June 7, 1997 - Artemis

Saturday dawned with Toronto recovering from a summer thunderstorm. My radio was playing Tchicofsky's 1812 overture, great music to get me moving. I started by doing the weekly task laundry, and while it was drying, I sat on my balcony and watched the Org.

For those of you who haven't seen it, the org is a 8 floor building, and all except the middle 1/3 of the ground floor is Scientology. The building is rather decrepit looking, probably built in the sixties some time, and it has air-conditioners hanging out of windows, rather tatty looking blinds hanging from some of them and plastic bags of something up against many windows. On the south side of the building, the only side with no windows, there is a large 'pixelboard', animated display. This isn't owned by the Co$, they apparently rent the space out, and then buy back adverts, usually at cheap times. The typical advert is "Dianetics|As Seen on TV|700 Yonge v", where v is a downarrow. These adverts are exclusively seen at the cheap rate time, I.E. the times when the board contains adverts for itself.

There is a short rain shower at about 11am, but this quickly clears up, The weather for the rest of the day was perfect, dry but overcast so we didn't have to stand in direct sunlight.

I arrive at the meeting spot at about 12:30, and I stake out the org. Very little sidewalk activity, no body routers. Watching the main entrance, there is a guy in his fifties, and in an electric wheelchair, he sits outside the org smoking a cigarette, as he turns to go in, I see the back of his jacket. He has a Canadian OT logo on it (Canadian maple leaf from the flag with an O & T superimposed over it). I guess that he hasn't reached the right level of control over his BT's yet.

I watch the clams. A lady sea org in uniform. A heavyweight bouncer type, in white shirt, pants and suspenders (Smoking, of course). A guy I've seen before in clerical uniform.

12:50. I see a squirrel! Yes, one of Toronto's famous black squirrels is on the awning above the public area.

12:57 The Reverent Buttnor is spotted! And the first body router, a black guy in his late twenties or early thirties. He brings out the card table, and proceeds to ignore the hundreds of passer bys.

In fact, until we went outside, I didn't see a single person look at the book, take a ticket to the orientation film, or acknowledge the BR at all.

At 2 pm there are 3 picketers, Myself, D'art, Gregg & one observer, Miss U. The three picketers are equipped with Lisa McPherson T-Shirts, and Gregg & Myself go off for the picket supplies. The Metro Toronto Police park a crime prevention unit van conspicuously on the corner nearest the org, and Gregg goes to introduce himself, apparently the police have heard of the violence in Poole, and wish to ensure there isn't anything similar here. Note we did not tell them about Roland, they must have done their own research.

I was equipped with a twelve page/six sheet flyer, printed on a delightful salmon colour stock. I had approx. 240 copies, and Gregg has 500 copies of the RX on white. We were equipped with the three signs from before, and of course our Lisa t-shirts. I also carry a small supply of Xemu leaflets in German and French, Lisa's autopsy report and single copies of other reference stuff.

On site, our first encounter was with the Reverent Al Buttnor, our favorite OSA clam. Asks Gregg if he has the picket permit (of course we do) and if we have a copy with us (We don't, cause we don't require to). Notable absent from the previous pickets is the requests for our names.

Rev. Buttnor immediatly grabbed the phone, presumably phoning for reinforcements. Must have been cottage country weekend, as there wasn't any noticeable increase in the number of clams around the org. A quick recap, on the May 11th picket we had 2 photographers, 1 videographer, plus approx. 4 who only passed out leaflets & other anti-picket reactions.

Today, we had one sole photographer, no anti-picket leaflets and only a total of three body routers active in the whole three hours. In fact one of those (the black guy mentioned above), spend at least 15 minutes talking to someone who was apparently a friend of his, trying desperately to ignore our leaflets in the friends hands.

After approx. 45 minutes, Miss U, who was convinced she would remain a lurker, decided to become an active picketer and helped me give out orange leaflets. These leaflets were flying out of my hands. I'd had a minor sore throwght earlier in the week, and because of this I didn't want to do much shouting, but still I had people ripping them out of my hands.

At about this time, our police left, as they were needed for crowd control at a fire, and our 5th protester, Slippery Jim diGriz arrived. He acquired Gregg's sign, and a supply of RX's. and we were at our highest strength of the day.

At this point the Co$ put operation FB into full automatic. The Sea Org who was photographing the critics realized that he was behind, and tried to capture the two late arriving protesters, and he photographed Slippery Jim, and tried to photograph Miss U and Duke the dog. Now Miss U is shy, she doesn't want anyone photographing her, regardless of their Orgness, and she covers her face with the orange leaflet, and generally tries to prevent photography. Gregg is running a full commentry at the top of his voice and attracting a huge crowd, most of who take a leaflet to find out what it's all about. Gregg estimates that he gave out 50 leaflets in that short spell.

Our SO type doesn't give up, and even though we try covering her up with our picket signs as moving her around as required, the sea org type might have gotten a picture of her. This frightens Miss U and she feels that she has to leave now. I escort her away from the org, well out of camera range.

Miss U was a visitor to Toronto, visiting from her native Winnipeg, and probably won't get a chance to attend another picket. We'll miss you Miss U.

Eventually all good things come to an end, and at 5pm I have precisely 5 copies of the orange leaflet left. 4 in orange and the original. I give each of the picketers their copy, and keep one copy and the original for myself. Gregg has approx. 150 left of the RX special, and I've given our my copies of the autopsy report and some of the French & German Xemu's.

We head off in the direction of the car park, and we have a tail, our Sea Orgger wants to see where we parked. Sheesh! If you're going to tail someone, make yourself inconspicuous, wearing an ugly uniform and with a camera around your neck doesn't qualify.

We retire to the bar for post picket refreshments, and discuss our reactions, and one by one we head home. I was the last to leave, and as I was going, I overhead a conversation. It seems that a guy had driven past the org, saw us, stopped and parked, but by the time he got back, we'd gone. He was in luck! I gave him my copy of the leaflet.

All in all, a successful day.

Highlights

A very distressed lady came up asking for help, apparently her 15 year old son had done the OCA test, and since then she'd been getting harassed, the phone was ringing many times a day. We direct her to the Rev Buttnor, and we hope she got success.

One time they tried to get their numbers up for those seeing the orientation film. They announced it's starting, it's about to start, it's just started, any second now. As far as I can work out, it actually started at about 3:45, or 45 minutes late if you take their 'on the hour' schedule seriously.

They have the table display of Dianetics in a number of languages. Notably absent is French. Wake up guys! This is Canada, we're a bilingual country!

One body router takes the predictable attack route, we're psychs, we're paid to be here. D'art engages him in conversation, and the Rev Al. takes him off into the Org. We hope that we didn't get the poor guy into RPF.

As we're leaving, being tailed by the Sea Org, we pass by their chapel. This room has about 6 pews, a Crowley, sorry Scientology cross on the wall, and absolutely no signs of use. I work out that it's approx. 0.5% of the floor space.

As always, I'd like to thank the Metro Toronto Police, their presence is very much appreciated.