The Newfoundland and Labrador premier’s office has decided that you can’t be a journalist if you’re dressed like a giant Pokémon character.
Jon Keefe wanted to report on a recent press event held by Premier Dwight Ball, and he chose to do so while wearing a Pikachu onesie. Once he was dressed for the occasion, he grabbed a notepad and pen and headed to The Rooms, which houses Newfoundland’s art museum and archives.
“About 20 minutes after the event was supposed to start, a couple of people came downstairs and handed out laminated passes to everyone but me and the guy holding my camera,” Keefe said. “I told them that they forgot to give us our passes; the man, who refused to give his name, told me that the event was for registered media only.”
Curiously, several reporters at the event tweeted that no one had registered for the event.
https://twitter.com/TelegramJames/status/758648036369178624
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Keefe left, while the rest of the assembled media went to the availability. He had figured he’d receive some pushback, but didn’t expect to be barred entry.
“I figured they’d put up a halfhearted attempt to stop me, but I was actually halfway surprised when they shut me down. I honestly didn’t think they’d be so foolish,” Keefe said.
Other than appearing in costume, he wasn’t planning on causing a fuss. “I have plenty of questions for Ball, but wasn’t planning to pose any of them to him today.”
Jon Keefe, not being let in. Matthew Howse/Handout
Despite being denied entry, Keefe isn’t too disappointed. “I was hoping to just watch the press conference like everyone else, but starting a public conversation about the relationship between the media and the government is a decent consolation prize.”
“There are mechanisms in place to deal with disruptors. Barring people because you don’t like their politics isn’t acceptable,” he said.
It’s reasonable to assume the premier’s office doesn’t like Keefe’s politics. While he doesn’t really consider himself an activist, he’s accepted the label in the past. He came to a kind of infamy recently after printing a series of posters with Ball’s face and the “Resign” in bold text. He also produces a broadsheet poster series The Running Mouth, a satirical paper of sorts he’s posted around the legislature in the past few months.
The Running Mouth, Keefe’s broadsheet. Jon Keefe/Handout
Of course, it’s entirely possible that what they objected to most was not Keefe’s politics, but the fact that he was wearing a giant, furry Pikachu costume.
The Newfoundland premier’s office did not respond to questions from CANADALAND. Should we receive a response, we’ll provide an update.
The decision to pick and choose who is and isn’t a journalist got the NDP government in Alberta in some hot water earlier this year, when reporters from the Rebel were forbidden from attending a budget briefing. The right-wing news site, which is openly hostile to the NDP, gained widespread support from media across the country. Premier Rachel Notley’s government eventually caved to public pressure, reversed their decision and handed over decisions on who to accredit to the legislature’s press gallery.
“They are an enormous client,” wrote a program director to her staff
Battered by allegations of animal mistreatment, barred from breeding more orcas, and beset by frequent protests, Marineland is a theme park with few friends.
Thankfully for the beleaguered Niagara Falls attraction, their generous ad budget means that Bell-owned radio stations won’t contribute to the pile-on in their hometown.
Hosts of three southern Ontario radio stations were ordered to not express any opinions about the troubled theme park on air, because Marineland does so much business with Bell.
“In light of Marineland opening and the ongoing controversy I want to make sure we’re all on the same page regarding this client,” program director Sarah Cummings wrote in a May 2014 email sent to radio staff, since obtained by CANADALAND. “I know there are many opinions but I am asking that you please refrain from talking about them on air.
“They are an enormous client of Bell Media and I think keeping our coverage to news only is best,” she wrote.
One of the stations with hosts ordered not to talk Marineland is the only talk radio station for the region, 610 CKTB. Hosts at the music stations 105.7 EZ Rock in Niagara and 102.9 K-Lite FM in Hamilton were also sent the directive.
Cummings did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did the hosts who were sent the email. As always, we’ll update our story if any of them do.
The memo also directs staff not to engage with any discussion of Marineland on its website or on social media. This all but eliminates talk of the park’s troubles by several major radio stations in the region. EZ Rock is the highest rated station in the region, according to stats posted by Kowchmedia. Bell owns three of the seven stations in the region, and they draw more than half of the area’s listeners.
Marineland has been accused by former staff of mistreating their animals. The amusement park has vigorously denied all the allegations and is suing for defamation former staff who have spoken out and the Toronto Star, who published a sprawling investigation into allegations of poor conditions at the park. Marineland has also threatened to sue CANADALAND, for airing an episode where former animal trainer Phil Demers spoke of the abuse he alleges he saw.
