents in […] have been withheld by RCMP from personal-information disclosures.)
Jansen then concluded that “to keep peace and ensure no escalation to physical violence” had been the reason for my July 2 arrest:
“- File reviewed. Short term detention needed to keep peace and ensure no escalation to physical violence.
- Related Files on system relative to GAO.
- Essentially a civil dispute thus criminal charges not appropriate.”
S/Sgt. Jansen’s notes above essentially outlined the following situation scenario: As local RCMP detachment commander, S/Sgt. Jansen knew my incident was “unrelated” to Valery Fabrikant’s murderous acts in Montreal, but some UBC persons claimed to fear me, and the local media was also interested in a local story; so although the arrest had been to remove me to vacate office, Jansen decided to make it look like preventing violence. He instructed Cpl. McKerry to selectively “copy” some pages of the police statements to keep “on File” and sending the original to a different filing, and somehow what was on file now appeared like preventing violence – doesn’t this look similar to McKerry’s alterations from her original report to her typed version?
The local story in the community newspaper, Kitsilano News, sounded even worse, not because of the local violence the story claimed but as a result of UBC Faculty Association President William Bruneau’s excessive politicizing, who made it sound like the conservative policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher caused people to fear losing their jobs and to resort to violence (“UBC profs anxious after tenure fight turns violent”, by Russ Francis, August 26, 1992, Kitsilano News):
“A Montreal professor who shot to death three of his colleagues this week was affected by the same “publish or perish” mentality behind two violent incidents involving University of B.C. professors in the last 18 months, says UBC Faculty Association president Bill Bruneau.
…
“He had to be dragged from his office,” Bruneau said. “It was related to the level of pressure on the campus.”
…
Staff Sgt. Bern Jansen of the RCMP’s university detachment confirmed that a former faculty member was held in police custody for a short time in early July after refusing to leave his office…
“Tenure issues are pretty big here,” Jansen said. “But we’ve never had anything anywhere near as big as the Concordia event.”
“There’s a lot of personality issues that takes place here – it’s just like any other community.”
…
In an interview Tuesday, Bruneau said the Concordia shootings recalled the 1989 Ecole Polytechnique massacre, in which Marc Lepine fatally shot 14 women engineering students. The rising level of violence in society is a concern to academics: “Universities are supposed to be concerned with reason and compassion.”
…
The university incidents point to a larger social question: “People are terrified they are going to lose their jobs – it’s a consequence of the 1980s, Reaganism and Thatcherism.””
So someone like me trying peaceful academic politics was now bundled – though my name wasn’t released – with Valery Fabrikant as causing “violent incidents” in universities.
S/Sgt. Jansen was going in the right direction emphasizing “a lot of personality issues”, but that should be about my dispute with Computer Science Head Maria Klawe and not about my mental state as some alleged. Prof. Bruneau was right saying universities were supposed to be “concerned with reason and compassion”, but I had not only been using reason to express my opposition to Klawe’s management style but tried to use democratic methods to address it – unfortunately my efforts may have amounted to nothing in Bruneau’s compassion standard.
Bill Bruneau’s political hyperbole seemed a righteous grandstand from his position, but it could do more harm to a former member of his faculty association like me. Bruneau would continue to pound on similar issues, including writing a book (William Bruneau and Donald C. Savage, Counting out the Scholars: The Case against Performance Indicators in Higher Education, 2002, James Lorimer & Company):
“Performance indicators have a long history. But it is no accident that PIs became the vogue in the Thatcher/Reagan era and beyond—one part of the movement to transform universities into business corporations complete with CEOs and the top-down structures favoured by the business community. … In the end the result has been the exact opposite—the imposition of costly and highly centralized bureaucracies onto the university system, and the triumph of a right-wing nomenklatura.”
Wasn’t it a little hypocritical when the faculty association president, later president of Canadian Association of University Teachers, and also a Bertrand Russell scholar (“William Bruneau Elected as Speaker”, May 2006, Vol. 53, No. 5, CAUT Bulletin), effectively denied about a local management flaw while denouncing, in his publications, the wrong management theory for the world according to him?
Take my case as an illustration. Why was my predicament a consequence of Reaganism and Thatcherism, if not as a result of the oppressive means of Maria Klawe and Barry McBride, the backstabbing tricks of Jack Snoeyink, and the provocative/underhanded tactics of Christopher Healey and Andrew Martin as discussed in Part 4?
This Kitsilano News story apparently caught S/Sgt. Jansen’s attention, as on the next day, August 27, he faxed a copy to UBC Community Relations office to discuss with them, but their conversation content has been withheld by RCMP.
On August 27 Jansen also held a meeting with UBC “Computer Sc Faculty Admin Group”, a group I had never heard of but presume to include Head Maria Klawe and Acting Head James Kennedy, among others.
