As in Part 7, I was freed on bail after a July 27, 1993 guilty verdict at Richmond Provincial Court for violating a pre-trial bail condition not to contact Vancouver lawyer Patricia Connor – a result of my persistence seeking her legal defense for an assault charge arisen from my standoff with University of British Columbia Hospital security guards; on July 23 I had been unfairly found guilty for the assault charge but given an absolute discharge.
On July 30 I returned to UBC Hospital to request a reassessment of the wrongful psychiatric diagnosis of “Delusional Disorder” from my first involuntary committal initiated by Royal Canadian Mounted Police on November 30, 1992 – hours after my faxing to Member of Parliament Kim Campbell documents critical of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s leadership conduct, and of UBC Computer Science Head Maria Klawe named in my October 6 lawsuit.
As Hospital record indicated RCMP was quickly called, and responding officer Peter Kennedy, who as in Part 7 had handled a similar previous assault charge for which I was acquitted, assured the staff there was no “outstanding restraining order”. I was then told by the physician to follow up with my family doctor and with psychiatrist Dr. Laura Chapman who had supervised the first committal.
My new claim of being “suicidal” was ignored.
I wasn’t suicidal at all, but wanted to continue accessing UBC Hospital psychiatrists to request a reassessment. As in Part 7, by June the time for submitting supporting documents for my Unemployment Insurance benefit appeal was over despite UBC Hospital’s refusal to provide an acceptable clearance backdated to my February 12 release from the second, last committal; to see a psychiatrist I needed another excuse, but not “delusional disorder” which I never accepted – a depressed mood might work given my recent long pre-trial jail detention, guilty verdicts and loss of my apartment as mentioned in Part 7.
During this long political saga I often borrowed ideas I found in the media from daily listening to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio program and reading The Vancouver Sun newspaper. At the time there were press stories referring to “depression” or “suicidal” as I retrace, especially one on July 27 about Zerom Seyoum, former UBC graduate student from Africa and murderer of a UBC lab technician in 1987 due to “paranoid schizophrenia”, being allowed to take public transit alone (“Paranoid killer free to travel alone”, by Moira Farrow, July 27, 1993, The Vancouver Sun):
“Psychiatrist Dr. Emlene Murphy, of B.C.’s adult forensic services department, testified that Zerom Seyoum, originally from Ethiopia, has been given this freedom even though he still lives in a psychiatric hospital, suffers from paranoid delusions, and has threatened to kill a lawyer.
She also testified that when Seyoum travels by bus he develops a crick in his neck from looking constantly out of the window because he feels “molested” and troubled by women in the bus.
She said he is allowed to travel by bus because he is in a job search program.
Seyoum was 32 when he killed laboratory technician Minh Trang Nguyen in 1987 just as they were about to start work in a research laboratory in the University of B.C.'s chemistry building.
Seyoum was found not guilty of second-degree murder by reason of insanity. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Douglas MacKinnon ordered him detained at the Forensic Psychiatric Institute at Essondale until the provincial cabinet orders his release.
He was due to appear Monday before the B.C. Review Board in New Westminster in connection with a Nov. 10, 1992 order restricting his liberties at the institute but no details were given. The restriction has since been lifted.
…
The doctor, responding to another question, said it’s possible that Seyoum could have another unexpected “incident” and he sometimes feels suicidal at certain disappointments in his life.”
This killer confined at Forensic Psychiatric Institute had been slapped with even more court-ordered restrictions on November 10, 1992, the day when I first sent out press releases critical of my then UBC boss Maria Klawe and then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and also the day when RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster was elected INTERPOL president as discussed in Part 5. But less than a year later Zerom Seyoum was free to travel alone even with risk of “unexpected” killing, while as a peaceful activist I was considered “mentally ill” and “violent”, and subjected to psychiatric measures.
A week later on August 6 I went to UBC Hospital again. This time I was asked to describe my “depressed” mood including idea of “suicide”:
“He has thought definitely of committing suicide. He has thought of walking out in front of an automobile.”
Emergency physician, Dr. M. Carter brought out resident psychiatrist Dr. A. Burgmann to interview me, who found that my “suicidal” ideations were “vague”, “fleeting”:
“Presently in ER with complaints of depressed mood over past 4 days. Accompanying symptoms include difficulty initiating sleep, ↓ appetite, generalized feelings of hopelessness and vague suicidal ideations. General interests remains intact. Suicidal ideations are fleeting non planned thoughts.”
Dr. Bergmann’s conclusions about my mental state were good; for the first time a UBC Hospital psychiatrist didn’t consider me “mentally ill”:
“– Thoughts – no formal thought disorder – non delusional – no psychosis”
His diagnosis was “Acute Reaction Disorder” and plan was “Referral to Crisis Clinic”.
On August 5, the prior day of this hospital visit, The Vancouver Sun had run a story about Karla Teale – one half of the notorious couple Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo in their common married name Teale, serial killers of Niagara Falls area teenage girls – with a depression claim by her lawyer George Walker (“Killer Karla Teale under close guard as ex-husband’s murder trial awaited”, August 5, The Vancouver Sun):
“Teale’s lawyer, George Walker, has said his client has been suicidal and undergone psychiatric treatment for depression since her husband’s February arrest.”
My sense is that back then I studied news stories like the above when making up depression claims to continue accessing UBC Hospital psychiatrists.
Some of these stories may have carried deeper meanings. For instance, in May Karla Teale had been offered a 12-year jail plea bargain; then lawfully, Homolka would later be released on July 4, 2005 and given absolute freedom on November 30 (“Timeline: Karla Homolka”, by Amanda Roth, June 14, 2010, The Brock Press).
One week later on August 12, there was news on the July 20 suicide of Vincent Foster, deputy White House counsel and long-time law partner of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s wife Hillary, revealing that at his wife’s request Foster had written a list of concerns related to his “depression” (“White House lawyer wrote list of concerns”, by Stewart Powell and Dan Freedman, August 12, The Vancouver Sun):
“Roughly 10 days before deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide, his wife Lisa urged the 48-year-old lawyer to write down the concerns that were contributing to his depression.
Foster, a Little Rock lawyer and long-time law partner of Hillary Clinton, took his wife’s advice. Using a pad of lined yellow paper that is the trademark of the legal profession, Foster detailed the frustrations that apparently drove him to take his own life a few days later with a 1913 .38-calibre Colt revolver in a secluded Virginia park on July 20.
Investigators concluded Tuesday that Foster committed suicide.
The note was later found in the bottom of his briefcase, torn into more than two dozen pieces. It was turned over to the U.S. Park Police by White House officials some 30 hours later.”
In the afternoon of August 12 I was again seen at UBC Hospital, claiming to be “suicidal”.
The psychiatric assessment report drafted by Dr. A. Burgmann on August 6 was formally dated August 12, although he didn’t interview me on this day. A noticeable change in the formal report from the draft was the diagnosis:
“Acute Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood, Rule Out Major Depression”.
In psychiatry an “acute adjustment disorder with depressed mood” was presumably more real and less “fleeting” than an “acute reaction disorder”, but the new diagnosis also let Dr. Burgmann rule out any scenario of a “major depression”.
Dr. Burgmann also changed his referral, instead of to Crisis Clinic it was now to psychiatrist Dr. A. M. Marcus in the community:
“Mr. Gao was originally referred to the Crisis Clinic, but upon reevaluation of the situation, it was deemed that this might be inappropriate due to the fact that he has a lot of negative institutionalized transference which he may use during the sessions at the UBC Hospital. It was thought that a more appropriate treatment intervention would be by a psychiatrist in the community. Dr. A. Marcus was chosen due to the fact that he has much experience in forensic psychiatry and he may be most apt in dealing with this difficult patient.”
I don’t think the Foster “depression” news story had anything to do with the psychiatrist’s change of plan: as in Parts 4 & 7 a UBC Computer Science person I had known, programmer Martin Frauendorf, had just been beaten to death with a baseball bat on August 11 while bike riding in the woods of University Endowment Lands.
My guess is that in this sudden circumstances “Crisis” and “Acute Reaction” became sensitive words while “major depression” would imply a real tendency to commit suicide, so Dr. Burgmann made some adjustments. The reality was that I wouldn’t have gotten myself killed – but could have been staged to, I suppose.
As discussed in Part 5, back in August 1992 after news of multiple murders by engineering professor Valery Fabrikant at Concordia University, RCMP’s UBC detachment was intensely lobbied by UBC Computer Science Department to link my dispute to Fabrikant’s at Concordia, and ‘doctored’ police file on me to emphasize preventing “physical violence”.
This time, UBC Hospital referred to me as “difficult patient” but was not so hostile.
On August 12, 1993 I was not given Dr. Burgmann’s new referral, but one by emergency physician Dr. (Harold) Schubert to the community-based Vancouver South Mental Health Team. As in Part 7, I now lived in south Vancouver after some relatives had moved my belongings out of my apartment at 1640 West 11th Avenue while I was in pre-trial detention and owing back rents.
Dr. Burgmann’s referral letter to psychiatrist Dr. Marcus was dated August 16, and when I was at UBC Hospital again on August 17 psychiatrist Dr. (Jonathan) Fleming set up my first session with Dr. Marcus for August 19.
I was also on pre-sentencing bail, with pre-sentencing evaluation and forensic psychiatric assessment ordered by Judge J. R. Groberman and next court date set for September 2. On August 5 I quickly signed a waiver to let probation officer David Phillips access my personal information at medical providers, and on August 16, the same day when Dr. Burgmann wrote referral to Dr. Marcus, Phillips made a referral to Adult Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Services for a psychiatric evaluation.
Previously in June while trying to obtain a medical clearance for Unemployment Insurance benefit – as in Part 7 – I was cool to a UBC Hospital referral to Kitsilano Mental Health Team. Now comfortable with Dr. Burgmann’s new assessment I connected with Vancouver South Mental Health Team, and on August 19 VSMHT began receiving my personal information from Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Hospital nurse Diane Woodhouse and my family doctor.
In his feedback, family doctor Dr. James K. Lai said I was “very healthy” and he would only treat medical problems, wouldn’t have much to contribute to a “CC” (case conference) being set up by VSMHT.
UBC Hospital info from Diane Woodhouse – so as in Dr. Burgmann’s referral to Dr. Marcus – falsely asserted existence of a restraining order, which RCMP officer Peter Kennedy had stated there wasn’t – in May and June there had been bail conditions not to attend the site while facing assault charges due to standoffs with UBC Hospital security guards.
Interestingly, although a VGH psychiatrist had given me a letter of medical clearance for my Unemployment Insurance benefit appeal the VGH info looked as if no such letter existed as I hadn’t followed advice to attend VGH outpatient clinic.
As in Part 7, a letter was written on April 30 by a VGH psychiatrist who on May 10 also wrote a forensic psychiatric assessment for my first assault charge, and he was the first psychiatrist to declare me “not mentally ill”. It was possible the April 30 letter was off the hospital record due to political pressure enforcing the “mentally ill” label RCMP had initiated on November 30, 1992. As I have recalled in Part 7 that VGH psychiatrist was likely Dr. (John Mark) Levy; in the May 10 forensic psychiatric assessment his phone number was 875-4009 and he also listed Adult Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic’s phone number 660-6604.
Instead, VGH info reported an earlier VGH visit for fever/cold symptoms on April 14, 1989 – not long after I had moved to my apartment at 1640 West 11th Avenue near VGH. I note that it was 4 years from this date, i.e., on “93414” as in Part 7, when Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy lawyer Don Richards conducted an examination for discovery for my lawsuit’s defendant UBC.
Having received a mentally-normal assessment from UBC Hospital, I felt it was time to resume civil litigation versus UBC and RCMP. It had been stalled as in Parts 5, 6 & 7 after the RCMP-initiated psychiatric intervention, with my lawyer Brian Mason quitting in early April after I had run out of money.
On August 20 I wrote a letter to Albert McClean, UBC Associate Vice President in charge of legal affairs, to request reopening a UBC investigation into my employment grievance against Maria Klawe, and addressing her fitness as Computer Science Head.
On the same day, Adult Forensic Psychiatric Outpatients Services notified probation officer Dave Phillips that it would take 6-8 weeks to complete pre-sentencing evaluation and my next court date should be postponed.
To me it was a temporary lull of less oppressive pressure for me to consider my next steps.
On August 23, Justice Department changed its lawyer for RCMP from Alisa Noda to David Fitzsimmons.
Around this time I visited Albert McClean at his office. McClean said he would not reopen the closed file on my employment grievance but, McClean told me, formerly as Dean of Law he had been involved with the UBC student legal clinic helping low-income people with their legal problems, and now unemployed if I sought legal help at the clinic and the law students brought my lawsuit to him he would review it.
