Given we're in the midst of a very telling hearing on the future of Canadian television (Shaw v. CRTC et al) while a massive number of new (albeit primarily American) series are launching, I've decided to prorogue the Canadian industry portion of the blog until next week.
And based on the wonderful response I got to yesterday's post. I've decided to make this "Good Causes Week" here at the Legion. A chance to introduce you to things worth supporting before we get back to the usual whining and bitching and career suicide cunningly disguised as incisive insight.
For Day #2 of what might become an annual event, I offer the case of Betty Krawczyk, who, at the age of 82, is about to feel the full force of Canadian Justice and be tossed in the slammer to serve the rest of her natural life as an unrepentant career criminal.
Why does the state want to lock Betty away and lose the key? Is she a baby raper? A serial killer? A violent bank robber?
Nope.
But she sure annoys the hell out of some people.
A mother, grandmother, author and Green Party political candidate, Betty first crossed the Law at the age of 65, busted in 1993 for attempting to stop the logging of old growth forest in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island.
Midnight Oil did a historic concert during that protest to garner world support for Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and others aligned against the governments of the time.
Seven years later, their work saw Clayoquot Sound designated a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.
In the interim, Betty and 849 others did jail time and earned criminal records.
And apparently, she didn't learn her lesson, because in 2006, now 78 years of age, she was slapped in cuffs for blocking a bulldozer ripping up another swatch of pristine forest to build infrastructure for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Betty went to jail a second time. Not for anything violent or damaging. But for defying a court order by showing up where she wasn't wanted.
Now she was a two time loser.
Strike Three came not long after, followed by prison sentences 4 through 8. Again, not a single one of her arrests involved hurting anyone or a single dollar of property damage.
She had simply exercised her right to dissent.
And for that the Attorney General of British Columbia intends to make an example of her.
Sick and tired of Betty embarrassing successive governments of differing political stripes and inconveniencing multi-national corporations, BC's lead lawyer has asked the Courts to rule that she is a chronic offender and put her away -- for life!
This is how bizarre the system gets in Canada. A government more than happy to trumpet its environmental achievements with one of its forked tongues, uses the other to condemn a woman who went to jail to make that achievement come true.
And oddly, for those who expect such things from the scary, hidden-agenda, law-and-order, gun-lovin', environment hatin', Harper Conservatives, this is happening at the hands of a Liberal Provincial government and the same gang of legal insiders who provided the white-wash expert to save former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Michael Bryant's hot-rodding ass!
Maybe Harper hatchet man, John Baird, was out of line blaming recent problems on the "Liberal elites of Toronto", but from where I sit, all he got wrong was the geography.
And CBC News endlessly wonders what gives rise to a Rob Ford or the Tea Party Movement…
In British Columbia (and pretty much the rest of Canada) you'll do less time for molesting children, drugging and raping a woman, gang-banging or peddling the West Coast's major cash crop than trying to stop somebody from chopping down a tree.
We're a country based on the edict of "Peace, Order and Good Government" with an emphasis on learning that you don't question the reasons why those in the latter category dole out their own versions of the first two.
Betty Krawczyk gets her day in court today, September 22nd, in Vancouver. Maybe you think that means it's too late to do anything to help. Her fate is in the hands of a Judge where no amount of protesting or outing of political scumbags can make a difference.
But it's not.
You can contact the BC Attorney General's Office at mike.brundrett@gov.bc.ca to tell them what a shameful bunch they are and what a good idea it would be not to embarrass their children with their childish behavior.
I mean, what's the point of telling your kids to "Go Green" while putting grandparents behind bars for practicing what you preach?
You can also call up any Liberal representing any Federal or Provincial Riding and ask if this is the sort of "progressive" justice they're describing whenever they criticize the brand offered by one of their political opponents.
They may tell you what they think you want to hear, so ask for proof that they've contacted BC Premier Gordon (DUI) Campbell to ask him to show Betty the same mercy another court once showed him.
You're allowed to voice your disagreement with something in this country. Honest, you really are.
Maybe if you stand up for somebody who is having that right taken away, somebody else will be there for you when "they" come to take away your own.