Per Jansen’s notes, the meeting was just more of UBC lobbying the police regarding concern or fear about me over the Montreal shootings. Jansen stood by his position that the two were “unrelated”, and that RCMP’s intervention rule should be normal; but as a precaution Jansen advised redirecting my telephone calls made to some colleagues to discuss the dispute:
“Recommended: If goals is to eliminate contact with GAO then all calls should be forwarded to university admin staffer outside department. To continue conversations is to encourage him to call.”
Jansen also noted that UBC Parking and Security would post a guard at the Computer Science office “as an entry level of precaution”.
In summary, although he changed the definition of my arrest from police-assisted removal to preventing violence, by and large the RCMP local detachment commander was careful not to treat me as a real suspect of violence; however, UBC Faculty Association’s president was more belligerent, and wrongheaded in his media interview putting a former member of his association in the same category as a murderer elsewhere, rather than sympathizing with the member’s peaceful dispute with the management.
There were two possible factors to account for William Bruneau’s position.
One, UBC Faculty Association had cozy connections to the university administration, making it not always easy to distinguish them clearly. Closely related to my case was Dr. William Webber, the Associate Vice President in charge of faculty affairs who in April had arranged for me to be assessed by private psychiatrist Ronald Remick in order to satisfy Dean Barry McBride and keep my e-mail privilege, whereby Dr. Remick determined that I was normal but also labelled me as a patient under his care in a note for the university as in Part 4. Dr. Webber had once held Bruneau’s Faculty Association job, and UBC considered it part of “administrative leadership” (“Senate Tributes – “W”: WILLIAM A. WEBBER”, University Archives, the University of British Columbia):
“Bill’s administrative leadership surfaced in 1968 when he became President of the Faculty Association, and expanded in 1971 when he became the Associate Dean of Medicine. Six years later he was appointed Dean of Medicine and served in that capacity for 13 years. … In 1990 he was appointed Associate Vice- President for Faculty Relations, and served in that capacity for six years.”
In fact, as in Part 4 it was a suggestion from Associate Vice President Webber’s office that led me to take my grievance also to the faculty association.
But in the end, the alignment between the faculty association and UBC management on my dispute was one of entrenched interests that an individual like me could not overcome.
A second possible factor was Valery Fabrikant’s poor relation with Concordia University faculty association, which had soured during the association’s mediation of his problems to the point that its president ended up among the shooting dead. Bill Bruneau was angry about it, as the news article indicated he also sent a letter of sympathy to June Chaikelson, vice president of Concordia University faculty association, on August 25; so as a result of the Montreal event he may have become more agreeable with UBC management’s pre-emptive strike against me politically.
The RCMP information cited above is from personal-information disclosures in 2003 and 2008, where the 2008 disclosure released more information from S/Sgt. Jansen’s notes than the 2003 one – the earlier disclosure had withheld all things about UBC’s attempts lobbying RCMP to link my case to the Valery Fabrikant murders.
Was the improved information disclosure in this case simply a matter of time passing, or that under former Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s Liberal government in 2003 the political climate ‘covered up’ for the academia? It turned out that in the next year 2004, both Jean Chretien and Maria Klawe – by now Princeton University’s Dean of Engineering and Applied Science – as well as Brian Mulroney’s in-law Lewis Lapham, the “famously liberal” Harper’s Magazine editor mentioned in Part 1, received honorary degrees from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, with Chretien on May 27, Lapham on June 3, and Klawe on June 4. (“Honorary degree recipients announced: Former Prime Minister, Editor of Harper’s among those selected”, May 11, 2004, The Journal)
The other honorary-degree conferee on June 4 as Klawe was Gordon Wells, Sub-Lieutenant of the Royal Canadian Navy, advisor to the Government of Jamaica and Senior Advisor to the Contractor General, and Chairman of the Jamaica Broadcasting Commission.
I should point out this was the same Canadian university from which Andrew Martin had graduated in 1989 before attending UBC Computer Science Department for graduate study, who in 1992 did more than others behind my back (as in Part 4) to send me to the ‘freezer’ for my opposition to Head Klawe’s leadership. I just didn’t know at the time that Maria Klawe and such powerful Canadian and international figures of disparate political stripes would be so together.
Maybe there were also entrenched foreign interests in the authorities’ considerations.
On September 3, 1992 at the RCMP “E” Division complaints & internal investigation section, an Occurrence Report–General form was prepared by investigator Blommaert, and a letter was signed by Insp. W. B. Vye to notify me that the complaint was being forwarded to “Officer Commanding Vancouver Subdivision”. The next day, S/Sgt. Medley in the office of Superintendent D. G. Cowley, assigned the investigation to the officer in charge of the Deas Island Highway Patrol detachment, stating:
“S/Sgt. JANSEN, NCO i/C University Detachment, has given direction on this investigative file and I would appreciate an external examination of this complaint.”
That can be interpreted as that Jansen was involved in my case at this point and someone from outside, his counterpart at the regional highway-patrol detachment, would conduct the complaint investigation.