Founded by B.C. New Democrat Premier Mike Harcourt as a law student in 1969, UBC student legal clinic had a reputation as a good last resort for persons who couldn't afford a lawyer and didn’t know other low-cost legal services (“Can't afford a lawyer? Many turn to students”, by Ellen Saenger, June 2, 1987, The Vancouver Sun).
When the job market was tight such as in 1988, the year I would start teaching at UBC, the legal clinic was a venue of starting summer jobs for law graduates when there weren’t for their peers in other fields (“Specialized work still hard to find”, by Pat Leidl, May 3, 1988, The Vancouver Sun).
In January 1990 the clinic received a boost in expertise when B.C. County Court Judge John Peter van der Hoop, a leading expert in civil procedures, began helping students in the legal clinic as Judge-in-Residence at UBC Faculty of Law. It also gave the clinic a bit more media profile as Judge van der Hoop had stirred up controversy in November 1989 by calling a 3-year-old girl “sexually aggressive” in a sexual assault by a 33-year-old man (“Sex-ruling judge heads for UBC post”, by Justine Hunter, January 13, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“County court Judge Peter van der Hoop, who stirred a controversy over his characterization of a three-year-old girl as sexually aggressive, began a term as judge-in-residence at the University of B.C. faculty of law this week, the faculty dean confirmed Friday.
Prof. Peter Burns said the arrangements coincide with the Vancouver judge’s sabbatical from the bench, “which I might add was something arranged about nine months ago” and was “absolutely unconnected” to the furore raised over the court finding.
Judge van der Hoop gave Delbert Leeson, 33, a suspended sentence Nov. 14, 1989 after Leeson admitted to a sexual incident with the toddler. The judge found the victim was “sexually aggressive” and Leeson was tired and
under the influence of alcohol at the time.The decision prompted an outcry from the public and 250 people demonstrated outside the Vancouver courthouse the following week to demand Judge van der Hoop’s removal from the bench.
…
Judge van der Hoop is helping law students working out of UBC’s legal clinic.
The clinic handles about 1,000 files a year, including cases that go into the provincial courts and some administrative tribunals, Burns said.”
Not only wasn’t Judge van der Hoop removed from the bench as protesters had demanded, but during 1990 he became B. C. Supreme Court Justice as B.C. County Court merged into Supreme Court, and even coauthored a book and taught a “continuing legal education” course with then B.C. Supreme Court Master Pamela Kirkpatrick – my UBC colleague David’s wife who later in November 1992 helped RCMP start psychiatric oppression against me as in Parts 6 & 7! (Supreme Court Chambers Orders, Annotated, by British Columbia Supreme Court, J. P. van der Hoop, Pamela A. Kirkpatrick, William McCallum, edited by Linda Rainaldi, 1990, Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia; and, “Robert D. Holmes, Q.C.”, Holmes & King)
Right away UBC student legal clinic aimed for higher success, taking an immigration appeal to Federal Court of Canada (“Emigre's age barrier queried in appeal bid”, by Kevin Griffin, February 7, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“Blake Hobson and Terri Stevenson, third-year law students working in UBC's legal clinic, believe they have a strong case with Ricardo A. Orantes, the father of three young children.
Orantes, in Canada on a minister's permit, was told last year that he had a credible basis for a refugee claim but would not be given landed immigrant status because of Sec. 19 (1) (b) of the Immigration Act.
That section says “persons who there are reasonable grounds to believe are or will be unable or unwilling to support themselves and those persons who are dependent on them for care and support” will be deemed inadmissible to Canada.
Hobson said he and Stevenson believe that amounts to discrimination under the equality rights section of the charter.
…
According to his examination under oath, Orantes’ persecution in El Salvador began after a niece who felt entitled to an inheritance she did not receive falsely accused Orantes of being a Communist who associated with guerrillas in neighboring Guatemala.”
It was around this time in spring 1990 when my UBC employment dispute originated as in Part 4 when I applied to convert my fixed-term faculty job to a tenure-track one: Department Head Maria Klawe was in overall charge, while David Kirkpatrick expressed support for me but then brought in Jack Snoeyink from Stanford to be given a tenure-track job.
By late 1990, a new “women’s legal clinic” opened as part of the student clinic, staffed by female law students providing free legal service for women (“New legal clinic comes to women’s aid”, by Alicia Priest, November 16, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“…
A new women’s legal clinic, operated by the Greater Vancouver Law Student’s Legal Advice Society, and “womaned” by University of B.C. law students, aims to address that inequity.
The Vancouver west side clinic offers free legal advice to all women who cannot afford regular legal services.
The idea for the clinic originated when “a group of women realized there was a gap in legal services available to women in particular,” says UBC second-year law student and clinic volunteer Morgan Rea.
…
Rea says even if the clinic cannot handle a particular client’s case, the volunteers can always give competent advice on legal matters and women’s rights.”
Now in late August 1993 as advised by former Dean of Law Albert McClean I would visit a UBC student legal clinic office, and surprise, one was near me!
At 8163 Main Street, about 1/2 mile from my new dwelling in south Vancouver, was the head office of Indo-Canadian community organization Orientation Adjustment Services for Immigrants Society, or OASIS. Like UBC student legal clinic OASIS had a long and proud history, helping South Asian immigrants adjust to life in Canada since 1975 (“Oasis cash dries in wake of audit: Indo-Canadians are the victims”, by Stewart Bell, September 24, 1993, The Vancouver Sun).
In the OASIS head office was a UBC student legal clinic open 2-3 times a week, operated by a small group of mostly female law students. The Indo-Canadian community was also raising fund to start a South Asian Women’s Centre at that location (“Centre aims to combat sexism, racism”, by Kim Bolan, March 14, 1994, The Vancouver Sun).
OASIS had been headed by businessman Herb Dhaliwal, an Indo-Canadian community leader who had fought racism with his own fists as a new immigrant kid (“Prominent British Columbians recall the sting of racism”, by Carole Taylor, May 10, 1991, The Vancouver Sun):
“Herb Dhaliwal, a successful businessman from Richmond and president of OASIS, an immigrant-services agency, is clearly a happy man when he talks about his young daughter’s recent play. But his eyes cloud over when he thinks of his own school experiences. They were not so carefree.
…
Not speaking a word of English, Harbance found that his name was changed to Herb for the convenience of the teacher and other students. And just when he was beginning to make some friends, he was required to repeat his year because he had moved to Canada in December and missed a couple of months’ school.
Humiliation and a profound sense of not belonging haunted this little boy. Desperately trying to fit in, Herb would never bring roti in his lunch. Strange foods ostracized one; white-bread sandwiches did not. He was made to feel embarrassed about his ways and ashamed of his heritage. When the other kids called him names, he didn’t know they were racist, he just knew they weren’t nice. The only level playing field he had was his physical strength, so he beat them up.”
Here was a ethnic community leader who had known how to “beat up” racists since childhood, yet in contrast UBC and RCMP had to impose a false label of “violence” on me who challenged authority figures through peaceful politics.
But in August-September 1993 when I came to visit, serious financial problems at OASIS were about to come to the fore.
Misuse of government funding had surfaced in 1990 with Dhaliwal at the helm, but ignored by funding agencies until now – when Herb was heading toward a greater future as Liberal party parliamentary candidate under opposition leader Jean Chretien, with his election campaign office nearby and a campaign underway now that Kim Campbell had succeeded Brian Mulroney as Prime Minister (“Indo-Canadian group got grants despite serious internal problems”, by Stewart Bell, September 24, 1993, The Vancouver Sun):
“Concerns about the Orientation Adjustment Services for Immigrants Society (OASIS) began surfacing in 1990, according to a government audit report on the organization viewed by The Vancouver Sun on Thursday.
…
Mobina Jaffer, a member of the OASIS board of directors until 1991, said she tried to convince the funders, after she became aware of problems at the organization, to hold back money as a way of pressuring senior managers to clean up their act.
But the funding agencies did not respond until this year, when many of them suspended their financial support following a government audit that uncovered serious mismanagement of funds and staff.
“I tried to get the funders to get involved. I really tried,” said Jaffer.
…
Jaffer is one of two former OASIS directors now running for the Liberal party in the federal election. Jaffer is running in North Vancouver. Herb Dhaliwal, who is running for the Liberals in Vancouver South, was president of OASIS until 1991.
Dhaliwal said when he first became aware of the problems, he set in motion a process to restructure the organization, taking power away from the office of the executive director. But before the changes were carried out, Dhaliwal left to devote more time to his business.
“When I left, I don’t know how far they got, but (the changes) were being implemented,” said Dhaliwal, whose Main Street campaign office is a few doors away from the OASIS head office.
Dhaliwal said he is saddened by the problems at OASIS because the services are needed and he worked hard for many years to improve the organization. The collapse of OASIS will only hurt the Indo-Canadian immigrants who need services, he said.
The changes that began during Dhaliwal’s reign were never completed.”
Back in 1990 when the financial problems began to surface – the same year when UBC student legal clinic strode for greater success with Judge J. P. van der Hoop’s help – tragedies also struck close to OASIS. In April, 43-year-old Gina Jagjit Kaur Sara, a UBC graduate originally from Punjab, India, one of the first women hired by the Canadian government’s immigration department 17 years ago, one of its “finest minds” and a bridge to Indo-Canadians, was killed in a car accident (“Funeral today for immigration specialist Gina Sara, 43”, April 7, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“Gurdeep Singh Atwal, who knew Ms. Sara for 17 years, said she was a unique person who was admired and liked by everyone who met her.
“She was very community-minded. She played a key role in educating the immigration department about Indo-Canadians and also in educating Indo-Canadians about immigration,” said Atwal, a program director for the Indo-Canadian immigrant services agency OASIS.”
Then in December 1990, at an OASIS-sponsored social evening to educate immigrants to the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse, a hail of gunfire greeted the attendees at the end as they exited, killing 2 and wounding 3 (“Tragedy unfolds after play’s over; His play upstaged by a true tragedy: Audience emerges to find two men dying, three hurt”, by Salim Jiwa and Shelly Easton, December 3, 1990, The Province):
“A stage play depicting one tragic death was upstaged by a double slaying at an immigrants’ social evening Saturday.
Surrey realtor Bhupinder Dhaliwal was wiping the makeup from his face after acting in the play when the real life-and-death drama began unfolding outside.
…
Dhaliwal said he had written and directed the stage play, and was one of several volunteers who had helped organize the evening to educate immigrants to the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse. Almost 400 people attended.
The function, held at Delta senior secondary school, was sponsored by the immigrant-services group OASIS.
One survivor told his brother that the shooting began as soon as he and four friends left the school auditorium.
“The two guys who died were the first to come out,” said Swinder Bhatti, brother of injured victim Jatinder Bhatti.”
When I came to visit, OASIS’s financial problems were still weeks away from being reported in the media. At the student legal clinic there, I presented my civil action to two female UBC law students. The more ‘tomboy’-like one, Alison as I recall her name as, showed great interest and enthusiasm, but I was told by the other, whose name I don’t recall but whose look later reminded me of Roma Downey – Irish actress in “Touched by an Angel” – or a smaller Lucy Lawless – New Zealand actress and environmentalist – that the clinic gave advice but wouldn’t represent lawsuits, and that all they could do was to mediate the employment dispute with UBC.
I suggested that I get a lawyer to lead the law students on the civil litigation, but the response was they wouldn’t be involved if I had a lawyer.
Perhaps suing UBC was a problem for them, but I would also guess that to the UBC law students my case wasn’t like the 1990 immigration case of Ricardo A. Orantes when Judge Peter van der Hoop was with the clinic: its origin had been an inheritance dispute in El Salvador.
It reminds me of the mathematician John Nash with his mysterious history of “mental illness” mentioned in Part 7. As discussed in my first blog article “Greeting the New Millennium – nearly a decade late”, Nash’s wife Alicia Larde was from a social-elite family in El Salvador, with an uncle working as a United Nations interpreter in New York in 1958-59 when Nash became active in peace politics and showed bizarre behavior that led to his psychiatric committal and “Paranoid Schizophrenia” diagnosis at Boston’s McLean Hospital.
Similarly unsatisfactory were my discussions with retired UBC faculty member, private psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Marcus in his Gastown office as referred by UBC Hospital. Dr. Marcus said that while I might not have “delusional disorder” he felt I had “obsessive-compulsive personality disorder” as shown in my persistence. He ordered a copy of my UBC Hospital records, but told me he could help only if I stopped trying to get UBC Hospital to review the original diagnoses, and shift my focus to an academic career away from UBC, e.g., at Simon Fraser University.
In May I couldn’t agree to criminal defense lawyer Linda Hall’s advice to forgo the politics and move on as discussed in Part 7, now in August I could not accept Dr. Tony Marcus’s conditions as they were far short of my goals for the civil litigation, which as discussed in Parts 4 & 5 included examination of Maria Klawe’s management conduct.