The Star’s investigation details the plight of a number of marine mammals, several who have since died, who suffered from a variety of ailments, thought to be caused by poor water quality.
Last year, the Ontario government passed a law prohibiting the park from breeding any more orcas, sometimes known as killer whales, in captivity. The law also banned the sale of orcas in the province. It doesn’t prohibit, however, the sale and purchase of other marine mammals.
After that Star’s investigation was published, Canadian Accredited Zoos and Aquariums inspected the park and found “…that at the time of the site inspection the animals in question in the Marineland collection, including the marine mammals were in overall good health and there was no evidence of animal abuse, that water quality in all the pools was very good, and it appeared that staffing levels were adequate.”
This isn’t the first time Bell Media management has attempted to suppress news content that conflicted with its business interests. Former Bell Media president Kevin Crull ordered staff not to put CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais on air, after the regulator ruled cable and satellite companies would have to unbundle their TV packages. The so-called “pick-and-pay” decision infuriated Crull to the point of calling the head of CTV’s news division to keep Blais off camera, according to a Globe and Mail report. Afternoon shows on CTV News Channel, which is owned by Bell, cancelled planned interviews with Blais. However, the 11pm newscast on the main network featured an interview with the CRTC chair, in defiance to the edict.
Crull later apologized. Soon he was out as Bell Media president, and in the release announcing Crull’s departure Bell CEO George Cope wrote the following:
“The independence of Bell Media’s news operations is of paramount importance to our company and to all Canadians.”
UPDATE (July 18, 3pm): Since the memo was sent in May of 2014, Marineland has been a topic of discussion on CKTB, the talk radio station. This includes an hour-long interview with the former trainer Demers, which aired in February of this year. It’s unclear whether this was done because management dropped its edict baring Marineland discussion, or if it was conducted in defiance of the memo. If we receive comment from any of the involved parties we will update accordingly.
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@robert_hiltz
Decades after her alleged abuse by John Furlong, what Cathy Woodgate really wants is to heal. But to heal she first needs to be heard.
Wednesday evening the Assembly of First Nations heard her voice.
A resolution passed by the AFN seeks to pressure the federal government and the RCMP into launching a formal investigation into multiple abuse allegations made against the head of the Vancouver Olympics. Furlong has been accused of physically and verbally abusing dozens of students at the Immaculata School in Burns Lake, B.C. when he was a physical education teacher there in the late 60s.
The Assembly of First Nations is the country’s largest indigenous political advocacy group, and functions as the main lobby group for First Nations’ issues in the country.
“I’m a bit relieved,” says Woodgate of the resolution. “For a while I thought our voices would never be heard. There are many hurt victims that are suffering today that are never going to go through life the way they planned, including myself, because of this man, the way he put us down,” Woodgate said.
In 1969, she was in was in one of Furlong’s gym classes, where she says he physically abused her for not keeping up with the other students. “He hit me over and over. And I tried, and I cried and soon it just didn’t matter any more. And soon I learned to keep the tears from coming,” she said by phone. “Yet I was crying inside myself.”
Years later, Woodgate longed to tell him the damage he’d done to her self-esteem. “I thought if I could only confront him and say, ‘Look, you hit me because I was slow. And I had a reason to be slow.’ ” The reason she was slow, she would later find out, came with a diagnosis of muscular dystrophy.
While the passing of the AFN resolution may be a victory for Furlong’s accusers, it’s only the beginning. It directs the assembly “to urge the federal government and the RCMP to conduct, as expeditiously as possible, a thorough and impartial investigation into the allegations of abuse brought by Mr. Furlong’s former students,” according to a draft of the resolution provided to CANADALAND.
As part of the investigation, the resolution lays out that a meeting between the federal government, the AFN, and former students should take place, “to hear their concerns about the conduct of investigations and to discuss with them acceptable remedies.”
Before the vote, Lake Babine First Nation member and Burns Lake resident Emma Williams sent a letter to the AFN to set the stakes on what the resolution would mean for the community. “We feel like the invisible child seeing the violence that happened and hearing the hateful racial slurs and comments made to the children of Immaculata School that we have attended,” she wrote. “The scars that are left in our heart; we are still living this aftermath of the wounded people that turn to alcohol and drugs.