On September 7, S/Sgt. M. M. Ukrainetz prepared an RCMP public complaint receipt form, by September 9 he advised the 3 officers, N. E. McKerry, C. L. Dinham-Jones, and A. M. Bangloy, of the complaint.
As I recall, in his telephone conversations then with me to initiate the investigation process, S/Sgt. Ukrainetz did nothing but confidently assuring me that RCMP had done nothing wrong in this case, that their assistance had been requested by UBC and so my grievance should be against UBC only. Ukrainetz went as far as telling me, “the RCMP is on your side”.
I of course understood the politically correct image of the proud Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but the reality was that it intervened on behalf of UBC. I was unfamiliar with the relevant legal statues governing RCMP, and during that time was also consulting with lawyers about filing a lawsuit, some of whom strongly advised that I name both UBC and RCMP as defendants and use the court as the venue of grievance.
So when Ukrainetz called again on September 28, I told him I would be filing a lawsuit where the RCMP aspect of the dispute would also be dealt with, thus I could withdraw the complaint as he had urged. Ukrainetz replied confidently that I should not sue RCMP either.
Interestingly, the package I got from the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, a government agency independent of the RCMP, included a “Withdrawal of Complaint” with my name already typed in, so I just signed and faxed it to Ukrainetz.
S/Sgt. Ukrainetz’s final report dated one day earlier, September 27, showed hints that he had merely been trying to talk me out of it – calling me three times to arrange for an interview yet none was scheduled by the time of my withdrawal:
“… The operational file at the University Detachment was reviewed and Dr. GAO was immediately contacted to arrange an interview at a future date.
[…]
Dr. GAO was contacted on two further occasions in an attempt to arrange an interview with him. During one of these calls, GAO’s position seemed to be softening…”
(Content in […] has been withheld by RCMP from personal-information disclosures.)
Ukrainetz didn’t mention that I was filing a lawsuit, where RCMP would be named, in place of this complaint.
On October 5, S/Sgt. Medley signed for Supt. D. G. Cowley to approve termination of the complaint investigation:
“In view of the circumstances outlined by S/Sgt. UKRAINETZ and Dr. GAO’s official withdrawal of complaint, I recommend termination of this investigation (Section 45.36(5)(c)).”
Though the termination looks routine, a closer inspection suggests that Supt. Cowley may have applied the rules of the RCMP Act somewhat inappropriately in order to cover all the bases for the three officers.
Here is a listing of the relevant RCMP rules to explain why.
The RCMP Act section cited by Supt. Cowley states (“Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act”, Department of Justice Canada):
“45.36 (5) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Part, the Commissioner may direct that no investigation of a complaint under subsection 45.35(1) be commenced or that an investigation of such a complaint be terminated if, in the Commissioner’s opinion,
…(c) having regard to all the circumstances, investigation or further investigation is not necessary or reasonably practicable.”
In other words, all circumstances including my withdrawal were considered for the decision to end the investigation.
But there is a more directly relevant rule in the RCMP Act:
“Informal disposition
45.36 (1) The Commissioner shall consider whether a complaint under subsection 45.35(1) can be disposed of informally and, with the consent of the complainant and the member or other person whose conduct is the subject-matter of the complaint, may attempt to so dispose of the complaint.
Statements not admissible
(2) No answer or statement made, in the course of attempting to dispose of a complaint informally, by the complainant or the member or other person whose conduct is the subject-matter of the complaint shall be used or receivable in any criminal, civil or administrative proceedings other than, where the answer or statement was made by a member, a hearing under section 45.1 into an allegation that with intent to mislead the member gave the answer or statement knowing it to be false.”
S/Sgt. Ukrainetz phoned me 3 times just to schedule a formal interview with me, yet none was ever scheduled while he kept trying to “soften” my position, so from my standpoint his efforts to persuade me to withdraw was not yet part of any investigation but attempting to “dispose of the complaint” informally. In this initial stage, statement made by either side to the investigator was not legally liable, except if the RCMP officers made a false statement “with the intent to mislead” they could be subject to a hearing on their conduct per Section 45.1 of the RCMP Act.
Cpl. Nancy McKerry’s altered statement (i.e., the typed version) to make me look mentally unstable and about to become violent, if by this time was “on File” when investigator S/Sgt. Ukrainetz reviewed the file, could be subject to a conduct hearing!
I wonder if the passage withheld in Ukrainetz’s report may reveal something relevant. But at the time Supt. D. G. Cowley, as signed for him by S/Sgt. Medley, simply invoked a “notwithstanding clause” in the RCMP Act so that all circumstances were declared as already considered by him.
The day Supt. Cowley issued his final decision happened to be the day before the filing of my lawsuit. On October 6, lawyer Brian A. Mason of Maitland & Company and I filed “Writ of Summons” and “Statement of Claim” at the British Columbia Supreme Court, naming both UBC and RCMP as defendants.