In fact, in 1988 before accepting a fixed-term position at UBC Computer Science Department I had been offered a tenure-track one at SFU – the type at the core of my employment dispute with Head Klawe as in Part 4. The SFU job prospect has been mentioned in my 2009 blog post, ““Nairobi to Shenzhen”, and on to Guangzhou”.
The arrival of Maria Klawe and her husband Nicholas Pippenger made UBC Computer Science more important but reduced my prospect of a longer employment, so between ‘fate’ and ‘luck’ – SFU professor Wo-Shun Luk had been particularly interested in my going there – I had chosen fate.
Worse yet, it was a ‘double’ fate: while still at UC Berkeley in April-May 1988 it had been Klawe’s good friend Professor Richard Karp – today the founding director of Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing – informing me of the couple’s decision to go to UBC – thus no immediate chance of tenure-track for me – and also advising me to choose UBC over Simon Fraser because of the new strength; then in 1990 when I applied for a tenure-track position under Head Klawe, “Dick” Karp’s promised reference letter was a no show without my knowledge as discussed in Part 4.
Around the time of visiting UBC student legal clinic and attending Dr. Marcus’s counselling sessions, there was an intriguing death event, unbeknown to me and of unclear ramifications: on August 28, Bruce Verchere – as in Parts 3, 5 & 6 Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s tax lawyer and financial trustee, appointed as Chairman of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. just before Mulroney’s retirement – died of a gunshot in his Montreal home in what was ruled a suicide.
A UBC law graduate and son of former B.C. Supreme Court Justice David Verchere, Bruce had married his wife Lynne Walters, a computer programmer at IBM, in Vancouver (Stevie Cameron, Blue Trust: The Author, the Lawyer, His Wife and Her Money, 1998, MacFarlane Walter & Ross):
“When David Verchere won a coveted appointment to the British Columbia Supreme Court, he didn’t need to feel any deference towards Vancouver’s private-school boys, who swaggered through the big law firms on Howe Street. And when Bruce arrived at the University of British Columbia in 1957, everyone knew he was a judge’s son. …
…
If there was one word people used to describe Verchere, it was “charming.” Like his father, he believed that life was for living. But there was a ruthlessness in him that showed up early on. He dated Carol Sloan for four years… Let’s get married, he urged her before he left for Ottawa in the late summer of 1963. Not now, she told him. You need to grow up a little.
Carol Sloan paid a high price for her honesty. Three weeks after she turned Verchere down, he proposed to Lynne Walters, a young woman he’d just met. The were married a few months later, on December 27, 1963, at St. Mary’s, Kerrisdale, an Anglican church. … She had a commerce degree and a job as a computer programmer.
Computers? In 1963 people barely knew what computers were, much less knew anyone who had studied them at university. But Lynne had landed a job at IBM… in the engineering labs, where IBM was developing computer systems. At UBC the computers were so primitive that junior staff in different buildings had to gather up boxes of stiff punch cards at the end of each day and walk them over to the administration building for sorting and entering in the university’s clunky mainframe.”
No one in the Computer Science field could afford to defy IBM’s omnipotence, especially given how primitive UBC computers had been as described in the above quote from Stevie Cameron.
In 1989 courtesy of Head Maria Klawe who had moved from IBM, as in Part 4 with her prestigious IBM Fellow husband Nick, the company gave $5 million to UBC for a joint project on graphic, film and computers (“IBM teams with university in $5M computer project; Confusion reigns when calculating charges”, by Michael Bernard, November 27, 1989, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Maria Klawe, a former IBM researcher, said the idea of the project came to her after she talked to Canadian computer scientist Bill Reeves, one of the key men involved in creating Tin Toy, a computer-generated feature that won an Oscar in 1988 for animation.”
But Lynne Walters Verchere was more than Maria Klawe.
In 1993 after his February announcement to retire as discussed in Part 7, in April Brian Mulroney appointed Walters as Chairman of Official Residences Council, overseeing Canadian government official residences including Prime Minister’s Residences at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa and at Harrington Lake. Lynne didn’t disappoint when Mulroney stepped down in June, authorizing a $150,000 payment for old furniture Mulroney’s wife Mila left. (“No politics involved in purchase, insiders say”, by April Lindgren, July 13, 1993, The Ottawa Citizen; and, Stevie Cameron, Blue Trust: The Author, the Lawyer, His Wife and Her Money, 1998, MacFarlane Walter & Ross)
The Mulroney furniture deal generated intense public criticisms, and Mila subsequently cancelled it (“Public anger cited in cancellation of furniture deal; Have to respect wishes of Mila Mulroney, NCC says”,, by Jeff Sallot, July 17, 1993, The Globe and Mail); but the public didn’t know that the chair of the government council recommending it was the wife of Mulroney’s own lawyer whom had just been given a major government board chairmanship.
After Bruce Verchere’s death and the defeat of Mulroney’s successor Kim Campbell, incoming Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien would keep Lynne Walters at that job according to Stevie Cameron’s book.
As mentioned in Parts 3, 5 & 6, the business relationship between Mulroney and Verchere was never reported in public until Cameron’s 1998 book, despite the fact that it had been from Verchere’s law firm lawyer John Major was first appointed to Alberta Court of Appeal and then on November 13, 1992 to Supreme Court of Canada.
Searching through major newspaper archives I find only a one-line mention of Verchere’s appointment on June 24, 1993 as AECL board chairman (“Bruce Howe named head of nuclear agency”, June 28, 1993, Toronto Star):
“Bill McKnight’s final act as energy minister was to appoint a new head of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
Bruce Howe, deputy minister of Western Economic Diversification, has been named president of the Crown corporation.
…
McKnight also appointed a new chairman for the corporation.
Bruce Verchere, a partner with the law firm Bennett, Jones Verchere, will head the corporation’s 13-member board of directors.”
The public wasn’t told about the final act by Mulroney appointing his personal lawyer and financial trustee to oversee Canadian government’s nuclear facilities.
Verchere’s death was said to be a result of emotional ruin from a family dispute due to his financial fraud and extramarital affairs, some of which read like from an extravagant spy tale (Stevie Cameron, Blue Trust: The Author, the Lawyer, His Wife and Her Money, 1998, MacFarlane Walter & Ross):
“Panama was a good choice for the kind of secrecy he wanted. One of the most notorious tax havens in the world – or, more politely, what McGill crime expert Tom Naylor, in the 1994 edition of his book Hot Money, called a “peekaboo financial center”… With no owner of record, Verchere’s shell companies could deposit money in bank accounts protected by Panama’s infamous secrecy laws. On March 7, 1988, Verchere arranged for Alfaro and Moreno to incorporate a new Panamanian company for him called Shore Operations S.A. …”
After Verchere’s death on Saturday, August 28, Lynne Walters chose Mulroney as a funeral pallbearer along with Verchere’s sons Michael and David, son David’s friend Greg Williams and two of Verchere’s law partners. There, Mulroney jokingly let it be known he viewed Verchere as someone of very big “guilt”:
“The coffin, carried by Michael, David, Williams, Walker, Britton, and Mulroney, left the church; the hearse, followed by many mourners, took it to the Mount Royal Crematorium for cremation and the final committal. After that the family drove to the University Club, where they held a reception. Mulroney didn’t attend the reception, but he had the last word on the day, one that the people who heard him will never forget. Turning to Bill Britton, Mulroney tried to inject a little levity by cracking a joke. “You know what we Irish say about funerals,” he grinned. “The bigger the guilt, the bigger the funeral.””
Fellow pallbearer Greg Williams was in an unusual relationship with the Verchere family: a McGill University rowing athlete – of interest in relation to some murder cases discussed in Part 3 – and the ‘boyfriend’ of Bruce’s son David, he had recently moved in with the family at the height of their internal tension; then after Bruce’s death he showed police where the guns had been stored in the house.
The death-funeral notice in Montreal Gazette newspaper mentioned nothing about who Bruce Vechere was. For this “charming” son of a B.C. Supreme Court justice, who had made it to among the elite few in Canadian legal practice, it was an obscure end – in stark contrast to the international attention given to deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster’s death in the United States.
The Montreal Gazette notice also omitted mention of Bruce’s two younger children, Paul and Emma Hailey, from his affair with bestselling international author Arthur Hailey’s daughter Diane.
Verchere’s death happened on the 11th anniversary day of my arrival in North America – for graduate study at University of California, Berkeley. As conveyed in Part 4, any malicious agenda against me by some in the Canadian gay community would have been unjustified given my prior intellectual immersion in an environment most open to homosexual rights.
On August 30, Dr. A. M. Marcus told Vancouver South Mental Health Team he couldn’t help me:
“Dr. Marcus – says that he tried his best & failed. He’s willing to try again in a couple of months if Feng agrees but doesn’t feel that he can be effective now.”
Before quoting him, VSMHT’s August 30 notes mentioned that on August 19 I had signed a “contract” with Dr. Marcus promising not to visit UBC Hospital but then gone straight there, and that UBC Hospital’s Dr. McGarvey, Dr. “Agbaeweya” and a woman from Crisis Clinic would attend a meeting on my case.
The participation of Dr. M. O. Agbayewa, a hardline psychiatrist as in Parts 6 & 7, signalled the return of greater oppressive pressure linked to RCMP. VSMHT’s August 30 notes also showed probation officer Dave Phillips contacting “Dr. Maria Klawe” at UBC Computer Science, an act outside the scope of his bail supervision for a breach-of-recognizance case outside of UBC.
According to UBC Hospital notes in late August, I had seen Dr. Marcus on August 19 & 25, but on August 26 told hospital I didn’t know Dr. Marcus and wanted to see a psychiatrist there, and was declined by emergency physician Dr. A. Holler on that day and the next.
Finally on August 30 emergency physician Dr. M. Carter – he had brought out psychiatrist Dr. A. Burgmann on August 6 to assess and refer me to Crisis Clinic – cited Dr. Marcus as advising to have RCMP arrest me and impose a restraining order.
The warning likely worked: I didn’t attend UBC Hospital again until early October according to the records.
As respected as Dr. Tony Marcus was, formerly Head of UBC Psychiatry Department’s Forensic Psychiatry Division, his experience was more noted in handling psychiatric diversion for hardcore criminals who faced strict law-and-order and found his psychiatry a more flexible alternative.
Dr. Marcus had played a key role in the legal defense of notorious serial child killer, police informant Clifford Olson (“Remains of missing B.C. girl believed topic of Olson talks”, by Ian Mulgrew, December 2, 1982, The Globe and Mail):
“Mr. Olson, a long-time police informant who pleaded guilty to murdering 11 youngsters between November, 1980, and July, 1981, is lobbying intensively for a transfer to the Regional Psychiatric Centre at Abbotsford, where mentally ill prisoners are treated.
He has written letters to federal and provincial officials and was believed to have been bargaining with authorities by offering them information on a number of murders in exchange for a transfer, which would allow him more frequent visits from his family.
If he were granted the transfer, Mr. Olson has said in letters that he would probably allow a team of psychiatrists - led by Dr. Anthony Marcus, the head of the division of forensic psychiatry at the University of B.C. - to study him. “I’m sure it can be of some help to society to have an insight as to what should be looked for and maybe to prevent this kind of tragedy to a certain degree,” he wrote a letter to a Vancouver Sun reporter.
Dr. Marcus, who interviewed Mr. Olson for his defence before his trial last January, told reporters he was interested in such a study. “He (Mr. Olson) has an uncanny ability to make victims of us all - you, me, the Government, the police, everyone right up to the Cabinet,” Dr. Marcus said. “Olson is holding the country to ransom - he has everyone frightened of him.””
Having described Olson as “uncanny” in 1982, in 1997 when Olson applied for parole Dr. Marcus would describe him as a person of “true moral insanity” who claimed he could help police with 143 unsolved murders (“Olson claims he had role in 143 killings: Confessed murderer either deluded or history’s worst serial killer, psychiatrist says”, by Ken MacQueen and Neal Hall, August 19, 1997, The Ottawa Citizen):
““I know I will never be paroled, I’m not a stupid man,” Mr. Olson told the jury.
But he then went on to urge jurors to weigh his character as they consider his fate. …
…
The mostly middle-aged jurors, selected barely an hour earlier, sat grim-faced as Mr. Olson, wearing a tattered red T-shirt and leaning over the rail of the prisoner’s dock for emphasis, claimed to have knowledge of 143 unsolved murders -- some of which he committed himself or with an accomplice -- including 64 in six Canadian provinces and dozens more in the U.S.
…
A terse Justice Richard Low reacted to Mr. Olson’s claims by telling the jury much of the evidence that Mr. Olson referred to will not be admitted during the hearing.
