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from the Cannabis Culture email list. (See details below articles.)
By Mike Foster and Dana Larsen
After being arrested and detained by police for attempting to pie a statue of Emily Murphy, Marijuana Party leader Marc-Boris St Maurice was charged with "assaulting a police officer" (for getting whipped cream on a cop.)
St Maurice has been released and is on his way back to Montreal.
The Parliament Hill rally was poorly attended but evidently not uneventful. There were lots of media folk there. Seeds were given away openly and many joints were consumed with no arrests. Steve Bacon's live plant was seized by police. Mike Foster showed up shortly after with a big plastic one.
Great speeches were given by host Rick Reimer, exemptee Rob Brown, Renee Boje, Eugene Oscapella and more. Larry Duprey delivered his heavenly thunder.
By Mike Foster and Dana Larsen
Marijuana Party leader Marc-Boris St Maurice was detained by police on Saturday, November 25 after attempting to pie a statue of Emily Murphy on Parliament Hill during a Marijuana Party rally.
St Maurice is being held at the Ottawa Police Station. The official police line is that the situation is being investigated to decide if charges will be laid in relation to the incident. A Sgt.Turner is in charge of the investigation.
Marijuana Party candidates Larry Duprey, Sotos Petrides, Neev Tapiero and Terry Parker are currently waiting for St Maurice in the police station lobby as of 8PM EST.
Emily Murphy (1868-1933) has a statue on Parliament Hill because she is one of the "Famous Five" Canadian women who successfully had women included in the legal definition of "person" under Canadian law.
Unfortunately, Emily Murphy was as racist and anti-Chinese as she was pro-feminist. She was the author of the bestselling book The Black Candle (1922), which was an expansion of a series of articles she wrote for Maclean's Magazine under the pen name "Janey Canuck." The Black Candle was a frightening and sensationalist expose of the plot by Chinese and Blacks to corrupt and destroy the White race with marijuana and opium.
The Black Candle had a huge influence on Canadian drug laws, and was largely responsible for Canada's ban on marijuana which was passed a few years later.
(Ms Murphy is quoting a Los Angeles County Chief of Police on the
effects of marijuana.)
"...persons using this narcotic smoke the dry leaves of the plant,
which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict
loses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while
under its influence are immune to pain. While in this condition they
become raving maniacs and are liable to kill or indulge in any forms
of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of
cruelty without, as said before, any sense of moral responsibility."
An addict who died this year in British Columbia told how he was frequently jeered at as a 'white man accounted for.' This man belonged to a prominent family... and used to relate how the Chinese pedlars taunted him with their superiority at being able to sell the dope without using it, and by telling him how the yellow race would rule the world.
They were too wise, they urged, to win a battle, but would win by wits. They would strike at the white race through 'dope' and when the time was ripe would command the world...
Some of the Negroes coming into Canada - and they are no fiddle-faddle fellows either, have similar ideas, and one of their greatest writers has boasted how ultimately they will control the white men.
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from The Ottawa Citizen
Marc-Boris St-Maurice, the leader of Canada's Marijuana Party, was charged with assaulting a police officer yesterday over a pie-throwing incident during a day-long marijuana decriminalization rally on Parliament Hill.
The pie, however, was one that Mr. St-Maurice threw at himself.
The 31-year-old Montrealer was trying to put a pie in the face of a Parliament Hill statue when he was confronted by three RCMP officers.
"I was still holding a live pie," he said yesterday, after being charged and released by Ottawa-Carleton police. "So I de-activated it by putting my own face in it." Some of the pie splashed onto the face of a nearby Mountie -- "about two bites" worth, he said.
That, he said, was the basis of the assault charge. According to the RCMP, half of the officer's face was covered in pie. Mr. St-Maurice is to appear in court on Dec. 15.
The mid-afternoon incident occurred well into the rally, which drew a diverse crowd of several hundred people fighting for the decriminalization of marijuana.
There were the medical exemptees, each with a long list of health problems and a longer list of legal battles fought to secure their permission to light up. There were the recreational users, still taking their chances legally. There were the libertarians and the economics-talking candidates for the Marijuana Party.
There were RCMP officers in full uniform, with their big blue coats and furry hats. There were undercover Mounties with tuques and earrings.
In the middle of it all was Renee Boje, the celebrity casualty of the American war on drugs -- the 31-year-old California woman applying to the Canadian government for status as a refugee from the U.S. and its justice system.
She is bundled up against the Canadian cold not by choice. Charged by her federal government with watering the marijuana plant of a friend, Ms. Boje could face a 10-year imprisonment if she is extradited to the U.S. She has been in B.C. for two years and will stay there while she waits for Justice Minister Anne McLellan to decide whether she can stay in Canada.
"Mother Earth gave us this plant," she told a crowd yesterday, "so that we can heal each other and the planet."
A film crew follows Ms. Boje around, working on a documentary with the working title, The Flower in the Storm. Everyone at the rally knows her. Many have been on the Internet show she hosts, The Healing Herb Hour.
"She's basically a flower child," said Ottawa lawyer and drug policy advocate Eugene Oscapella.
"She's a lovely gentle woman who has gotten caught up with one of the most punitive and violent prison systems in the world."
As Mr. Oscapella speaks, he is quick to point out that 1,000 RCMP officers are employed to enforce drug laws, he said. Half of the offences are simple possession of marijuana. Like everyone else at the rally, he finds that to be a waste of taxpayers' money.
"I'm here to talk about marijuana and money," said Raymond Turmel, the Marijuana Party candidate for the Ottawa-Vanier riding.
So much money would be saved by legalizing and taxing marijuana, that everything from health care to Quebec separatism would be solved, he said.
(Turmel, dear, I don't think you have it quite right. Decriminalization of marijuana must mean no regulations, no tax on the sacred herb.-ed)
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law.
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This page created November 26, 2000