On October 9, lawsuit documents were served to RCMP University Detachment; on the same day S/Sgt. Jansen ordered Cpl. McKerry to hand-deliver them to the Police Car Accident/Civil Litigation Unit of “E” Division, and sent a copy with a cover note to his superior, Supt. D. G Cowley.
The office of Officer Commanding Vancouver Subdivision stamped its copy on October 13 and wrote on the cover note, “Supt. Cowley – For your Info.” So included in the RCMP disclosure are a few pages of my lawsuit copy with Supt. D. G. Cowley’s handwriting and seal on them.
On the first page of the writ of summons, Cowley’s writing appears to be:
“Discussion with Sgt Kelley (Civil Litigation) and he has the matter in hand. We will hold across town & brief subject to reenter or call from Sgt Kelley (264-2864)”
The handwritten comment was accompanied by his official seal stamp, signed and dated October 14, 1992.
The Occurrence Report–General form for the July 2 arrest, originally prepared by Cpl. McKerry on July 3, was also modified by Cowley, Where McKerry was listed as “Investigator”, “Parking Security UBC” as “comp” (complainant) and I as “sus” (suspect), there is an additional stamp of the same seal of Officer Commanding Vancouver Subdivision, signed and dated October 14, 1992.
Because Cowley used his seal to give official status to his comments on my writ of summons, my guess is that the seal stamp on this form served a similar purpose of authorization. I note that the stamp is located inside the “comp” section of the form, investigator McKerry’s Unit info “UBC” is crossed out with a pen, and where UBC Parking & Security’s info was unfilled has a large handwritten cross mark, and next to it is Cowley’s seal stamp.
So my sense is that it was a ‘stamp of approval’ after the fact, for the RCMP arrest conducted by Cpl. McKerry, namely that in reaction to my lawsuit Supt. D. G. Cowley post-authorized the July 2 arrest, thereby assuming Cpl. McKerry’s responsibility in a manner analogous to his invoking the “notwithstanding” clause over ending the investigation for my public complaint.
In other words, whether with the earlier public complaint or this later civil lawsuit, if I could not overcome the power of RCMP’s Vancouver regional commander I simply would not win, and that was decided by him without my being aware of the situation.
Inspecting more carefully I notice that in the “sus” section my race is listed by McKerry as “Ori”, place of birth as “China”, and citizenship unfilled – even though as in her July 2 police report she had Cst. Dinham-Jones check my immigration status and learned that I had just become a Canadian citizen on July 1.
After my release on July 2 McKerry told me that she lived in Surrey, which happened to be where my citizenship had been approved. In the “comp” section on this form, Cowley’s seal stamp is at around the location where the info of race, place of birth and citizenship would be.
I don’t want to be speculative, but maybe Supt. Cowley held the opinion that as a new immigrant Canadian I was in no position to sue the police.
On the same day of October 14, in a memo sent to Department of Justice to request legal representation for Cpl. McKerry, Sgt. Frank Kelley declared:
“It would appear the plaintiff and his lawyer are in the wrong court, however your department may have other ideas.”
The meaning of “the wrong court” was already quite explicit, that the RCMP not only did not accept being sued by me but was considering criminal prosecution against me.
Sgt. Kelley also handwrote some additional comment:
“Supt. Cowley OIC Vancouver S/D called on this civil suit and I advised him the ‘package’ was being taken down this A.M. by Cpl. Pacula, while attending another civil matter.”
Sgt. Kelley’s phrase, “the ‘package’ was being taken down”, smacks of cops pursuing criminal suspects, not unlike the wording of Supt. Cowley’s comment on my writ of summons, “we will hold across town & brief”.
These suggest that an intent of criminal prosecution also came from Cowley, RCMP’s Vancouver regional commander, and it was perhaps implied by his seal stamp on the Occurrence Report–General form.
The next day, October 15, Department of Justice lawyer Paul F. Partridge had a phone conversation with my lawyer, and on October 20 sent a letter to Brian Mason stating:
“I confirm my suggestion to you that the named defendant, R.C.M.P., is not a legal entity capable of being sued.
I confirming your advise that you will be taking steps to amend your pleadings to name a proper defendant and that you will not take any steps in default without having first given me reasonable notice of your intention to do so.”
Technically there was a minor glitch in the lawsuit: it was supposed to name “Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada” as the defendant when suing any Canadian government agency.
But why all the fuss by Supt. Cowley in his authority, and by him and Sgt. Kelley in their ‘cop talk’, and now by the Justice Department lawyer phrasing a minor technicality as his suggestion that RCMP “is not a legal entity capable of being sued”, and further demanding that my lawyer notify him in advance of the “intention” to take “any steps in default”?
My conclusions are that Supt. D. G. Cowley intended to block my civil lawsuit against RCMP – much like Dean Barry McBride blocking my democratic opposition to Head Klawe’s management style at UBC – and to use criminal prosecution as retaliation against me, and that following his cue the Justice Department exerted pressure on my lawyer to ‘get in line’.