“This is not a negotiating session,” he said, an apparent reference to Mr. Olson’s claim he could locate other bodies for “Christian burial.”
…
The first witness at the hearing, Dr. Tony Marcus, a court-appointed psychiatrist called by Mr. Olson as a witness, testified he interviewed Mr. Olson for 11 hours in June, and Mr. Olson claimed he was involved in 60-plus murders with another man, whom Mr. Olson identified only by the initials RRY.
He said he doesn’t know whether to believe Mr. Olson’s claims, but added that he asked Mr. Olson why he didn’t mention he had committed other murders when he was previously interviewed by Dr. Marcus in 1981. He said Mr. Olson replied, “I only got $100,000 -- I didn't get half a million.” (Mr. Olson was paid $10,000 for each of the bodies of his victims recovered by police after he told them where to look, and for supplying other evidence. He got a total of $100,000, which was used by his wife Joan to start a new life for herself and her one-year-old son.)
…
He suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, sexual sadism, is callous, grossly self-centred and lacks a conscience, he added.
“He can tell you about horrendous things as if he’s reading a grocery list,” he added. “He shows a true moral insanity. His value system, as such, is totally flawed.”
…
Mr. Olson thanked Dr. Marcus for an excellent report, adding he couldn’t disagree with it.”
But didn’t Dr. Marcus overlook the point that as flawed as Olson’s human values were his claims on unsolved murders could be of investigative worth? Olson had clearly honed “negotiation” skills for financial gain, probably during his police-informant career.
In the criminal world Clifford Olson was known as both “a snitch” and “a predator”, and had almost been killed in jail for being both by a “hardened criminal”, Gordon Lussier, years before he committed the 11 child murders now known (“Ex-con recalls attempt to kill Clifford Olson”, by Michelle Mandel, September 24, 2011, The Toronto Sun):
“It was on Feb. 13, 1976, four years before Clifford Olson would go on to kidnap, rape and murder his 11 victims, that hardened criminal Gordon Lussier decided the “f***ing scum piece of trash” had to die.
To his fellow inmates at Prince Albert prison, Olson was well known for two things: being a snitch and being a predator.
Lussier hated him on both counts.
In jail at the time for assaulting a police officer, the Toronto native had just 25 days left on his sentence before he’d be free. But Lussier had heard from several sources that the recently-arrived Olson had already chosen a young prisoner as his sex slave and it touched a raw nerve. He had been sexually abused as a boy – “brutally” he recalls -- and he couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
…
An Olson biography says Lussier actually stabbed him seven times -- three in the arm, two in his back, one in the kidney and a grazing wound to the head. Olson had surgery at a Prince Albert hospital and, unfortunately, survived. He even went on to collect $3,500 for the attack from the Saskatchewan Criminal Compensation Board, which found his conduct was “above reproach and indicates an unusual degree of moral and physical courage.”
..
After months in “the hole”, Lussier took a doctor hostage and won his demand to be transferred to Laval. A short time later, that prison erupted in a riot over its sub-human conditions and Lussier was involved in the hostage taking of three guards. They were released after officials agreed to fly Lussier and another ringleader to Dorchester in New Brunswick. “It was crazy,” he concedes. “I sit back and ask myself why.””
The fact that government financial compensation for Olson’s prison-attack injury came with a praise for his “unusual degree of moral and physical courage” pointed to his being more of a valued informant than a despised pedophile to the criminal justice system.
So an answer to the question before the above quote is: indeed Clifford Olson may have committed or known more deadly acts, if not the many he claimed. He had quickly sold out murderer Gary Francis Marcoux to police, but only let police try hard to figure out his deadly deeds when he wasn’t given a good deal, likely taking skeleton secrets to his grave when he died of cancer in 2011 (“Worried about attacks from prisoners RCMP bungled case, multiple killer says”, January 18, 1982, The Globe and Mail; “Portrait of a serial killer”, by John Kessel and Brad Evenson, September 21, 1987, The Ottawa Citizen; “Serial killer Clifford Olson dies: Canada's most notorious dangerous offender dead from cancer”, September 30, 2011, CBC News; and, “‘I was Clifford Olson’s lawyer’”, by Monisha Martins, October 7, 2011, Maple Ridge News).
But stories like below suggest Olson’s attempted killer Gordon Lussier may have only been a jealously ‘manlier’ imitator (“Clifford Olson — Canada’s national monster — dead at 71”, by Ian Mulgrew, October 3, 2011, The Vancouver Sun):
“He escaped from jail seven times.
In 1965, for instance, The Vancouver Sun reported the search for him on its front page.
Serving 3 1/2 years in the B.C. Penitentiary for break-and-enter theft, Olson fled three guards who had escorted him to Shaughnessy Hospital after he feigned illness.
The chase involved dozens of police and, at one point, the armed-and-dangerous Olson slipped through a closing net of investigators in Vancouver’s east end by only seconds. He spent that night hiding under the Queensborough Bridge in New Westminster.
After a week on the loose, Olson was nabbed in Blaine, Wash. - sniffed out by Tiger the police dog.”
For a few days in one of my detentions at Vancouver Pre-trial Services Centre in 1993 I was put in a normal unit instead of the Disordered Offenders Unit as in Part 7; I could see that some normal prisoners were much more hardened.
So Dr. Tony Marcus’s psychiatry might have helped Clifford Olson ease his prison life. But in my case it was wrongheaded: I didn’t need psychiatric counselling help, but rather the help to unravel the wrongful psychiatric measure that was a means of political oppression.
Despite the tightening oppressive grip at the end of August, I decided to look for a lawyer for civil litigation rather than have my lawsuit against UBC and RCMP mediated by law students without lawyer’s advice. With a lawyer I would also expand it to cover the wrongful psychiatric oppression brought by UBC and RCMP involving Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick after lawsuit’s filing.
My financial situation was also worse than when filing the lawsuit in October 1992, unable to afford legal expenses but a ‘contingency fee’ arrangement – not accepted by most lawyers.
I recall in the morning of the first day to visit law firms I received a phone call from Alison, informing me UBC student legal clinic’s decision not to mediate my UBC dispute.
In mid-September I was notified by Adult Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic that the pre-sentencing evaluation would start on October 6. Then on September 21, coordinated by VSMHT, a case conference was held under the hospice of “The Multi-Service Network” with UBC Hospital’s Dr. Agbayewa in attendance, agreeing on a plan to request court sentencing to impose forensic psychiatric counselling and no-go conditions for UBC Hospital and entire UBC:
“Service Plan: Those present agreed to the following:
Legal:
Any court order should include
1) A no contact order for all areas of the University of British Columbia and Health Sciences Hospital - University Site;
2) A condition related to counselling at the Forensic Outpatient Clinic; and
3) Periodic reviews by the judge.”
As in Part 7, forensic psychiatric counselling through criminal prosecution had been suggested by UBC Hospital’s Dr. James Harris supervising my second psychiatric committal in January-February, who opposed my release.
A no-go condition for the entire UBC area would be new, possibly a retaliatory measure for my latest liaison with Associate Vice President McClean.
In the “Treatment” plan there was a response to my new claim of being “suicidal”:
“Suicide threats will result in certification and referral to the Forensic Psychiatric Institute.”
The escalating plan of committal at FPI showed how crucial it was for me to claim only a mild depressed mood and not overdo it, because hardline psychiatrists like Dr. M. O. Agbayewa would quickly respond with a harsher level of psychiatric oppression.
Kelly Lynd, Adult Forensic Psychiatric Outpatients Clinic nurse handling my pre-sentencing evaluation, took part in the case conference, as did probation officer David Phillips. Lynd’s notes showed the idea of forensic psychiatric counselling as from UBC Hospital’s views, with the Clinic only preparing for an evaluation at that point.
So the community mental-health involvement only served the purpose of UBC Hospital which had referred me to VSMHT, to impose its views onto justice matters through a “multi-service network” approach, i.e., with “community” support: criminal charges relating to UBC Hospital had all been resolved, and a no-go condition for entire UBC would serve Computer Science Head Maria Klawe’s interests, while a court-ordered psychiatric approach was likely preferred by RCMP Vancouver regional commander Superintendent D. G. Cowley as seen in Parts 5 & 6.
Kelly Lynd erroneously recorded the start of the Clinic record as on July 20 upon Richmond Provincial Court Judge J. R. Groberman’s request of psychiatric assessment – it was August 20 as cited earlier. July 20 had been deputy White House counsel Vince Foster’s date of depression-related suicide, with no apparent Vancouver connection other than that the first summit between President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in April at UBC – of all places – as in Part 7.
One week after the community mental-health meeting, on September 28 there was press report that Sikh extremist Harjinderpal Singh Nagra had become an OASIS board member in a board reorganization two months ago in response to funding agencies’ pressure.
Nagra had gone to jail for smuggling a fellow extremist into Canada. He ran a newspaper advocating Sikh independence and a print shop next door to OASIS, printing political campaign material for Herb Dhaliwal (“Indo-Canadian group elected ex-smuggler as director”, by Stewart Bell, September 28, 1993, The Vancouver Sun):
“A former Sikh extremist who spent time in jail for trying to smuggle a fellow activist into Canada is now a director of the troubled organization that helps Indo-Canadian immigrants settle in B.C.
…
Nagra was elected to the board of directors two months ago, when the previous board was purged following the release of a government audit report that found serious abuses of public money within the society.
…
He operated a Punjabi-language newspaper in Vancouver that promoted Sikh independence. He later bought C.K. Printers Inc., a company formerly owned by Buksh, who is now president of OASIS.
The printing shop is next door to the OASIS head office on Main Street, and a few doors away from Liberal party candidate Herb Dhaliwal’s campaign office. Dhaliwal is a former president of OASIS. Nagra has printed some of Dhaliwal’s campaign material.”
This news came one month after the death of Brian Mulroney’s lawyer Bruce Verchere, who and whose suicide were largely unknown to the public.
As in Part 5, former UBC co-worker Theresa Fong’s sister Christine had been in a human-smuggling case reported by the press yet Theresa’s companion was a retired Hong Kong police superintendent, and their brother Paul operated a printing business in Delta near Richmond so the setting was familiar if not the political extremism.
The next day September 29, UBC Associate Vice President Albert McClean wrote me to reject reopening my employment grievance or investigating Maria Klawe’s Headship:
“I now have had the opportunity of considering the requests made in your letter of August 20, 1993. I do not, however, see any basis for re-opening the question of your job application or for any general enquiry into Dr. Klawe’s Headship.”
As in Parts 4 & 5, my employment grievance had been rejected on June 23, 1992 by UBC President David Strangway as advised by McClean; but my request of a broader investigation into Klawe’s Headship, raised in a June 18, 1992 letter to McClean, was never responded to even after I reiterated it to Strangway on June 25 after his rejection of my employment grievance – until on September 29, 1993.
In my long saga of political contests with Maria Klawe, Albert McClean maintained a neutral, noncommittal appearance to me while I tried hard at my own peril, as illustrated in an e-mail McClean sent me a decade later in August 2003, in retirement responding to my enquiry about reopening the issues:
“Dear Dr. Gao
I am not prepared to take part in any steps to reopen any issues you may have with UBC.
Yours sincerely
Bertie McClean”
He sounded like a friend even when he had been the one officially closing it against me.
The way McClean liked to ‘keep the door open’ means that his closing the entire UBC matter at that time may have been prompted by news of Sikh extremist involvement at OASIS, concerned about such political links UBC law students might have there – the 1990 story of the student clinic helping Ricardo A. Orantes had illustrated the subtle risk of links to political extremism.
Nonetheless, I doubt the Sikh extremist story had taken McClean by surprise – if only because my move to living near the OASIS location of UBC student legal clinic had been no accident.
As mentioned in Part 7, while in pre-trial detention in June my mother had arrived from China sponsored by relatives, who also moved my belongings out of my apartment at 1640 West 11th Avenue for which I owed back rents; we stayed at their home at 5826 Wales Street following my release after the July 27 trial.
In early August while I was looking for a place to move to, Uncle Stephen, husband of Mom’s first cousin Aunt Sally, told us he found one and quickly helped us move our belongings, including some of my furniture, into the basement of a house at 258 East 58th Avenue owned by a Chinese couple living above, the husband working in a factory in Richmond and two of their three daughters attending UBC – one in nursing.
But Uncle Stephen was Rev. Stephen Lee of Vancouver Chinese Mennonite Church located in Chinatown, founded by him on June 4, 1978 (“Vancouver Chinese Mennonite Church”, Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online) – another appearance of the number “64”, like in my previous apartment address and other things mentioned in the earlier Parts.
