Background and Biography

Becoming a Lawyer

I chose to become a lawyer when I was 12 years old. My father, a very practical man, said, “You seem to have abilities of reading complicated legal documents and you like to be outdoors. Which would you like to be, a farmer, or a lawyer?” I said that if I’m a lawyer, I could still be a farmer, but if I’m a farmer, I could not be a lawyer, so I’ll be a lawyer.

Because I was not very good at school, it seemed an unrealistic goal. Math, science and French were a problem for me. English, social studies, and geography were not. I loved history. I graduated from Charleswood Collegiate in 1963. United College and a double major in political science and philosophy occupied 1964-1967.

Law school at U.B.C. from 1967 to 1970 was a serious challenge to my physical and mental reserves, since I had little or at times, no money. I made sandwiches and sold them in the law school to fellow law students and delivered “spudnuts,” a potato-flavoured doughnut, to cafeterias on campus from Dennis Zacoratus, a baker on 4th avenue near Alma. I lived in a single room with a hot plate on the right of the stairs, at 4370-2nd Avenue West for two and a half years. Eighty year old Jenny Hoogan was my landlady.

I attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help church on 10th avenue, where I was baptised during my 2nd year, in May 1969. My conversion began in 1967 in Winnipeg.

The road through law school was a hard one. I had a bicycle, walked or ran to law school each day from 2nd avenue and Trimble street along the beach to Point Gray. The other students were cordial but I didn’t mix. I attended mass each morning at St. Marks near the law school at 7:00 am. The cafeteria gave me fries and soup for under $1.00 per day. My room and food totaled less than $100 per month. Pat Burns was my radio hero and the radio my only entertainment other than walks on the beach. I graduated from law school in May 1970 and the day was a great relief. But worse was to come.

I got articles with John McIlrey at Harman & Co. in Victoria, starting in May 1970. In the early part of 1970, probably January, I was in Victoria where I wanted to article, being interviewed by Ellis Achtem and Harman & Co. The money provided to travel was fifty cents short. I sat at the Empress Portico to catch the bus to the airport and saw an elderly lady, that I actually considered asking for 50 cents. Rather than do that, I asked the bus driver to forgive me fifty cents, which he kindly did. Traveling on the bus, I struck up a conversation with the lady, whom I discovered to be Charlotte Whitton, Ottawa’s famous woman mayor.

Major Challenges

After the many clients I have represented, I have been perceived as a right-wing extremist, nazi, or anti-semite. These smear words are inaccurate, unfair and obscure in their meaning. That’s how smear words work.

I am an individualist. I assert my right to be measured as an individual and I recognize every other person’s right to be so assessed, as well. I am proud of my Scottish heritage, and my common law roots in the traditions of Britain. But I recognize the rights of all others to be proud of theirs, as well. I do not assess individuals on the basis of the group to which they may claim to belong, or do in fact belong, or are alleged to belong.

My major challenge is to have myself and my thoughts and words assessed on their individual merits, rather than being stereotyped, slandered and written-off as most people in the media have already done. I am not in fact as I am represented by my enemies. I am a complex person with an essentially altruistic, generous, intelligent nature, upon which is superimposed a genuine desire to be a follower and servant of Jesus Christ. I have faults and flaws; I have virtues and many blessings. My faith grows daily by the receipt of grace and blessings beyond my most optimist imaginings. I seek to build a better world for my people (Western Canadians) and all mankind. My major challenge in brief is to be taken seriously after what has been said about me.

Attacks on me and how they helped me

At early stages of my career, I was very timid, frightened and concerned about what people might say or think about me. This self-conscious stage, I have observed, occupies and controls the entire lives of some timid souls who never tread beyond the path of others, or step into the great unknown of controversy.

It was principles of freedom that caused me to step off the beaten path. It is the love of freedom that keeps me off the path of slaves. I have come to realize from the attacks that inevitably followed my stepping out of line, some great realizations:

Firstly, slaves hate the free more than they hate their slave-masters. They serve their masters by attacking the free. Secondly, the attacks of the lairs and malicious ones who have and continue to defame me have caused me to have lee fear of standing on principle. Indeed, I have been attacked with spit, rocks, fists and bricks through my window, which hurt far less than media lies. I have been referred to as a “perverted monster” by Gary Bannerman and when I sued, I lost, costing me a small fortune, proving to the jury and I suppose, to the public, it was a fair comment. I have generally been written off by the major media as at best a gadfly of a separatist, or a racist monster. But all this has helped me greatly.

It has liberated me from fear of what others think. I know the truth and the truth knows me. I serve the God of Truth. The opinions of men are sadly and perpetually misinformed in this world and there is little or nothing I can do about it. If I die scorned, abused and reviled by all but a few friends who know me, when even they are afraid to admit that they do, I die no worse than the greatest man of all history, my Lord and Saviour Jesus. Through the attacks on me, which I have known to be false and malicious, I have come to experience and know in a small way what He went through and thus to have a closer friendship with Him and greater respect and love for Him as a person and as God. This has strengthened me beyond human means.

So come what may, I will stand for truth, freedom and justice. These three are really one, combined like the Holy Trinity. I have been made stronger by every lie and twisted half-truth told about me, because I am strong in the knowledge that liars hate me.

To any rational person who looks at the true facts and thinks about these words, they will see my point. To the rest, they can believe what they like. I am liberated by the attacks of my enemies. I am confirmed in my faith in life beyond death and the purpose and worth of walking where truth and freedom leads, come what may. Otherwise, I would have remained a timid slave of a corrupt system. Neither I nor the world nor God would have been any better off for such a life. What a waste of time and resources that would have been!

Why I do what I do

The value of freedom was so significant to my ancestors that they repeatedly fought for it against hopeless odds in the Scottish Wars of Independence—from Bannockburn, June 24, 1313, to Culloden, April 16, 1746, where some of my ancestors lay buried. My grandfather in the First World War and my father in the Second cherished the notion that they were doing the same. Whether they were right or wrong, freedom was the belief for which they were prepared to give their all.

My life has been free of such high demands for sacrifice. Nevertheless, with the time I have been allowed and the gifts I have been given, I too have tried to defend freedom against a much more insidious enemy. My enemy has been the constantly encroaching power of the State. Every day in every way the power of the State grows: to tax, to regulate activity, to prohibit speech, to proscribe opinion on history and many other topics, to virtually outlaw religion, to control health, medicine and the family, to undermine morality and to usurp the power of the Church.

The State has become more and more like the Big Brother of George Orwell. The new religion of the State is prescribed by law and will punish all heretics with fines or imprisonment or punitive taxes. The State grows, while the individual diminishes. Creativity and even truth are being stifled. Someone has to stand for freedom. I have tried to be that person. I have enjoyed defending the dissidents who dare to speak out against tyranny. I have vowed that as long as I am able, they will not stand alone. As a boy I took the same stand: against the playground bully and for his victim, who I would not leave to stand alone.

Though I have been vilified and realize I always will be, it is for freedom and no other reason that I do what I do. My culture, my language, my moral and spiritual values are just as important for me to defend as they were for my ancestors. Thankfully, I can do so without war or violence. And defend them I shall as long as I can.

Media attention

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