In a Chinese blog post, “忆往昔，学历史智慧（三）——文革“破旧立新”开始的记忆”(“Reminiscing the past, learning history’s wisdom (Part 3) – memories of the start of "destroying the old to erect the new" in Cultural Revolution”, with English Synopsis), I have recalled my childhood experience of facing a “home raid” by Cultural Revolution Red Guards in 1966 at the dorm-apartment allocated to my middle-school teacher mother, located near Guangzhou City’s Second Workers Cultural Palace at 640 Tongfu East Road.
Now in 1992 I happened to be living in a Vancouver apartment at 1640 West 11th Avenue, while the phone number of RCMP Sgt. Frank Kelley in charge of civil litigation was 264-2864.
So many “64’s” already, not to mention over a decade later Maria Klawe’s honorary degree from Queen’s University on June 4, 2004!
I should say it out loud, that June 4, 2004 happened to be the 15th anniversary of what the Western media refers to as the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, China, when democratic protests were ended by military force.
The date of October 14, when Supt. D. G. Cowley issued his authorization against my civil lawsuit in 1992, is also interesting to me though somewhat more elusive.
My most recent Chinese blog post, “忆往昔，学历史智慧（六）——青少年时代对政治思想的一些兴趣”(“Reminiscing the past, learning history’s wisdom (Part 6) – some youthful interest in political thoughts”), was dated November 9, 2011, in memory of my late maternal grandfather who first taught me read and write, who had been born on October 14 in the Chinese lunar calendar around the turn of the 20th century. Grandfather was a retired ordained minister of a historical Presbyterian church in the eastern region of China’s Guangdong province, the first Christian church in that region’s history, and his grandfather had been the first ordained Chinese Presbyterian minister in the capital city of that region (prefecture).
No one in his right mind here is trying to accuse Supt. D. G. Cowley of picking a similar but coincidental date to authorize political persecution of me, but just to get a better understanding by looking at other relevant events on that date in this context.
There was another October 14 in this same Chinese blog post, where I quoted from an article by Vladimir Lenin, “Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution”, written on October 14, 1921 (probably in the Julian calendar). This article is of special interest because some of China’s Chairman Mao Zedong’s writings strongly paralleled it, and a main theme of this Chinese blog post of mine is a critical review of Mao’s writings which I had studied as a youth – and the subject matter is doubly interesting because my late father has been a noted Chinese academic in the history of Marxist philosophy.
One may notice the coincidence that the Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski arrived in Vancouver on an October 14, to become a Canadian landed immigrant but unfortunately upon arrival was immediately tasered to death by RCMP.
I can’t think of anything in my environments so tragic involving someone Polish, other than – as in Part 3 – when I was a Berkeley Math graduate student, that bomb attacks wounding two Berkeley Electrical Engineering persons and scores of others in the United States were secretly carried out by Theodore Kaczynski, Polish American and former Berkeley Math professor before my time there.
But I find it intriguingly interesting that Maria Klawe is actually of part-Polish heritage. Her father had come from Peotrekow in Poland and worked as the chief cartographer for Thomas Nelson & Sons in Scotland, a Christian publisher and one of the oldest publishers of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, while her British mother had served as an intelligence officer during World War II, prior to their settling in Edmonton, Canada. (“West African secondary school atlas”, ed. by J. W. Watson & A. K. Wareham, Maps by Cartographic Dept., Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., Janusz J. Klawe, chief cartographer, 1963; “The State of Canadian Children’s Atlases from a European Perspective”, by Herbert A. Sanford, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring 1987, Cartographica; and, “In Memoriam – Kathleen Klawe”, Newsletter 2003, Department of Economics, University of Alberta)
These various dates and facts may have been coincidences, but there probably were undercurrents of politics that should not be ignored.
Supt. D. G. Cowley’s main media profile has exemplified one such, exclusively focused on leading RCMP crackdown of native-activist blockades near Whistler-Pemberton just north of Vancouver – protests waged in 1990-91 by the Lil’wat Peoples Movement of the Mount Currie Band.
On November 2-3, 1990, the press reported that RCMP Inspector Dave Cowley flew to the native blockade to warn them that the police may begin arrests and the future would be unpleasant for them (“Victoria heading to court to halt Indian blockade”, by Stewart Bell, November 2, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“The provincial government was heading to court today to seek authority to take down a road blockade erected by Mount Currie Indians.
Attorney-General Russ Fraser announced the government plan after members of the First Nations Congress and the RCMP got a chilly response when they met with the Mount Currie Indians Thursday to try to end the blockade on the Duffey Lake Road.
…
But the natives, who say they are a sovereign nation and do not recognize Canadian laws, drummed and sang "RCMP have no jurisdiction" after a brief meeting at the blockade Thursday with Vancouver RCMP Insp. Dave Cowley.
…
"I just can't help but worry that we're coming to some clash down the road," Cowley told the group of about 30 natives sitting around a campfire.