The Mennonite church had a long tradition of Pacifism, respected by the Canadian government, and as conscientious objectors to war (“Pacifism”, The Canadian Encyclopedia).
Originally from China, Stephen had immigrated from Hong Kong with Sally, living in Calgary before Vancouver, and Sally’s younger brother, also Uncle Stephen (Wong), formed an interracial family with Aunt Nina Hooker from Calgary.
South Vancouver was a leading ethnic minority area in British Columbia, courted by former OASIS president Herb Dhaliwal as federal Liberal candidate, competing with Chinese Canadian Liberal-turned-Conservative K. K. Wan after losing party nomination in Richmond to Chinese human-rights activist Raymond Chan whom Wan had helped (“Two success stories compete for job”, by Doug Ward, September 27, 1993, The Vancouver Sun):
“Liberal Herb Dhaliwal and Conservative K.K. Wan are front-runners in the race to succeed the popular John Fraser, a Tory who appeared to own the riding during his 21 years as its member of parliament for South.
Businessman Dhaliwal and dentist Wan were raised in the working class -- Dhaliwal in South and Wan in Hong Kong. Both now live on the bourgeois side of the street -- Dhaliwal in Richmond and Wan in the neighbor riding of Quadra.
The Liberals thought the retirement of Fraser presented them with a perfect opportunity in South. After all, the riding has one of the highest percentage of non-whites in all of B.C. -- a group traditionally loyal to the Liberals.
…
Wan himself was a Liberal until months before his Tory nomination this spring. He voted in the Richmond Liberal nomination this winter for his friend Raymond Chan who ironically defeated Dhaliwal.”
The ethnic-minority Liberal trio Chan, Dhaliwal and former B.C. Medical Association president Hedy Fry who ran against Prime Minister Kim Campbell in Vancouver Centre riding where I had lived, would score big in the October 25 election as I reviewed in 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 5)”):
“Kim Campbell turned out to be the biggest winner – and the biggest loser – of the ambiguous, non-open pressure waiting on Mulroney’s decision, as she would be crowned Mulroney’s successor (i.e., without a lot of competition) and become the first female prime minister after having been the first woman as justice minister and as defence minister – a real “triple crown” – but she would also suffer the worst electoral defeat in Canadian history at the hand of the Chretien Liberals.
Adding insult to injury was the fact that Campbell would lose her own MP seat, to Liberal Dr. Hedy Fry, former president of B.C. medical association and the first woman of color to be in the cabinet; the Vancouver area also elected Raymond Chan, the first Chinese-Canadian cabinet member, and Herb Dhaliwal, later the first (Sikh) Indo-Canadian cabinet minister and the one accompanying Chretien to the Sikh Golden Temple in India to celebrate their 10-year victory anniversary.”
A veteran UBC law dean like Albert McClean would have had a good sense of local politics. A question in hindsight is: given this ethnic political movement, wouldn’t it have been wise for me to accept mediation by UBC law students at OASIS?
There were at least three factors implying a likely negative answer when my goal was to unravel wrongdoings by Klawe and Mulroney.
Firstly, despite the electoral euphoria, community power still lied within institutional entrenchment. VSMHT’s serving as a community venue for UBC to push its harder agendas against me to the justice system illustrated the easy bias and sway of community orientation.
Indo-Canadian political activist Mobina Jaffer, former OASIS board director and also Liberal parliamentary candidate, lamented about the situation at OASIS (“Indo-Canadian group got grants despite serious internal problems”, by Stewart Bell, September 24, 1993, The Vancouver Sun):
“Jaffer, a family lawyer, said she was alarmed to discover that people running workshops on domestic violence were unqualified and giving bad advice to victims of spousal abuse.
“One of my concerns was women were being counselled to go back to violent situations,” she said.
“I blame the funders. They were like ostriches. They should have done this four years ago.””
Such OASIS counselling would have “mediated” me back to under the kind of management I had complained against. The OASIS board had been reorganized but if a Sikh extremist’s elevation to it was any indication, the fact that the 1985 Air India bombing had originated from the B.C. Sikh community – as in Part 7 a worst civilian air disaster RCMP Chief Superintendent P. M. Cummins supervising B.C. municipal policing in 1993 had previously failed to solve as RCMP’s lead investigator – would suggest a potentially violent direction rather than my peaceful activism.
Though not directly linked, UBC Computer Science programmer Martin Frauendorf was murdered after Harjinderpal Singh Nagra’s election to the OASIS board.
Secondly, even in elected politics, entanglements between the Conservatives and the Liberals in Canada made it unlikely for either to really poke the other’s sensitive spots.
The example of Vancouver South Tory candidate K. K. Wan was right there, who had just switched from the Liberal party after helping Raymond Chan win party nomination in Richmond.
Another example, as in Part 6, was the fact the lead lawyer Jack Giles for UBC in the civil litigation of my lawsuit had acted as a henchman for the former B.C. Socred government of disgraced ex-Premier Bill Vander Zalm while Giles’s law partner, Keith Mitchell, was a leading B.C. fundraiser for federal Liberal leader Jean Chretien, and both Giles and Mitchell had roles in the political oppression against me.
Thirdly, it could be a situation where an elected politician of another stripe wouldn’t or couldn’t help.
In August prior to meeting UBC law students at OASIS, I had been given a meeting with Tom Perry, New Democrat Member of B.C. Legislature and Minister of Advanced Education, in whose Vancouver-Little Mountain riding my former apartment was located.
In my 1992 UBC internal grievance I had raised the spectre of taking it to “the Office of the Minister of Advanced Education of British Columbia”; then at the end of July 1993 I read a news story that prompted me to do so, when Minister Perry also happened to be local MLA. The story reported an open disagreement and dispute between Advanced Education Minister Tom Perry and UBC President David Strangway over the setup of a UBC research institute, a project Strangway alleged had been killed by B.C. government “with the stroke of a pen” (“Perry challenges UBC on research site”, by Moira Farrow, July 31, 1993, The Vancouver Sun).
Tom Perry, and Hedy Fry who would defeat Kim Campbell as federal MP, were medical doctors as was Stan Wilbee, former Tory MP for Delta whose challenge of Mulroney’s continuing leadership I had highlighted in my November 1992 press releases discussed in Part 6.
Dr. Perry was kind enough to meet with me and listen to my presentation on the documents I provided him, most of which I had sent to former MP Kim Campbell in November-December 1992.
Elected in 1989, after our meeting Perry would soon lose his Minister of Advanced Education job in a September cabinet shuffle by Premier Mike Harcourt, and would retire from electoral politics altogether in 1996 – with a few other NDP MLAs including Harcourt himself (“Clayoquot jail terms out of proportion”, October 19, 1993, Times – Colonist; and, “Ex-minister Perry returns to medicine”, by Jim Beatty, February 15, 1996, The Vancouver Sun). By this later time Maria Klawe was already UBC Vice President as mentioned in Part 4.
After Hedy Fry’s defeat of Campbell in October, in November 1993 I also sent the documents to Dr. Fry’s constituency office.
No known positive result has come out of these political lobbying efforts by me.
On the other hand as in Part 5, in 2004 Jean Chretien, Maria Klawe and Brian Mulroney’s in-law, Harper’s Magazine editor Lewis Lapham, all received honorary degrees at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, with Klawe on June 4.
In hindsight, could I have spoiled such future happy “togetherness”, possibly planned over a decade in advance for these personalities?
With a math background I am sensitive to numerical patterns. The repetition of the number “58” in my addresses in July-August 1993 was an especially interesting one.
First it was the home of Rev. Stephen Lee and Aunt Sally Lee at 5826 Wales Street where Mom and I stayed briefly, across from B.C.’s oldest working diary farm Avalon Diary at 5805 Wales Street, owned by founder Jeremiah Crowley’s grandson Lee Crowley (“Historic Avalon Dairy in east Vancouver sold for $6 million”, by Denise Ryan, December 23, 2011, The Vancouver Sun; and, Avalon, Certified Organic, since 1906).
Recall in Part 6, UBC Hospital psychiatrist Dr. Laura Chapman had referred to UBC’s Dr. Klawe as “Dr. Crowley” and “Dr. Cowley”, and I knew no one by these names but later RCMP disclosure has linked to then Vancouver Subdivision commanding officer Supt. D. G. Cowley – now here was a Crowley family milking cows!
After that, our basement dwelling was at 258 East 58th Avenue.
The recurrence was interesting coincidence with my persistence approach to try achieving my objectives in political activity. It was intriguing because my mother was living with me at these addresses and I had been born in January 1959, so the coincidence of repetitive “58” would indicate she was ‘pregnant’ with a difficult-to-give birth, i.e., me, albeit in a political sense.
What’s more, in her real life it had been true as I was not Mom’s first pregnancy: partly due to her demanding activity as an amateur athlete – member of the Guangzhou City ping-pong team – she had suffered a ‘stillborn’ carriage a year prior.
Such hidden meaning could be ominous. Did it imply that one dead fetus wasn’t enough, that the second fetus would also be difficult, ‘sick’ or near ‘stillborn’ in a political sense? It’s a legitimate question because – due to political complexity as reasoned above – I was engulfed in near futility in my perseverance.
Ironically, by 2004 when Queen’s University honoured Jean Chretien, Maria Klawe – on June 4 – and Lewis Lapham I still was, and now writing this blog post nearly two decades later I still am, a political ‘stillborn’.
The fetus metaphor may be more real in the example of the partnership of lawyers Jack Giles and Keith Mitchell representing UBC and participating in political oppression against me: as in Part 5, my first day in Vancouver, August 24, 1988, coincided with then B.C. Ombudsman Stephen Owen’s release of a report censoring Socred Premier Bill Vander Zalm’s government for intrusive spying on a pro-abortion group with the infiltration and spying supervised by Jack Giles and his law firm Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy – hence my referring to Giles as a “henchman” for the Vander Zalm government.
Anther noteworthy repetition was Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic’s phone number, 660-6604, repeating “660” with an enveloping “6 … 4”. My Chinese blog post, 忆往昔，学历史智慧（三）——文革“破旧立新”开始的记忆, has told my experience as a child witnessing a Chinese Cultural Revolution “home raid” on my Mom in the summer of 1966 at our dwelling near “Guangzhou 2nd Workers Cultural Palace located at 640 Tongfu East Road”; here from its English Synopsis:
“Part 3, “文革“破旧立新”开始的记忆 (memories of the start of “destroying the old to erect the new” in Cultural Revolution)”, recalls early Cultural Revolution experience started by a student Red Guards’ “home raid” on Mother in the summer of 1966.
One Sunday after seeing a morning movie in a theater in the nearby Guangzhou 2nd Workers Cultural Palace located at 640 Tongfu East Road, Father, Feng and sister arrived back at the dorm building’s 3rd-floor stairs across from parents’ room, only to be stopped by Grandma from entering: Mother’s middle-school student Red Guards were in the room executing a “home raid”. Feng could hear Mother weep and men’s chastising voices inside.”
There were other interesting patterns: my new phone number in south Vancouver was 323-8110, quite close to but ‘smaller’ than OASIS’s 324-8186 (“Here's how to find help”, by Kathy Tait, April 10, 1994, The Province), and had similarity to Vancouver South Mental Health Team’s 324-3811; as in Part 7 my previous number had been disconnected by B.C. Tel due to excessive phoning of lawyers Patricia Connor and Carol Konkin.
In any case, in summer 1993 my mother, who didn’t speak English or know Canadians outside of a few Chinese ones, likely knew the hopelessness of my situation more than I did.
With my sense of optimism, in September I went on a second round of civil-lawyer search, but with fewer law firms to visit than in July-September 1992 first exploring a lawsuit against Maria Klawe at UBC: those that had said no would be even less interested given my lack of money now.
Still, as I recall I revisited as least one of the previous law firms, Bull, Housser & Tupper, for two reasons. One, a year ago I had had interviews with several lawyers there courtesy of a senior partner’s arrangement, and come away very impressed by Dan Bennett, a young associate and UBC Law adjunct-faculty member, with his ‘crash course’ for me on civil lawsuit, employment and labor-relation matters. Two, the earlier trip had been prior to my taking on criticizing then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and now in 1993 in my bigger political adventure I learned that lawyer Bob Seeman from this firm was running as an independent candidate for Vancouver Mayor, e.g., from a news story on the same day as the one about Karla Teale being depressed (“Yuppie lawyer with sense of humor wants to sit in mayor’s chair”, by Wyng Chow, August 5, The Vancouver Sun):
“What do a lawyer and sperm have in common?
Both have about a one-in-a-million chance of becoming a real human being.
That is lawyer Bob Seeman’s favorite lawyer joke.
He wants to become Vancouver’s next mayor …
…
Well, he’s a Kitsilano yuppie who rides the bus to work downtown. Only now he’s taken a leave of absence from the law firm of Bull, Housser and Tupper to devote all of his time to winning support.