“Healing needs to be done. We are forgotten and invisible,” Williams said.
Meanwhile, Woodgate knows this isn’t the end of her battle, but she is optimistic. “I’m hoping it will lead somewhere, and I’m glad we’re finally being heard.”
Video credit: CBC/The National/Duncan McCue
It wasn’t that long ago that Furlong was able to claim a sort of victory, when he won a defamation lawsuit against him filed by journalist Laura Robinson. “What happened to me should not happen to anyone. I’m relieved this nightmare is over and that my family, friends — and others in difficulty — can see in a matter such as this it is possible to prevail and survive,” he said last year.
As the AFN resolution notes, the suit did not deal with the abuse allegations directly. It was concerned with statements Furlong made attacking Robinson and her work. The vast majority of the allegations against Furlong were never tested in court, and the sworn affidavits against Furlong signed by eight of his former students were explicitly barred from evidence during the defamation trial. None of his accusers gave testimony, or were present.
The AFN resolution says after inquiries from officials at the Lake Babine First Nation, the federal government’s only response was a letter from Carla Qualtrough, the minister of sport. “The government’s sole response…is that the Court decision is definitive of the matter,” the resolution reads.
Furlong’s profile is not what it once was, but he’s still quite active in public life. He was named this month to head up a special advisory committee as the city of Calgary considers an official bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics, according to a Calgary Herald report. The committee is put together by the Canadian Olympic Committee and will guide the city, should it decide to go ahead with a bid, though the process.
As well as his new Olympics duties, he gave a keynote address just last month at the Canadian Interuniversity Sport annual meeting. He’s the head of the advisory board of the government’s Own The Podium initiative, tasked with upping Canada’s medal count at the Olympics. Furlong is also the chairman of the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer club.
For Woodgate, the AFN resolution is the result of hard, persistent work. Because of her muscular dystrophy, she has difficulty typing letters, and getting to this point has required a lot of letter writing. She says, with the help of her community, she was able to describe how damaging her time at the school was.
“All our self-esteem is gone. He really put us down, he hurt us,” she says. “For me, that’s where my hurt started is with that school.”
But despite her lingering pain, Woodgate is ready for taking another step forward. “I’m hoping there will be healing after this. That’s what we need is healing, and healing has to start with us being heard.”
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@robert_hiltz
Rosie DiManno, the Toronto Star’s acerbic and long-serving columnist, was charged with assault this week, according to Ontario Provincial Police.
DiManno was charged Tuesday near Bancroft, Ont., according to a police press release. In its statement the OPP didn’t offer any further details, saying DiManno would appear in court July 26. A call to the OPP detachment was not returned immediately. When they do, we’ll update our story.
DiManno declined an interview with CANADALAND, via email. “There are children involved and I won’t make the situation worse for them,” she said.
Wednesday morning, Teresa Villeneuve tweeted “Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno charged for assaulting a mother in front of her children.” Villeneuve had previously described DiManno in her tweets as “my children’s aunt.” But once news of the arrest spread Wednesday night, Villeneuve tweeted “My phone was stolen a couple weeks ago and I did not post the two previous posts,” both of which referred to DiManno’s arrest. Both posts soon disappeared.
Screenshot via Twitter
On Twitter, DiManno herself seemed unfazed. “oh I’m still a cool broad. And I will always defend kids,” she said to one user. “I’m fine, thanks. Children need defending. Can’t just allow abuse,” she said when asked if she was OK by Toronto radio personality Mike Bullard. “And the truth will out,” she replied to another user, when asked about her impending court date.
Screenshot via Twitter
The long-time sports and crime columnist isn’t one to shy away from controversy. Famously, DiManno told Toronto Sun columnist Joe Warmington last month “How fucking dare you? Come here and say that. I’ll rip your fucking throat out,” when Warmington questioned whether she cared about the suicide death of her colleague.
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@robert_hiltz
Soon, reporters and the pubic may be able to request police records in Saskatchewan, according to proposed changes [PDF] to the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) legislation. Right now Saskatchewan police are not subject to FOIP, which is what led to reporters collecting data on racial profiling themselves instead of relying on police records.
