Surrounded by the street smarts of repeated offenders, mild-mannered Toronto grandmother Linda Gibbons remains a forgotten political prisoner of the Ontario government.
For most of the past four years, the grandmother of four has languished in prison, with only two, 20-minute weekly visits breaking the loneliness and monotony.
A 20-minute session with immediate family was her only bright spot last Christmas Day. An average day for the forgotten prisoner comes with the cacophony of inmates yelling to be heard over the talk shows and soap operas that are the daily background in the Common Room of the Western Detention Centre.
"As long as you're in here, you're technically an absentee parent," Mrs. Gibbons told Our Toronto in a telephone interview from the Centre. "I'm here with women arrested for drug dealing, who only see their kids three or four days a year. All they have to keep them going the rest of the time are these little pictures of their kids."
"The noise is bar room level," she says, adding that the cacophony was easier to get used to than the lack of privacy available when having to answer nature's calls.
Western Detention Centre is no place for a softly-spoken, bible-reading lady, but Linda Gibbons finds a "special source of inspiration" in Jesus Christ.
While one might expect the rhetoric of a firebrand, she's surprisingly non-preachy and low key.
Considered something of an anomaly by fellow inmates, she's won their respect for going to such lengths in standing up for her beliefs. "They can't get over it when they understand that I could sign myself out at any time," she says. "They tell me they'd sign out in a minute, but for me that would be going against my own principles."
On Sept. 9, Mrs. Gibbons, Anneliese Steden of Cambridge, Ont., and Rev. Ken Campbell of Milton, Ont. were arrested for disobeying a court order by breaking the NDP government's 1994 injunction against the peaceful picketing of abortuaries. Mrs. Gibbons remains in jail because she will not accept bail conditions requiring a promise not to return to the abortuary. Because of ministry commitments, Campbell signed the condition on Sept. 10. Mrs. Steden was released on Nov. 18. The three face trial on Feb. 2 and 3, 1999.
While watching her being taken away in a paddy wagon on Sept. 9, journalist Michael Coren noted wryly: "The city is a lot safer now."
The true crime of Linda Gibbons?
More complicated than most. According to the authorities, obstructing a peace officer and breaking probation. Praying, picketing and offering counselling outside Toronto's abortuaries was shifted over into the realm of criminal activity, back in the days when strident feminist Marion Boyd, was Ontario's first Attorney General without a law degree.
In August 1994, with the NDP in power at Queen's Park, Justice George Adams granted an interlocutory or temporary injunction (until an expected trial) banning home picketing and establishing 30 to 50 foot 'bubble zones' around abortion clinics. Justice Adams rejected bubble zones for hospitals.
A tentative sigh of relief came from the pro-life movement with the election of a Progressive Conservative government in June 1995. Since the government has the power to do so at any time, as the Gibbon's affair is a civil matter and the government is the initiator, many thought the NDP-inspired injunction would be dropped. Conventional wisdom held that Charles Harnick, who would become Attorney General, would follow through on his pre-election indication that the injunction was an unwarranted suppression of free speech. Following election, Harnick, who counts NDP MPP Peter Kormos among his circle of friends, seemed to undergo a change of heart on his earlier views, and the injunction, though technically still 'temporary', remains intact.
Having been charged with 'obstructing a peace officer' effectively prevents Mrs. Gibbons and her legal counsel from arguing against the injunction on constitutional grounds, before a jury. Observers are convinced that this is due to doubt in the Attorney General's office about whether the injunction could withstand a court challenge.
Long-time Gibbon's supporters in the pro-life clergy decry that she is improperly imprisoned for breaching the Boyd-Harnick injunction, when she has never been prosecuted on the more appropriate charge of "disobey court order".
Nor is the pro-life movement the only contingent taking issue with the wrongful prosecution notion. Judge Milton Cadsby earlier acquitted Rev. Ken Campbell on the basis that "obstruct peace officer" was the wrong charge for the conduct for which Campbell had been arrested. In June, 1997, Judge Scullion openly scolded the Crown for bringing Campbell before his provincial court, rather than the appropriate General Division Court, which had issued the injunction and should enforce the same, and on the wrong charge of "obstruct" rather than the appropriate "disobey".
In what he described as a "reluctant" letter to Campbell on Dec. 1, Crown Attorney Paul Culver claimed that Judge Cadsby "made an error in law in deciding that the length of time an interlocutory injunction is outstanding has any relevance to the duty of a peace officer to enforce that injunction." Culver added, "numerous other Provincial Division Judges have ruled that obstruct Peace Officer is an appropriate charge in this and similar situations."
"Until this issue is determined by an Appeal Court, Judge Cadsby's ruling is not binding on any other Provincial Division Judge, and indeed has been given an opposite interpretation by the many other Provincial Division Judges before whom these cases have been tried, both inside, and outside of Toronto," Culver wrote.
"If the crown concludes that Judge Cadsby erred for ANY reason in acquitting me on the "obstruct" charge in July, the Crown ought to appeal the decision," says Campbell.
Remembered from the Sunday pulpit, Mrs. Gibbons has been relegated to the status of "forgotten political prisoner" by an election-bound Tory government which seems to have taken a Pontius Pilate role.
During four years of incarceration, she's been virtually ignored by what she calls "an absolutely politically correct media".
"I'm an ordinary Christian but I couldn't be more oppressed than if I were in Russia."
"That she's spending her days in prison as a forgotten political prisoner instead of being allowed to carry on her ministry is nothing less than a tragedy," says Rev. Charles McVety of Canada Christian College.
Linda Gibbons will be interviewed from jail by Ken Campbell on Liberation Radio, broadcast daily at 12:45 noon on CJMR, "the voice of the city", 1320 AM, on two successive Friday broadcasts, Jan. 22 and 29.
Mrs. Gibbons, one of two grandmothers and a grandfather, facing a Feb. 2 court date, believes she will find no justice against her violated Freedom of Expression because she is facing a "wrongful prosecution" having been "wrongfully charged" and "wrongfully arrested."
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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