And no, he says he’s not interested in becoming premier of B.C. - unlike Mike Harcourt and Gordon Campbell.”
As I recall this time at Bull, Housser & Tupper I met with a female lawyer, who told me she and her husband lived in North Vancouver – my criminal defense lawyer Richard Dempsey lived there also.
By September’s end I had found no lawyer to take my case. The September 29 letter from UBC Associate Vice President Albert McClean to close the issues internally at UBC would have arrived when I began visiting the last law firm picked from the Yellow Pages or Lawyer Referral Service info, on Friday, October 1. After that I would abandon my lawyer-search effort for the time being.
But this law firm would start a further downward slide for me – despite my refrain from civil disobedience given my bail status arisen from persistently phoning lawyer Patricia Connor.
According to Vancouver Police record, I visited law firm Cram & Associates located in a building at 900 Howe Street on October 1, and was told on October 6 the firm would not take my case, at which time I became argumentative and returned to try again numerous times, and police attended; the next day, police officers Manhas (badge No. 1319), Fox (No. 1494) and Wood (No. 1659) attended and I was eventually arrested.
As I can recall, on October 1 I attended a phone-scheduled visit to Cram & Associates and was introduced by the secretary to lead lawyer Jack Cram, who shook my hand and confirmed that his associate, Arnold Shuchat, would interview me. As Mr. Cram conveyed, I needed a ‘contingency fee’ arrangement and his junior associate would be the only cost-feasible option. A little disappointed it wouldn’t be like my previous lawyer Brian Mason who led his firm Maitland & Company as in Part 6, I was relieved to find a lawyer to resume civil litigation versus UBC and RCMP.
It was much more disappointing when I phoned back to enquire about Shuchat’s progress in studying my case and was told he wouldn’t take it because it wasn’t a good one.
I then went to Cram & Associates to retrieve my documents, and tried to pitch him the scenario of taking the next provisional step and assessing the prospect, but Shuchat was firm in his refusal and instead subtly gestured me to lift my voice and persist – as if I would need to be ‘manlier’ in this predicament.
This happened on the anniversary of my lawsuit’s October 6, 1992 filing.
The police record had only Cram & Associates’ side of the story. However, a public document exists about another case, enough to illustrate that our interaction going downhill had to do with their deceptive practice based on a legal case’s monetary value, which quite belied Arnold Shuchat’s youthful and active appearance.
A February 29, 1996 B.C. Expropriation Compensation Board ruling on a 1993 dispute between B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Highways and Bill's Frontier Restaurant & businesswoman Panayota Giannikos over legal fees for the latters’ lawyers including Jack Cram and Arnold Shuchat, admonished Cram for his unreasonably high legal fees and showed Shuchat, from Quebec with little legal experience in B.C., as assisting Cram but billing as a separate legal entity (“February 29, 1996, E.C.B. No. 53/91/l04 (58 L.C.R. 204)”, British Columbia Expropriation Compensation Board):
“The claimants engaged the services of three successive law firms in advancing their claim. They first retained Mr. Basil Hobbs of the firm of Hobbs Harvey (later Hobbs Harvey Hargrave) in Nanaimo from March, 1990 until late November, 1991. They next retained Mr. Jack N. Cram of Vancouver beginning in late November, 1991 and continuing into the period of the compensation hearing in late May, 1993. Finally, they retained Mr. Arnold E. Shuchat of Vancouver, whose initial involvement in late March of 1993. was evidently in collaboration with Mr. Cram but who eventually appeared as counsel of record on behalf of the claimants throughout the compensation hearing. …
…
Turning to the accounts of Mr. Cram, I will not belabour the obvious which is that his hourly fee of $250 is so far above that which the board has thus far considered reasonable even for senior, experienced counsel that, in the absence of compelling evidence in support, it must be substantially reduced. Again, I have no evidence from the claimants as to the experience of either Mr. Cram or his associate, Mr. Hood. What I do have is a letter from the respondent to the law firm, dated November 15, 1992, recalculating what it considers a “reasonable” hourly rate of payment for Mr. Cram at $150 and for Mr. Hood at $75. In all of the circumstances, I would be inclined to accept the respondent’s suggested rate for Mr. Cram and adjust upward to $100 per hour the rate for Mr. Hood who was a called lawyer at the relevant time. …
The respondent submits that the claimants’ change of law firms, first from Hobbs Harvey to Mr. Cram, and then from Mr. Cram to Mr. Shuchat, resulted in duplication of time and effort on the file, the costs of which the respondent should not be required to pay. I accept that there was some measure of duplication …
At the date of the compensation hearing, the claimants’ third counsel, Mr. Shuchat, was a lawyer of approximately eight years’ experience, having been called in the province of Quebec in 1985 but not having commenced practice in British Columbia until 1993. It appears that the present matter was his first involvement in the field of expropriation law. In my opinion, Mr. Shuchat’s hourly fee rate of $125 is not unreasonable. The manner in which he prepared for and conducted the claimants’ case, however, bears some scrutiny. Although he had assisted Mr. Cram with discoveries several weeks prior to the compensation hearing, Mr. Shuchat only took over full conduct of the case approximately three weeks before commencement of the hearing.”
When I met him in October 1993 Shuchat was an associate of Cram’s, but for this ECB case he had appeared in March as Cram’s associate then starting in May as his own “law firm” – getting a legal-fee rate close to what the Board would give to Cram himself.
Likewise, these ‘legal sharks’ must have really asked around about my case, and their rejection indicated my chance of winning likely wasn’t good, not enough to get them the handsome legal fees from the other side – the writing was already in Albert McClean’s September 29 letter to me, unless a lawyer would take his/her gloves off.
In that vein, prodding me to display civil disobedience was the logical next step for civil lawyer Arnold Shuchat to create new opportunity for criminal defense lawyers, who could be paid by Legal Aid given my poor financial status.
Already in bad circumstances, my situation was made worse by outdated, exaggerated police information, misinterpreting old charges as “currently charged” and asserting “record of violence”:
“GAO is believed to be potentially dangerous and mentally unstable.”
On October 8 at Vancouver Provincial Court, instead of Assault-by-Trespass charge initiated by police I was charged with Mischief concerning the disruption I had allegedly caused to the law office.
In that day’s news story, Sikh extremist Harjinderpal Singh Nagra resigned from OASIS board, stating he would remain active with the society (“Former Sikh extremist resigns OASIS post”, by Stewart Bell, October 8, 1993, The Vancouver Sun).
The Cram & Associates incident ended a trouble-free two months since my bail release in late July. According to UBC Hospital records, after August 30 I had stopped going there to request a review of the original mental-illness diagnosis. Clearly, I could stop my persistence and perseverance when there appeared to be a promising civil approach to pursue the matters.
The lawyers’ refusal to take my case, instead prodding for civil disobedience, ended a period of civility and began an escalating process of new legal troubles leading to an even more oppressed state of mind for me, that I wouldn't have lawyer representation for the civil lawsuit.
On October 6, the first day of police intervention at Cram & Associates, was also my first appointment at Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic. Clinic’s record didn’t show any interview, only obtaining my “DNA” sample:
“Mr. GAO DNA”
I vaguely remember having done tests there, but not a DNA test as highlighted in the record.
Even in the present day, not to mention in 1993, the determination of mental illness by DNA test is still scientifically elusive as Dr. John Grohol, Editor-in-Chief of the internet publication World of Psychology commented in July 2010 (“Genetic Testing for Mental Disorders: Avoid 23andme, Navigenics, Others for Now”, by John Grohol, July 24, 2010, PsychCentral):
“Two years ago, I wrote that I thought genetic tests for mental health problems are largely scams. Today, I’m here to reaffirm that our understanding of the causes of mental disorders has progressed very little in two years. …
…
This is modern day snake oil, in my opinion. The research on the genetics of mental disorders remains very much in its infancy, yet companies are selling you hope that their DNA testing will reveal something of value to you.”
‘Modern day snake oil scams’ as Dr. Grohol puts it, yet back in 1993 forensic psychiatrists at B.C. Adult Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Services, part of B.C. government’s Ministry of Health, unabashedly featured a “DNA” test in my patient record.
Clinic record showed that from October 7 to October 13 I was in police custody and the first psychiatry interview was done on October 13 upon my release on bail – after I went to UBC Hospital and was redirected to the Clinic. UBC Hospital record showed that after August 30 I first appreared on October 12 so apparently was freed on that day, and on October 13 was redirected to see Dr. Kerr at Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic. VSMHT record cited Clinic nurse Kelly Lynd as saying an interview had been missed due to police detention.
The DNA test result hadn’t come back on October 13 when I had my first Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic interview – with Dr. Clifford Kerr.
As I recall it was during my first Outpatient Clinic interview I was told by forensic psychiatrist Dr. Kerr, who also reviewed my UBC Hospital records, that in his opinion I had “Paranoid Schizophrenia”.
As in Part 7, previously unbeknown to me on January 15 in my first Vancouver Police detention, a forensic psychiatrist had made this hardline diagnosis – in response to accusations I made to CBC about Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s conduct in handling Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa who had cancer.
Dr. Kerr’s diagnosis came as a shock to me, but I knew I couldn’t change it. It only intensified my efforts to get UBC Hospital to review its original diagnosis of “Delusional Disorder” made in November-December 1992, which Dr. A. Burgmann already dropped from his psychiatric assessment on August 12, 1993.
Clinic’s record showed that in mid-October I frequently phoned and visited UBC Hospital, but didn’t attend a psychological testing appointment at the Clinic. In phone conversations with UBC Hospital nurse Diane Woodhouse, the Clinic suggested to pursue a harassing phone call charge and get RCMP intervention, but Woodhouse was more interested in sending me to another psychiatric committal, away from UBC this time at Forensic Psychiatric Institute – it had been agreed on by a “Multi-Service Network” case conference. In response, on October 18 the Clinic suggested Riverview Hospital, then on October 19 changed the proposed site to Vancouver General Hospital after receiving a phone call from VGH’s Dr. Diane Watson.
Lobbying UBC Hospital was only half of my activity in mid-October. Facing a new criminal charge I needed to meet with my defense lawyer Richard Dempsey who had handled the July trials at Richmond court. Over the phone we agreed to an appointment at his office at YMCA Enterprise Centre, but when I appeared Dempsey was a no show, and several follow-up phone messages were not returned by him.
There might be a problem, I was aware it could be but it wasn’t my oversight.
As in Part 7, Richard Dempsey first came to visit me in pre-trial detention in June/July, after my attempts to get female defense lawyer Patricia Connor or Carol Konkin for an assault charge arisen from a standoff with UBC Hospital security guards led to harassing-phone-calls and breach-of-recognizance charges.
In July I accepted Dempsey’s defense for his willingness to call my testimony in the assault trial so I could present a summary of the political background issues. Under his defense I then received a guilty verdict but absolute discharge for the assault charge, and was acquitted of other charges except breach-of-recognizance in phoning Patricia Connor, for which I was released on bail for pre-sentencing evaluations.
But then when I met with Dempsey during August-September to discuss the pre-sentencing matters, one meeting took place in a room at Vancouver Provincial Court, for the reason – he told me only when making that appointment – he was a part-time prosecutor at the Vancouver location and needed to squeeze time for my appointment.
I felt as my lawyer Dempsey had been soft in defending me at Richmond court, but I was in a political-persecution frame of mind and the outcomes though dragging on were not the worst, so I couldn’t afford to be too unhappy.
But now as I faced an additional legal trouble Richard Dempsey simply dropped out of sight, to avoid a direct conflict of interest perhaps, but left no explanation for me whose troubles from looking for lawyers he had handled – it was akin to opening up for more hassles.
I went to the Crown prosecution office at Vancouver court and couldn’t find Dempsey. So on October 19 I returned to YMCA Enterprise Centre and became restless, walking around asking for Dempsey but otherwise not creating problems. A man introducing himself as the executive director told me that I was disruptive to the office tenants, and that police would be called if I refused to leave. I didn’t obey, and police officer Fung (badge No. 1305) made arrest for an Assault-by-Trespass charge, for my “mental instability” and his “genuine concern” of violence based on my police record, with a suggestion that the court impose “psych help” and close monitoring.
Again, Mischief was the actual charge filed in court. Crown prosecutor M. (Marjorie) Munkley explained her rationale in a memo to officer Fung:
“… based on the repeated visits over the last week, I think there’s a substantial likelihood of conviction!
I didn’t lay assault by trespass b/c there’s no evidence of resistance beyond passive resistance or mere nuisance.”
The prosecution clearly saw no violence, not even “resistance”. As for the “repeated visits” I only remember at most three trips, but on that last trip I did walk around persistently looking for Dempsey.
