A2 - Wednesday, May 4, 1983 - North Shore News

strictly personal

by Bob Hunter

Silent martyr wins

IT WAS STRANGE, talking to an old friend who

couldn't talk.

The frend was Paul
Watson, whose name surely
everyone must know by
now: the lad who threatened
to ram the sealing ships this
year and was thrown in jail,
along with the entire crew of
his ship, the Sea Shepherd
Il.

One thing Paul has never
had much trouble doing is
talking. He’s a fiercely
opinionated guy, as you
might expect of somebody
who once rammed a pirate
whaling ship off the coast of
Portugal.

He has long since replaced
Brian Davies of the In-
ternational Fund for Animal
Welfare as the bete noire of
the seal-hunting fraternity —
indeed, Newfoundilanders as
a whole.

In fact, the entire House
of Commons managed to

AMBLESIDE pond may scem like the most obvious place to leave a tame deck who's
grown too big to stay around the home anymore .

unanimously vote its
disapproval of Paul and his
lactics and everyone
associated with him.

At the mere mention of his
name, the new federal
fisheries minister becomes
foamy-mouthed and bug-
eyed with rage.

There is no doubt that
what Paul apparently did out
there on the ice-packs this
year was outrageous. It was
intended to be outrageous. It
was intended to provoke.

And provoke, it did.

On March 27, a SWAT
squad backed up by snipers
and two. divisions of
Mounties stormed aboard
the Sea Shepherd I], using a
weighted boom to smash
through a barb wire barrier
Paul and _ his
erected.

Since then. the protesters

crew had

have been charged with
mischhef, intimidation of
sealers, intimidation of the
captains and crews of three
sealing vessels, mischief
leading to endangering the
lives of two of the captains
and their crews and of being
unlawfully within half a mile
of the seal hunt.

Watson is also charged
with piloting his ship in a
dangerous manner.

I phoned him at the jail in
the littl Gaspe community
of Perce, where he and 18
fellow conservationists had
been held for 12 days.

1} wanted to ask him how
efforts were going to raise
bail money, since the story
of his frustrated efforts to
obtain bail had become a
regular feature of the daily
news diet.

But — get this! — he
couldn't talk to me.

The judge has ordered
him to remain silent if
questioned by the media in

+

NEWS phate Suuert Devic

. . but it's among the worst places.

in fact, there's every chance that such an action will gct a pet dack killed, according
to the Widilfie Rescue Association, who sny that dumping of domestic decks has
become a seriows problem. Only male tame decks asually survive in wild surroan-
dings because of the pecking by wild decks in the competition for territory and food,
and when they mate with wild femaics, wesightly cross-bred decks are the reswit,
upsetting the balance of mature, according to the WRA. Pictured with a domestic
duck she found being attacked in Ambicside pond, where she had to wade in tn order
to rescue fi, ls Rose McGavim. She will unke ft to one of the fares im Fraser Valley
which accepts decks and says this is what the deck dampers should he doting

themselves.

Canada. | ask if he can talk
to me as a fnend, and he
says, “Yeh, but if a word of
anything | say comes out in
the media, I'm in violation of
the order.”

All he can legally say is
that he can't talk about whal
happened.

He can only reply to
questions about how he’s
feeling, when he expects to
get out of jaul, how extensive
a tour he'll be going on
through the U.S. as soon as
he’s released, when he
expects to appear on the
Today Show again, etc.

I have to go to other
sources to find out what they
think Paul’s” thinking
because he can't say.

I do manage to piece
together a picture of a very
exultant radical who feels he
has focused world attention
on the seal hunt at a time
when it was otherwise fading
away.

uf atieor

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CQerverteirivestat

It seems to me that the
sahent fact of the encounter
that took place between the
Sea Shepherd HU and the
sealing ships in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence is that no one
was injured.

Watson’s mood reminded
me — nothing he said, mind
you, just my own subjective

impression — of another
radical in another tme:
Bobby Seale, the Black

Panther ordered gagged
during the trial of the
Chicago Seven back in the
60s.

Having become a martyr,
Seale knew he’d won. It was
a matter of being willing to
pay the price.

Paul Watson seems to
have achieved the same
status.

Sorry I can’t tell you any
more than that.

in

North Vancouver-Seymour

ELECT

STUART

McNISH
LIBERAL

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