A2 - Wednesday, January 11, 1984 - North Shore News

Watson hadn’t been
beaten, but there were flashes
of deja vu in my mind. The
dark side of the Gallic force
hovered in the air. Just as
McTaggart had been a victim
of that peculiar imperialistic
mindset that lurks in the
French soul, so was Watson.

He told the swarm of
reporters at the airport that
-in his opinion, the judge who
sentenced him to 15 months
and a $5,000 fine (as well as
confiscating his quarter-mil-
lion dollar ship) should have
disqualified himself from the
trial.

Indeed. In his book, Sea
Shepherd, My Fight For
Whales & Seals, Watson
described the first time he ap-
peared before Judge Yvon
Mercier in the provincial
court at Perce in the Gaspe

- wb na

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

I WAS AT THE AIRPORT when Paul Watson
came home to the arms of his daughter and wife
and friends — and a wave of media the likes of
which I haven’t seen since David McTaggart

returned from Mururoa Atoll after having been
beaten senseless by French commandos.

District of Quebec on Feb. 6,
1980, charged with violations
of the Seal Protection Regu-
lations.

Watson writes that after he
had been found guilty of in-
terfering with the seal hunt,
he ‘‘also ordered me to stay
away from the seal hunt for
three years. If I refused to
sign an agreement to do that,
he said, I would have to serve
another three months in
jail.”’

Now comes the rub: ‘‘This
probation order was entirely
in French, as were al} the
records of proceedings. I was
not given a translation in
English. When 1 asked for
one, the judge said that, in
Quebec, one spoke French,
and if I did not sign the
agreement, I would get an ad-
ditional 15 days in jail for
contempt.”’

At the urging of sup-
porters, Watson signed the
agreement, but he added, in
his book: ‘‘I do not consider
that I agreed to anything, for
I signed a.paper that I could
not read.’’

According to Watson, the
judge eventually got to read
the book and he was reported
to have been ‘‘furious’’
about this passage.

Yet when the chance to
deal with Watson came up
again, the same judge
refused to disqualify himself,
claiming impartiality. In
court just before Christmas,
when he threw Watson
behind bars for eight days
pending an appeal, the judge
said to the defendant: ‘‘I told
you I didn’t want to see your
face again.”’

The proceedings of the
trial was all in French again.
The papers Watson signed
were all in French again. He
is apparently under a gag
order which forbids him to

talk to the press, but he
doesn’t know for sure
because he doesn’t read
French.

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i must admit, this blows
my mind. Our vaunted
Charter of Rights and
Freedoms clearly states that
any individual has the right
to use English or French
before the Supreme Court or
any other federal court and
that ‘‘the use of either
English or French in the
courts of the province of
Quebec and Manitoba will
continue to be protected by
existing constitutional
provisions.”’

So where is the protection
of existing constitutional pro-
visions? Is this what equality
before the law in an officially
bilingual Canada is all
about?

Of course we all know that
the Parti Quebecois’s draco-
Mian language laws are in-
tended to drive a wedge bet-
ween English and French in
Canada, but I must say,
federal authorities who are
supposed to be opposed to
Francophone apartheid
policies have not helped the
situation at all by capturing
Watson in one province, then
rushing him off to Quebec
for trial, knowing, as they
must have, that he wouldn’t
receive the slightest
semblance of equal treatment
before the law.

. Anybody wanting to help
Watson out can reach him at
P.O. Box 48446, Vancouver,
B.C. V7X 1A2.

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