In court responding to my explanation that I had been there to find my lawyer, the prosecutor said Dempsey would represent me at the Richmond court for breach-of-recognizance sentencing.
But the brief phone conversation to set up his no-show appointment would be my last contact with Dempsey, who had a very low profile in his legal practice since 1989, until joining the firm Kane, Shannon & Weiler in 2008, disclosing that his “criminal law experience is primarily as a federal prosecutor where he spent many days in court appearing on a wide range of federal matters”.
The incident appeared to have been ‘set up’ by Richard Dempsey, possibly for Justice Department handling RCMP defense for my lawsuit, to create a false profile of me as a ‘radical’ who escalated hostilities and law-breaking from at an academic institution (UBC) to at a government institution (CBC), then to law offices and now local businesses.
Evidence for such a ‘sting’ included that the court documents for the YMCA Enterprise Centre charge didn’t mention Dempsey, and that he wasn’t even an office tenant there.
The YMCA Enterprise Centre was a small-business incubator sponsored by the Canadian government’s Unemployment Insurance program, to provide business start-up training and office support. It’s facilities were used on a time-share basis, so my “mischief” could easily inconvenient others unrelated to Richard Dempsey. But Dempsey likely wasn’t a qualified tenant in the Centre (“Centre that aids startups faces funding crunch”, by David Smith, October 29, 1991, The Vancouver Sun):
“The centre has two one-year programs. One for young entrepreneurs, ages 17 to 30, and another for women over 30. Applicants must work less than 20 hours a week and must really want to create their own business.”
Richard Dempsey was probably over 30 like me, obviously not female, and definitely wasn’t an unemployed type starting a new business but working part-time for the government’s law-and-order branch – unless he provided legal help to the Centre or its tenants in an arrangement, which could have been the case.
The YMCA had such enterprise centres around the country. In spring 1990, coincidentally the beginning of my UBC employment dispute when Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick’s husband David bringing in Jack Snoeyink from Stanford as in Part 4, The Vancouver Sun ran a story about the Montreal one, mentioning lawyer help (“Young entrepreneurs get a boost”, by Craig Toomey, April 16, 1990, The Vancouver Sun):
“Since being created three years ago, the enterprise centre has helped 67 other small businesses get off the ground, according to its president, Paul Krivicky.
…
The centre also makes available accountants, lawyers and other professionals needed by businesses and offers continuing business advice for two years.”
In 1992 when my UBC job was ending, Vancouver YMCA Enterprise Centre’s government funding was to end also, but apparently continued with a change of executive director from Niall Trainor to Kofi Ohene-Asante (“Centre that aids startups faces funding crunch”, by David Smith, October 29, 1991, The Vancouver Sun; and, “Y’s centre nurtures budding businesses”, November 21, 1993, The Province).
In police custody the night of the YMCA Enterprise Centre incident, a forensic psychiatric assessment mentioned a pre-sentencing report being prepared at Outpatient Clinic, gave a diagnosis of “schizophrenia”:
“… he has ‘soft signs’ of schizophrenia, namely guardedness, a tendency to lack an appreciation of social cues and particularly refusals…”.
On that day, October 19, prior to YMCA Enterprise Centre I had attended my second interview at Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic. The pre-sentencing report by Dr. Clifford Kerr was written that day, whose name has been withheld from disclosure but whose initials CGK are on it.
By the standard mental-health indicators in the report I was quite normal:
“Mr. Gao was well oriented for time, place and person and his intellectual and cognitive functions were grossly intact.
Mr. Gao did not appear to be seriously depressed or suicidal.
Mr. Gao denied that he was in any way a danger to himself or others.”
Regardless, Dr. Kerr insisted I had “Paranoid Schizophrenia”:
“It is my own opinion that Mr. Gao does indeed suffer from Paranoid Schizophrenia and that his overall functioning is gradually deteriorating and his illness is causing him to come into increasing conflict with the community.”
Lying to the psychiatrist was probably considered part of the mental-illness symptoms, but Dr. Kerr himself was confused with key facts:
“Indeed, when I interviewed Mr. Gao on the 12th of October, 1993 he did not tell me the truth; he said that he had not been attending the U.B.C. Hospital nor was he harassing the staff, when in fact, he had actually been at U.B.C. the previous day and that morning.
In view of the above, unfortunately Mr. Gao’s version of events cannot be taken as truthful which makes his assessment more difficult.”
As discussed earlier, according to Clinic notes and UBC Hospital records the interview as on October 13 when I went to UBC Hospital and was redirected to the Clinic and October 12 was my first UBC Hospital visit since August 30. I was just released from police custody following the October 7 Cram & Associates incident and felt the need to resume perseverance given the setback in getting a lawyer for civil litigation.
Dr. Kerr acknowledged that he found no psychotic symptoms but used “inference” from my perseverant behavior to “assume” mental illness:
“While Mr. Gao currently denies any psychotic symptoms I do wonder whether or not Mr. Gao continues to suffer from a number of delusional symptoms which he is not disclosing to physicians, because he does not wish to be perceived as mentally ill nor does he wish any kind of treatment. However, because Mr. Gao’s behavior is so clearly disturbed I would assume by inference that he continues to suffer from mental illness.
He recommended forensic psychiatric counselling at the Clinic, with the readiness to send me to psychiatric committal for “treatment” when needed:
“… I would certainly recommend that Mr. Gao be instructed to attend the Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic so that we can continue to monitor his mental state and if his mental state deteriorates to a point where he is certifiable and then he could be placed in hospital and appropriate treatment commenced.”
That was despite his acknowledging that VGH psychiatrists didn’t see a mental illness with me:
… Indeed, I understand that Mr. Gao was recently at Vancouver General Hospital where he was seen by a number of Psychiatrists, none of whom found him to be psychotic, none of whom found him to be certifiable and he was therefore released to the community without any on-going treatment.”
But here again Dr. Kerr was mixed up: I hadn’t been released from VGH to the community yet; for my second psychiatric committal starting from the first “Paranoid Schizophrenia” diagnosis by a forensic psychiatrist on January 15 while in police custody I was sent to VGH then transferred to UBC Hospital as in Part 7; but “recently” on the day of this report, October 19, VGH’s Dr. Diane Watson had phoned the Clinic to arrange for a VGH committal wanted by UBC Hospital – that might be how Dr. Kerr learned that VGH psychiatrists didn’t view me as mentally ill but the committal wouldn’t begin until next day.
On October 20 when I went to UBC Hospital again, emergency physician Dr. Schubert brought out psychiatrist Dr. Kathleen Ann McGarvey and resident Dr. Jaswant Singh Bhopal to interview me, who saw no “delusional” symptom but still diagnosed “Delusional Disorder”, and after consultation with VGH’s Dr. Diane Watson and Dr. Levy transferred me there via RCMP escort.
In her certificate Dr. McGarvey claimed she had witnessed threatening behavior:
“He believes he was wronged by psychiatrists in the past. I witnessed him screaming aggressive & angry & threatening ...”
But Dr. Bhopal’s notes recorded the opposite, that I was cooperative and reasonable:
“Staring eyes, looks around nervously at times. Cooperative. Good rapport. Can be reasoned with. Realizes that he was delusional in past.
…
Dwells on the notion that he has been wrongly diagnosed, and unfairly mistreated.”
That wasn’t a “threatening” personality at all.
Dr. Bhopal’s certificate cited my being “obsessed with a Dr. Finch” and a history with violence as “danger”:
“He seems to have become obsessed with a Dr. Finch (a psychiatrist resident). He has a history of harassment, assault and jail terms. He is a danger to self & others.”
That was a false history to justify “danger”. As in Part 7 my two assault charges had ended in an acquittal and a guilty but discharged outcome – there was no criminal conviction let alone “jail terms”.
The “Dr. Finch” tale was spun to greater height in the community VSMHT record:
“He has never met Dr. Finch. No one knows how he got her name but he has been ejected from the psych ward when he went there looking for her on several occasions.”
Female resident psychiatrist Dr. Finch had assisted Dr. Harris during my second committal and I had met her at the time. The above information indicated Harris and Finch misrepresented the facts to others.
As in Part 7, Dr. Harris who supervised my second committal in January-February, opposed my release ordered by a mental-health review panel and suggested that I be criminally charged and handled by forensic psychiatry; he then wrote a reference letter stating I was mentally ill, resulting in rejection of my unemployment insurance claim, leading to my frequenting UBC Hospital to get a medical clearance, standoffs with security guards there and the assault charges – “violence”-related charges resulted from UBC Hospital hardline machination rather than my behavior.
I tried to persuade Dr. Finch, whose name I seem to recall as Susan, to review my record and correct the wrong diagnoses.
Internet information shows basically only one female psychiatrist Dr. Finch in Canada: Susan Jane Finch graduated from Queen’s University in Kingston, received her McGill University MD degree in 1991, became FRCPC (Fellow of Royal College of Physicians of Canada) while at UBC, and in 2001-02 moved back from Duncan, B.C. to teach at Queen’s and counsel for Metis Nations of Ontario; her primary interest was “social psychiatry
and the use of coercion in psychiatry”. (“Sexual Aversion Disorder Treated With Behavioural Desensitization”, by Susan Finch, August 2001, Vol. 46, No. 6, Can. J. Psychiatry; “New Faculty Profiles: Susan Finch”, January 14, 2002, Vol. 33, No. 1, Queen’s Gazette; “Beyond Haloperidol: Teaching Emergency Medicine Residents to Manage Acute Agitation and Aggression in the Emergency Department”, by Susan Finch, August 2004, Vol. 49, No. 8, Can J. Psychiatry; “Registration Form, 9th Annual Conference Mood & Anxiety Disorders”, November 14, 2009, Queen’s University; and, “Finch, Susan Jane”, Physician Directory)
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the UBC Hospital Dr. Finch of 1993: as in Parts 4 & 6, Andrew K. Martin, a key agitator and antagonist in 1992 at UBC Computer Science Department and allegator of “violence” and “mental illness”, was from Queen’s University; and in 2004 Maria Klawe received a Queen’s honorary degree when Jean Chretien and Brian Mulroney’s in-law Lewis Lapham also did; besides, the name Jane-Finch (‘Jane and Finch’) has long referred to Canada’s most violent crime-infested neighbourhood, albeit located in Toronto.
On October 20 as in VGH record, I retracted claims of being “suicidal”:
“Many prior reports of suicidal ideation which he now says he made up.
…
– lies and then admits to the lie
– paranoid re doctors/lawyers”
No evidence of violent behavior, psychosis, delusion or even obsession was observed during my VGH stay, and I was released on October 25, despite the standard one-month period two (UBC Hospital) medical certificates authorized.
Having given info of my legal troubles to VGH, community VSMHT persons were surprised to learn I was not mentally ill:
“He is not in any way psychotic or certifiable. Nor is he delusional.”
Written by Dr. (John Mark) Levy, my Discharge Diagnosis was “Compulsive personality disorder” and Secondary Diagnosis “Delusional disorder, remission”.
This VGH conclusion looked like a compromise between a May 10 forensic psychiatric assessment while in police custody, most likely by Dr. Levy which stated I was not mentally ill, and a June 14 one that said my delusional disorder was “in partial remission with medication”, as discussed in Part 7.
The keeping of a little “secondary” “remission” tail had to do with politics, in my view, and was likely wanted by UBC Hospital: October 25 was the day of the federal election, in which Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative party under Prime Minister Kim Campbell would be nearly wiped out by the Liberal party under Jean Chretien, with Campbell – a former UBC faculty member – also losing her local seat.
I was let go at 11:00 a.m., enough time for the person to participate in voting. The harder committal wanted by UBC Hospital, a transfer to Forensic Psychiatric Institute, or Riverview Hospital per Forensic Clinic’s suggestion, would have treated me as a ‘criminal offender’ or an ‘unclear’ patient, and detained me for longer in violation of my constitutional voting right – Section 3 of Charter of Rights and Freedoms – on top of other violations of constitutional rights and freedoms in the political use of psychiatry.
On November 1 probation officer David Phillips produced his pre-sentencing report. A most objectionable part of it was his interviewing some UBC persons for their views on my years there and my employment dispute, when the court case – breach of recognizance phoning a lawyer to seek defense for a charge due to standoff with UBC Hospital security guards – had no relation to them. Phillips then recommended that I not be allowed on “University of British Columbia Endowment Lands” or near “University of British Columbia Health Sciences Hospital” or “U.B.C. Department of Computer Science” – no-go conditions approved by a VSMHT community ‘case conference’ as discussed earlier.