The proposed change comes less than a year after a collaborative investigation by Maclean’s associate editor Nancy Macdonald and a team of reporters and data journalists at Discourse Media, which brought attention to a lack of racial data about policing. While conducting the months-long investigation, which showed massive overrepresentation of Indigenous people in Canada’s prisons and provided evidence of racial profiling of Indigenous people by police, the Saskatchewan police refused to release racial data because they weren’t subject to FOIP legislation.
Because of the lack of publicly available data, Discourse Media had to conduct a survey to determine whether anecdotal reports of racial profiling were part of a systemic problem. The survey of over 850 students in Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg found that Indigenous students are more likely to be stopped by police than non-Indigenous students, and staying away from illegal activity does not shield them from unwanted police attention.
Ron Kruzeniski, Saskatchewan’s information and privacy commissioner, proposed the changes to the government last year. He says the legislation has not been updated in over 20 years. But what changes the legislation will bring and what specifically will be tracked is not clear. Elizabeth Popowich, manager of public information and strategic communication for the Regina Police Service, says it’s not yet laid out, but will likely become more clear in the coming year.
“It may take some information more accessible to the public,” she says, adding that while the legislation has yet to become official, police already operate with transparency in mind.
“Even though we weren’t covered under FOIP legislation before, we’ve been aware of the rules and tried to pattern our public information after what’s already there,” says Popowich.
In a press conference on June 13, Gordon Wyant, Saskatchewan’s minister of justice, told a scrum of reporters, “It was time that it happened.” When asked if police departments were pushing back against the change, Wyant said: “Most of them realized that there was going to come a point in time where they were going to be caught by our legislation. So they had been expecting it.”
When asked whether new legislation could highlight racial profiling within the police force that previously went unsubstantiated, Popowich replied that police follow strict policy at all times. “We get a phone call and go to the incident. We don’t ask at the time of the call what a person’s ethnicity is.”
Popowich pointed away from the force: “We all, as a society, need to look at not just the justice system, but at the way our society as a whole deals with poverty and addictions and homelessness and mental health and education and employment — things that sooner or later manifest as crime.”
Andre Bear, a 21-year-old from Saskatoon, was featured in Macdonald’s Maclean’s story when his 18-year-old friend filmed the pair being stopped by police on their way home from baseball practice. When Bear asked the officer the reason they were stopped, he was told, “Shut up, passenger.”
“There’s so many times when I get racially profiled, and it’s terrifying to know that if I say the wrong thing to this white cop he can kill me, and there’s nothing that I or anyone else could ever do about it,” says Bear, who is stopped by police once every few months.
Bear, who is Saskatchewan’s regional representative for First Nations youth, says subjecting police to FOIP policy is a good thing. But he doesn’t want Indigenous people to correlate it with justice.
“I would like people to really instil in themselves … not to let down their guard. Because even though these small incremental changes within legislation are baby steps forward, I wouldn’t want people to get too comfortable, because police can still continue abusing their power on oppressed peoples,” says Bear.
“We can never give up, and we can’t give up on these officers because they’re people too. They’re just going with the same behaviours that society is perpetuating. We need a paradigm shift,” he says.
“Our country has been racist for so long.”
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The full findings, based on surveys conducted by Discourse Media with the support of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, were published as part of Nancy Macdonald’s investigation into the justice system in Maclean’s in December.
PHOTO: John McFadden walks out of the Yellowknife courtroom with the Rheostatic’s Dave Bidini, left, and local media mentor George Lessard in tow. McFadden is being tried for allegedly obstructing a police officer.
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John McFadden, a reporter with Northern News Services, was arrested while taking photos of police searching a van in downtown Yellowknife in the early hours of July 5, 2015. His trial began on June 20 after being postponed twice.
This is not McFadden’s first trouble with the RCMP. Last year,CANADALAND reported he had been barred from a press conference and denied media access to officers because of what the RCMP called “unprofessional and disrespectful conduct” and an email that had “a disrespectful tone.” McFadden covered the Yellowknife courts and crime beat for his paper, but was taken off it to prevent a conflict of interest in the wake of the charges.
Last Wednesday, the court heard testimonies from three officers who were present the night of McFadden’s arrest. During the incident, four on-duty police were searching a vehicle with stolen licence plates. The trial adjourned until Sept. 1, which is when McFadden is set to testify.
CANADALAND reached out to McFadden. He declined to comment on the testimony of the officers. But, he told CANADALAND the worst thing about his case is that it has prevented him from covering his beat.
“I can’t cover the courts because I’m before the courts and that’s frustrating,” he said.