"If there's some way we could discuss the issue today to avoid any unpleasantness, that's why I'm here."
Cowley said he had come to the blockade simply to "patrol the neighborhood" and not because he had been instructed to do so by his superiors.”
The authority for the crackdown came from Chief Justice William Esson of the B.C. Supreme Court, but the native protesters insisted they were sovereign and not subject to RCMP jurisdiction (“Blockaders get ultimatum: Arrests due if road not cleared; Indians get ultimatum to end road blockade”, by Phil Needham & Stewart Bell, November 3, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“The blockade on the Duffey Lake road through the Mount Currie Indian Reserve must immediately be lifted or specific authorization for arrests and detention could be ordered next week, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Esson says.
…
Harvey Groberman, lawyer for the ministry of highways, said the judge "wanted to be absolutely certain that there was no confusion in the minds of the Indians."
Lil'wat Peoples Movement spokesman Terri John sent a letter Friday to Vancouver RCMP Insp. Dave Cowley – who visited the blockade Thursday – saying police should not be sent in because the question of who owns the road is still being debated in court.
Mount Currie Indian band lawyer Leslie Pinder plans to apply Monday for a hearing before the B.C. Court of Appeal to challenge the province's right to expropriate land from Indian reserves.”
Then on November 7, Cowley was for the first time reported as RCMP Superintendent in charge of the police crackdown that began the day before (“50 arrested at Duffey blockade face supreme court appearance”, by Scott Simpson and Bart Jackson, November 7, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“Most of the 63 natives arrested in the dramatic dismantling of the four-month-old Duffey Lake Road blockade Tuesday were to appear in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver today.
About 50 of those arrested were bused to Vancouver from Whistler and Pemberton after they refused to sign declarations they would appear in court on Friday.
…
RCMP Supt. D.G. Cowley said the natives were to be held until today, when they were to appear in Supreme Court.
…
The dismantling of the roadblock by 75 RCMP officers from detachments in the Vancouver subdivision was an emotional and occasionally violent five-hour operation.”
The protesters and their lawyer accused the RCMP of trying to escalate the situation by bringing semi-automatic weapons, but “RCMP Vancouver subdivision commander” Supt. D. G. Cowley denied it (“Duffey Lake weapons charges 'mindless,' RCMP leader says”, by Doug Ward, November 10, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
"Mindless accusations made to the media regarding the existence of semi-automatic weapons, body armor and assault dress are totally irresponsible and false and can only serve to inflame a sensitive community policing situation," said Supt. D.G. Cowley, Vancouver subdivision commanding officer.
Cowley's comments came after lawyer Lyn Crompton, representing natives arrested in the dismantling of the roadblock, charged outside the courthouse Friday that the RCMP is turning the Mount Currie dispute into an Oka-style confrontation.”
You see, D. G. Cowley was promoted within RCMP from Inspector to Superintendent in early November 1990, just in time to lead a crackdown on native protests on November 6 and appear victorious to the press on November 7, which happened to be an anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution – to commemorate it Vladimir Lenin had written an article 4 years afterwards on October 14, 1921.
Maybe Supt. Cowley indeed liked to escalate conflicts to the demise of those who protest or complain.
Anyhow, in October 1992 I had no knowledge of Supt. D. G. Cowley, but was told by my lawyer Brian Mason about a Justice Department lawyer phone call saying that the lawsuit pleading incorrectly named RCMP instead of the Queen. Mason soon filed an amended version.
The Statement of Defence filed by Justice Department lawyer J. D. Bissell on November 18 on behalf of RCMP was when Cpl. Nancy McKerry’s altered version of police report, with fabricated facts about the July 2 arrest, was filed at the court. The 2003 RCMP disclosure shows what looks like a copy (its contents have been withheld) of the typed version cited earlier, faxed on November 13 by S/Sgt. J. B. Jansen to Justice Department lawyer Paul Partridge.
So, what had begun in late August by the local RCMP after Valery Fabrikant’s murders at Concordia University, namely redefining my case as that of potential violence on my part, by mid-November became official with the legal filing from Justice Department.
Moreover there was a new revelation in the RCMP statement of defence to support its claim of concern for violence: on July 2 before the police intervention, Cpl. McKerry had reviewed an RCMP report showing I had been “violent” on March 16 – the day when I had heated email exchanges with Christopher Healey as in Part 4 – by throwing a coffee mug at a UBC student.
As mentioned in Part 4, to show my anger after he had tailed me in near darkness the day before, I did toss my plastic mug at the wall but not toward Healey.
So now you see I could have been treated like Robert Dziekanski was 15 years later, had the RCMP chosen to do so on the basis of second-hand information about ‘similar’ physical behavior.
But in November 1992 my focus was not on the lawsuit itself but trying to get publicity for it. To me, the lawsuit was an extended continuation of the dispute with Maria Klawe over her management style at UBC.