The timing – coming after the October 25 federal election – showed that under political psychiatry a major change of the political environment would have no help for me, whose legal troubles had stemmed from trying to publicize criticisms of ex-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney but were pre-conditioned by the UBC dispute. If anything, the new political climate would favor Maria Klawe as her management style wrapped in the skin of academia was likely empathized with by the Chretien Liberals – no less than their sympathizing with Lynne Walters Verchere – and she would grow further in power and glory.
The most troubling, negative implication of Phillips’s report would be any hidden deal like this: in a ‘remotely’ connected criminal case the UBC dispute was summarized in favor of UBC, and my civil litigation vs. UBC and RCMP would be without a lawyer yet considered ‘compensated for’ in some judgment – a kind of ‘monopoly’ scheme I had called “conspiracy” in November 1992 when first taken by RCMP to psychiatric committal.
In this report and in UBC Hospital Dr. Bhopal’s notes on October 20, Richard Dempsey was identified as my lawyer for this Richmond court case sentencing set for November 4.
I needed a lawyer for the two new Mischief charges at Vancouver court, and a day or two before this November 1 report I had found a law firm, Warren & Eder.
VGH social worker Brad Pearce’s October 22 note indicated I had gotten from the Court a trial date of April 25, 1994, normally not assigned right away, for the Mischief charges, the second of them filed only on October 19 – Pearce recorded an anecdote that I had once phoned court clerks 7 times in a day. The date was set for over 6 months later so I had time to find a lawyer.
Now a few days later Warren & Eder agreed to represent me, so I asked if they could move the trial date earlier so that I could get it over with and find a civil lawyer to resume civil litigation, and they said “no”. I then asked if they would do civil cases so I could wait that long and also use their legal representation for my lawsuit after the criminal trial, but the answer was again “no”.
I became persistent, and on November 1 incurred another criminal charge.
At that point I had gotten into a frame of mind, that if a lawyer or law firm appeared to be the only option or unusually promising, and then turned out unsatisfactory, instead of giving up I would persist – to the point of drawing a minor criminal charge if necessary. The mindset had begun in May-June with female lawyers Patricia Connor and Carol Konkin as in Part 7, ended afterwards, and then returned in the Cram & Associates incident partly due to Arnold Shuchat’s prodding.
To be honest, these mischiefs did cause inconveniences for the lawyers or law offices, but after Connor and Konkin any inconvenience was minor as it took place within one or two days and it was then my troubles only, and my court records which I felt were needed albeit carrying negative ramifications. Any concern for “violence” was unjustified, not real for the “victims”, but previously fabricated or exaggerated by UBC and RCMP in their political agendas – as in Parts 4, 5 & 6 – to make it much worse for me.
That said, when compared to Cram & Associates and to YMCA Enterprise Centre where Richard Dempsey had an office, Warren & Eder had the least expectation to be inconvenienced as they had not prodded for my persistence or tricked me into being helpless, but was merely unable or unwilling to do more than ‘in a set manner’. As a result, I struggled in my thought over whether to persist with them.
I have since learned of the media profile of lawyers Eric Warren and Birgit Eder in defending the legal rights of prisoners and of women, especially prostitutes, against unnecessarily harsh measures even if they had been ‘guilty’ – meaningful work where they faced rigid, freedom-limiting rules as the norm (“Another B.C. prisoner seeks release on parole”, January 13, 1987, “Supreme Court won’t question law to hold dangerous prisoners”, October 23, 1987, “Slain hooker ‘too shy’ for streets”, by Robert Sarti, April 6, 1988, “TB patients agree to stay in hospital”, by Robert Sarti, June 14, 1988, and “Mentally ill woman sent to hospital, but wanted jail: Found not guilty due to insanity for vicious assault in Richmond”, by Phil Needham, October 5, 1990, The Vancouver Sun; and, “Veteran cop is found guilty”, by Staff Reporter, May 19, 1991, The Province).
Again, on November 2 instead of Assault-by-Trespass police had filed I was charged with a third Mischief, with the Crown consolidating the 3 cases, i.e., at Cram & Associates, at YMCA Enterprise Centre and at Warren & Eder, as 3 counts of one case. Prosecutor Marjorie Munkley sent a memo to police like with the previous charge, pointing out that I made only “passive resistance” and “a civil restraining order” would be an alternative:
“… I can’t lay asst. by trespass charges b/c he only offers passive resistance. … When Mr. Gao has been persistent in his activities i.e. repeatedly attending to the offices & ‘harassing’, I’ve laid a mischief charge. He has 2 outstanding mischief charges b/c of this. Again, his actions aren’t enough to lay charges re: s. 264.
The only alternative is a civil restraining order.
P.S. I’ve heard that MR. Gao is well-known in Richmond for the same kind of activities.”
By Ms. Munkley’s logic the Richmond court Assault charges from standoffs with UBC Hospital security guards would have been questionable as well.
By this time I had spoken to other criminal lawyers, and some suggested that I get a lawyer to do both criminal defense and civil lawsuit – apparently my criminal offenses involving lawyers “victims” made it even less likely, beside my lack of money, for lawyers not dealing with criminal cases to take on such a civil ‘client’. I recall when I asked Warren & Eder about it on November 1 I had just been given that idea by other lawyers.
Regarding legal expenses, one lawyer I spoke to was a key figure at Legal Services Society handling Legal Aid, and he told me Legal Aid provided some financial assistance to civil cases such as in family law, but not for employment dispute. He did bring my case to an executive meeting to see if logistic expenses could be covered in a pro bono manner, but it was not approved.
As for a lawyer to handle both criminal and civil cases, several of the lawyers I spoke to highly recommended Marion Buller, enthusing that here was a female lawyer who could do both.
Two lawyers within her firm cautioned that Buller had recently become “engaged” and was quite busy, but I tried regardless, not getting to meet with her but speak once on the firm’s internal intercom-phone, who told me she would be in a conflict-of-interest position were she to take my case.
I persisted again, but this time when Vancouver Police came I was charged with Criminal Harassment.
This was a new type of criminal charge that had become part of the law on August 1, 1993, to target ‘stalking’ as a crime (“Criminal Harassment”, by Rebecca Kong, Vol. 16, No. 12, Juristat), and contained the following descriptions (“Criminal Code”, Department of Justice Canada):
“Criminal harassment
264. (1) No person shall, without lawful authority and knowing that another person is harassed or recklessly as to whether the other person is harassed, engage in conduct referred to in subsection (2) that causes that other person reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.
Prohibited conduct
…”
This was the “s.264” Marjorie Munkley had referred to in her November 1 memo, that my actions weren’t enough for this charge, which emphasized fear for safety on the victim’s part – with protection of women in mind – and carried a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail – actual violence not required!
Whether it had caught any real stalkers at that point, the new law netted me so wasn’t in vain. The evolution of the history starting from my UBC employment dispute and even prior – as in earlier Parts of this blog article – showed how crucial it was for those with oppressive agendas to concoct a thread of “violence” early on for the “fear” factor.
In hindsight there was the ‘Three strikes and you’re out’ doctrine on police’s part after I had piled up 3 mischief charges, but it would take a strong accuser to make “s.264” happen – when my actions didn’t justify it as Munkley stated.
I was unclear how ‘hot’ Marion Buller was, but to execute a pre-meditated ‘sting’ to clampdown on peaceful activism by asserting that minor infractions were actually fearsome and dangerous acts would take a strong personality, or a strong motive. Ms. Buller didn’t lack either (“Native justice report raps arrogant RCMP”, by Scott Simpson, October 29, 1993, The Vancouver Sun):
“Attorney-General Colin Gabelmann says he will tell the RCMP to improve its treatment of aboriginals following a report that says some police officers in the Cariboo-Chilcotin treat native Indian people with arrogance and disrespect, bordering on contempt.
Gabelmann spoke Thursday at the Toosey reserve during the release of Judge Anthony Sarich’s long-awaited report on the Cariboo-Chilcotin native justice inquiry.
…
Sgt. Peter Montague, the RCMP’s media liaison, said the RCMP received a copy of the report late Thursday afternoon.
…
Gabelmann also announced that Marion Buller, who acted as counsel for the commission, will carry out a province-wide consultation on aboriginal legal issues.”
A top B.C. lawyer on Aboriginal issues, Buller had been the legal counsel for a justice inquiry into RCMP mistreatment of natives in a B.C. region and was in charge of further province-wide consultation for the government.
No wonder other lawyers had told me she would be the person to take all my cases. But when she didn’t, didn’t care to, or couldn’t, she had no problem helping police execute a “3-strikes” measure on me.
On November 4 I appeared in Vancouver Provincial Court for the Criminal Harassment charge, instead of at Richmond Provincial Court sentencing for the breach-of-recognizance charge from phoning lawyer Patricia Connor. At this point lawyer Richard Dempsey likely dropped out from the Richmond case, as VSMHT notes on November 5 described the situation:
“Dave Phillips – they have not proceeded in Richmond for two reasons. 1) Mr. G is up on yet another charge in Van. 2) There is a problem with obtaining a lawyer who is willing to represent him.”
The Richmond court sentencing hearing was rescheduled for early December.
Now Crown prosecution opposed releasing me on bail for the 4 Vancouver court charges – most likely because of Criminal Harassment. Previously in May-July I had been denied bail twice for two Assault charges at Richmond court, as in Part 7, due to my breaching no-go or no-contact bail conditions. Now in October-November it was my piling up new charges at new locations.
In Vancouver Pre-trial Services Centre several corrections/probation officers formed an informal group to manage my situation, and Aunt Sally became part of it.
Why my Aunt Sally? It turned out that before I got into the legal troubles Sally – her husband Rev. Stephen Lee had founded Vancouver Chinese Mennonite Church on June 4, 1978 as discussed – had already worked for several years as a Vancouver Provincial Court Chinese-language interpreter (“Report of the Interpreters Working Group”, July 14, 2006, Law Society of British Columbia). What a surprise, quite in contrast to John Nash’s wife’s uncle having been a United Nations interpreter with elite Salvadoran family background – as if the kind of issues in one’s future had been predicted.
Fortunately, Sally and Stephen volunteered to put up a surety bond for my bail, i.e., if I got into future bail trouble they would lose the money, so on November 9 I was released from what would be my last jail detention in Vancouver.
On this surety bond recognizance as well as on the immediate previous ones, the no-go locations included “Crown Counsel Office at 222 Main Street” in Vancouver as a result of my frequenting that office to look for Richard Dempsey after his appointment no-show at YMCA Enterprise Centre and my mischief charge there.
Sally Lee’s address of 5826 Wales Street – right across from Lee Crowley’s Avalon Dairy at 5805 Wales Street – was also on it.
Immediately I was assigned earlier trial dates in 1994 for the Vancouver court charges: February 11 for Criminal Harassment and February 23 for the Mischiefs. This meant lawyer Phil Seagram took up defense for all my pending criminal cases, who told me Aunt Sally had spoken to him.
On November 12, my “DNA” test result came back to Forensic Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic. Clinic notes didn’t disclose what it meant, only that my probation officer was informed:
“p/c to P.O., informed him client D.N.A. on 93.11.12.”
As discussed earlier, using DNA to determine mental illness is more a “scam” than medical science even today.
On December 8, Vancouver South Mental Health Team listed “Aunt Sally Lee & Mom” among potential participants for another “CC” (case conference) wanted by UBC Hospital nurse Diane Woodhouse.
Prior to that on December 1, Richmond Provincial Court held sentencing hearing for my breach-of-recognizance from phoning lawyer Patricia Connor, and I was given a one-year conditional discharge by Judge J. R. Groberman, where probation conditions included no contact with Patricia Connor as well as what UBC Hospital’s Dr. James Harris had suggested since February, i.e., forensic psychiatric counselling – with treatments including medication:
“(4) You are to abide by all appointments set up through your P.O. and all appointments set up by the Forensic Clinic.
(5) You are to accept such treatments as provided by the doctors assigned to you and you are to take medication as prescribed for you by your doctor.”
Compared to the many bail recognizances I had been given to that point, this was the first time “treatments” and “medication” were written into the conditions – Forensic Clinic psychiatrist Dr. Clifford Kerr’s October 19 pre-sentencing report had indicated he wanted to use treatment including medication.
But there was no condition that I not go to UBC Hospital or UBC, recommended by the September 21 VSMHT community case conference and by probation officer David Phillips’s pre-sentencing report.
Somewhat relieved, I thanked lawyer Phil Seagram for doing his job.
By the time of the February Vancouver court trials, my lawyer would negotiate for those charges to be stayed in exchange for several one-year peace bonds with certain conditions. It was something I would have mixed feelings about, and wasn’t all Seagram’s credit, or Aunt Sally’s as no Chinese interpretation was needed. A judge presiding over some of the cases happened to be my former landlady's daughter – the apartment at 1640 West 11th Avenue in Vancouver.
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