Regardless of the outcome of the trial he said hopes his case leads to a less adversarial relationship between RCMP and the media in Yellowknife.
In his testimony, Const. Christopher Hipolito, who was the first to notice McFadden, said he saw him come from the direction of a local bar toward the scene. Hipolito told the court McFadden ended up between six to ten feet of the van before the officer told him to step back. At that point, Hipolito said McFadden became aggravated and told the officer he could stand wherever he wanted before announcing he was going to get his camera.
McFadden returned with his camera and proceeded to take photos of the police search. Const. Christopher Watson said McFadden was upset and yelling, saying he could take pictures if he wanted to, to which Watson responded “absolutely you can take pictures but don’t interfere with our investigation.”
All three officers told the court they believed McFadden was intoxicated, although they offered differing accounts of the extent of his intoxication. Two of the officers said McFadden was swearing throughout their interactions.
According to the officer’s testimony, McFadden took photos and their search attracted a crowd of 15 to 20 people, some of whom were smoking outside a bar adjacent to the van. Watson said McFadden was “getting the crowd jacked up and hostile toward police.” Several of them looked angry and began “chirping” the police in support of McFadden, Hipolito testified.
Photographs taken by McFadden over the course of three minutes and 25 seconds, which were entered as evidence, showed a few people in the vicinity of the van. The officers said some of the crowd was around the corner and not visible in the photos.
Watson claimed he was concerned about the officers’ safety as a result of McFadden’s presence in the “bubble we were working in,” leading the constable to conclude the reporter was obstructing the investigation.
When defence lawyer Peter Harte asked Watson if RCMP could have just ignored McFadden during cross examination, the officer responded by saying “It’s a huge officer safety liability to have an angry man with a camera in the area where you’re trying to work.”
Harte also asked Watson why the officers didn’t use police tape to mark off the scene.
At one point, Watson said he had to stop what he was doing to get McFadden to move out of the middle of the road, where he was taking photographs. After complying with the officer’s request, Watson said McFadden calmed down briefly.
But as Watson continued to search the front of the van, he said he saw McFadden’s camera enter through the side cargo doors, which had been opened by police. It was at this point that Const. Kevin Sales grabbed McFadden and arrested him for obstructing a police officer.
“I had to stop my search to remove him from the opening of the van,” said Sales. When explaining why he placed McFadden under arrest, Sales said McFadden was close enough to the vehicle that he could have tampered with the scene.
After being arrested, McFadden was brought back to cells where he was held for several hours. While he was in custody, Sales went through McFadden’s photos and downloaded the final shot which he said showed that the camera was inside the vehicle.
During their testimonies, the three officers said they knew who McFadden was but that they didn’t immediately recognize him when he showed up.
Watson and Hipolito said they ended up figuring out the reporter that night was McFadden before he was arrested.
Sales told the court he didn’t realize the man he was arresting was McFadden until the reporter told him he wanted to speak to Elenore Sturko, the communications liaison for the RCMP at the time, after he had been handcuffed.
“It was at that point I realized he was media,” said Sales.
McFadden’s lawyer hasn’t completed his cross-examination of Sales, who was the last to testify. It is anticipated that McFadden will testify in his own defence when the trial resumes on Sept. 1.
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Disclosure: Cody Punter is a former employee of NNSL and is currently doing contract work for them.
Photo by Cody Punter.
CORRECTION: The previous version of this story said, “Several of them looked angry and began “chirping” the police in support of McFadden, Watson testified.” It was Hipolito who used the word “chirping.” Sorry about that, everyone.
We are officially launching The Imposter, an arts & culture podcast hosted by Aliya Pabani, on July 13. Subscribe to The Imposter on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Episode 0 is online now.
For those in Toronto, we’re going to be celebrating with a live podcast performance at Gladstone Hotel on August 3. Tickets here.
This one-time event will include live music, feature interviews, comedy, storytelling, and other goodies.
This event is sponsored by FreshBooks.
Look forward to comedic storytelling by Jackie Pirico, member of the acclaimed Laugh Sabbath collective, live music from cosmic soul sisters bizZarh, and an audio documentary performance by Geoff Siskind about the 1980s period of “tax shelter cinema” that created such films as Porky’s, Prom Night, and Meatballs.
More guests TBA!
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For more info, email Katie at katie@canadalandshow.com
Photo by Yuula Benivolski.