Furthermore, for several months like many Canadians I had followed the events of the Charlottetown constitutional accord and national referendum campaign with great interest, and had begun to view Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in a similar vein as I did Head Maria Klawe, namely that both had used quite a bit of bullying tactics in their politics. So I decided to also take a modest shot at the issue of Mulroney’s leadership.
My first two written press releases were sent on November 10 to British Columbia TV and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation TV in Vancouver, and included the issue of Mulroney’s leadership and that of the failure of the Charlottetown constitutional process. In my yet unfinished series of blog posts on Canadian politics, written during 2009, I have discussed some statements in them (“The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 5)”):
“In one of the press releases on this date, November 10, 1992, I called for B.C. Tory MPs to support their caucus chair Stan Wilbee who had publicly demanded a leadership review, … and I demanded that constitutional affairs minister Joe Clark give a public account of the damages to national unity and to the economy inflicted by the Tory government’s constitutional misadventure. The quote below is from a copy of my old press release – disclosed to me in an October 1, 2003 RCMP personal-information disclosure:
“Mr. Stan Wilbee, MP for Delta, B.C., has spoken out publicly, criticizing Mr. Mulroney’s leadership and requesting a province-by-province Tory leadership review. The B.C. Tory MPs should speak out now in support of Mr. Wilbee, reaffirm their confidence in him as the B.C. caucus chair, and defy Mr. Mulroney’s threats of retaliation by means of cabinet restructuring or by any other means. … the most pressing issue facing the country right now, that of Mr. Mulroney’s fitness as the prime minister. … Before taking up any new tasks, Mr. Joe Clark needs to give the people of Canada an adequate explanation for the recent Charlottetown constitutional fiasco and a satisfactory account of the full extent of damages the latest constitutional adventure of the Tory government has done to both national unity and the economy.”
”
It turned out that on the same day the Mulroney government made an intriguing international diplomatic move for the RCMP, winning Chinese government acceptance of RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster’s nomination as the new president of the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), i.e., unopposed. I discussed this in the above May 2009 blog post:
“Even more intriguing is the fact that back on November 10, 1992 when Mr. Inkster was named president of Interpol, he got the job without competition: he became the only candidate when a second nominated candidate – from China – withdrew in favour of him.
Now that’s worth pondering: with Mr. Mulroney’s diplomatic clout among western leaders, Mr. Inkster likely had been agreed upon by them; but a Chinese government non-compete gesture at a time when the June 4, 1989 violent military crackdown on Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests was still fresh in people’s minds? That had to be the result of some deal from Mr. Mulroney.
What is personally interesting is that the day when Norman Inkster was acclaimed president of Interpol happened to be the day when I first sent written press releases to the media – especially CBC-TV in Vancouver – criticizing Mulroney’s leadership in general and his conduct in the Charlottetown constitutional process…”
I can see this new Interpol primacy giving Supt. D. G. Cowley even greater confidence at the time in exercising police crackdown on protests and complaints.
Three days later on November 13 – the same day when S/Sgt. Jansen sent Cpl. McKerry’s altered police statement to the Justice Department – Prime Minister Mulroney made another daring political move, the more subtle implications of which virtually gone untouched by the national media: he appointed Justice John Charles Major of Alberta to the Supreme Court of Canada in what turned out to be his last Supreme Court appointment before retiring in 1993.
I also discussed this in the above quoted 2009 blog post:
“Also note that Mulroney’s appointment of John C. Major of Alberta – a lawyer in the law firm Bennett Jones Verchere headed by Mulroney’s tax lawyer and financial trustee Bruce Verchere and a friend of Karlheinz Schreiber – to the Supreme Court of Canada happened on November 13, 1992, i.e., amid the tension of Stan Wilbee’s call for a leadership review, and that back in 1983 Schreiber had been involved in political maneuvers to oust Joe Clark and bring in Mulroney as Tory leader (the topic has been discussed in previous Notes, with attention to the fact that Justice Major later took early retirement on Christmas Day 2005 ahead of his turning 75 on February 20, 2006 – a date when my late father would have turned 73).”
More precisely, prior to being appointed to the Alberta Court of Appeal in 1991 John Major was a lawyer at the law firm Bennett Jones Verchere headed by Bruce Verchere, whose very limited media profile placed him as a lawyer and Canadian director for the Swiss Bank Corporation (mentioned in my earlier blog post in March 2009, The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 2)).
There were press articles from critics who disagreed with Major’s Supreme Court appointment on the basis of legal perspectives and court-bench experience (“Albertan named to Supreme Court Long-time lawyer has Tory ties, less than two years on bench”, by Sean Fine, November 14, 1992, The Globe and Mail; “Still mostly middle-aged, rich, Christian, white men JUDGES " The faces on the benches of Canada's courts don't represent the country's real makeup. There are too few women and minorities”, by Allan Hutchinson, December 3, 1992, The Globe and Mail; and, “PROFILE A 'lawyer's lawyer' ascends to the top court The latest appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada has been greeted with much controversy. Here’s how the country’s legal community feels about the newcomer on the bench”, by Sean Fine, January 23, 1993, The Globe and Mail).
But as far as I have searched for, not one person pointed out another real issue – whether anyone in the media knew in any official capacity is a related issue – that the prime minister was actually appointing a former underling of his personal financial manager and tax lawyer to be a supreme justice of the country.
It was not until 1998 when the anti-corruption crusader and journalist Stevie Cameron published her book, Blue Trust: The Author, the Lawyer, His Wife and Her Money, that it became public knowledge Bruce Verchere had been Mulroney’s personal lawyer and financial trustee who then died of a gun-inflicted, reported suicide in August 1993 two months after his appointment as Board Chairman of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited – where UBC Computer Science Acting Head James Kennedy had come from – by Mulroney a day before retirement as Prime Minister.
Cameron said in 1998 that to write this book she had been encouraged by the prominent Canadian author, (the late) Mordecai Richler, who had also introduced her to many of her sources for the story (“Bumper fall crop of Canadian books”, by Judy Stoffman, June 22, 1998, Toronto Star).
Yet to this day no one has raised a voice that Justice John Major had practiced law under Verchere in that law firm that served Mulroney, or that Justice Major had been a friend of Karlheinz Schreiber, the central figure in the Airbus Affair and the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair who laundered tens of millions of dollars in commissions from 1988 Airbus plane sale to Air Canada, including through bank accounts at the Swiss Bank for which Verchere was a Canadian director and lawyer while at the same time the financial trustee and lawyer for Prime Minister Mulroney.
Some of the financial and political relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber has been discussed in Part 1. The official Canadian government inquiry into these has so far only focused on if Mulroney accepted $300,000 from Schreiber shortly after retirement and whether that was ethically appropriate – a scope so limited even Schreiber himself felt was far from the real picture, as discussed in Part 1.
Looking back to November 1992, I get the sense that at the time Brian Mulroney was busy installing sufficient protective cushion, on both the law enforcement and legal justice fronts, for his and his political circle’s future, and that my attempt into public opposition to his leadership wouldn’t bode well for me.
Ten days later on November 20, 1992, I sent out another press release that focused on some of Mulroney’s leadership behavior, as discussed in my September 2009 blog post (The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 9)):
“On November 20, 1992, … I sent out another press release lambasting Mulroney’s “constitutional adventures” and his pushing Clark aside and resorting to “horse-trading” on constitutional negotiation:
“His constitutional adventures have done nothing but damages to both national unity and the economy. The horse-trading approach he employed during the final stage of the Charlottetown constitutional negotiation after he pushed Joe Clark aside (Poor Mr. Clark, he never failed Mr. Mulroney, not yet anyway), and discarded proposals based on the efforts of many experts, political leaders and ordinary people, together with his hardball tactics during the referendum campaign, caused the massive No votes across the country and the resulting division and resentments among people.” To single out Brian Mulroney for all the blames may have been overly simplistic, but in late 1992 it was done attempting to put pressure on the issue of his leadership future.”
Another ten days later on November 30, I faxed all of these press releases, with a cover note, to the Canadian Member of Parliament in the riding where I lived, Vancouver Centre, in what would turn out to be a very self-devastating political move.
At the time, my local MP was Kim Campbell, Justice Minister in the Mulroney government. I was hoping that Campbell would take my criticisms and allegations about Prime Minister Mulroney seriously, but as my review of the history in my 2009 blog posts indicates, she would soon be getting a political ‘inheritance’ from Mulroney to become the next leader of the Progressive Conservative party and the Prime Minister – the first women as the leader of Canada was a real tempting prospect.
In my cover note to Kim Campbell I went as far as essentially alleging a scandal in Mulroney’s handling of the Charlottetown constitutional process. I also alleged that I was about to be politically persecuted, for the reason that CBC Television in Vancouver to which I had sent the press releases, had begun to threaten that if I did not stop contacting over these issues I would be criminally charged with harassment.
Here is what I stated to Kim Campbell:
“These are press releases I have sent to CBC-TV. I have strong reason to believe the CBC regional management has informed against me and a political persecution ordered by the PM is underway. I need the immediate support of my MP and the B.C. Tory MPs. Charlottetown constitutional process was an elaborate setup by the PM to settle political scores and eliminate potential political opponents. I’ll get in touch later.”
After the morning fax, in the afternoon I was at home attempting to speak on the phone with CBC-TV, and as with most of my other attempts was put on hold. Unexpectedly, there were polite knocks at my apartment door, and I opened it to find two plainclothes gentlemen who had been let in the building by a neighbor. They introduced themselves to me as Sergeant Brian Cotton, a detective, and his Constable companion, RCMP officers from the University Detachment.
I of course had no idea that there was a Supt. D. G. Cowley who kept things under tight grip.
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