TORONTO, October 1, 2021. The six protests organized by the Canadian Association for Free Expression outside the South Toronto Detention Centre played a definite role in political prisoner Dr. James Sears' release on early parole this morning. "Believe me, those protests helped you get early parole," a guard had told Dr. Sears.
Dr. Sears emerged bearded and very thin, but cheerful, after serving four months of a 12 months sentence (the maximum) for writing satire of Jews and radical feminists, contrary to Canada's notorious "hate law" (Sec. 319 of the Criminal Code).
He told supporters who hugged him and gave him a bouquet of flowers that he had gotten on well with fellow prisoners and most of the guards. The prison food was, he said, "garbage better than hospital food, but not as good as army food."
"Freedom of speech is dying in Canada and will die because too many people just don't care. People may have to leave this country for freedom."
A new generation of free speech activists will have to join the fight, he explained.
"People should not be afraid of prison," he told his supporters. I'm 58 years old and survived," he said. In prison, he wrote 300 pages of several books, including a fictitious prison romance, based on reality, he grinned, between a political prisoner and a female guard.
Several bad things happened to him in prison. "I was kept for 27 days in isolation. That was illegal. The maximum is 15." Even worse, prison authorities never gave him the legal papers he needed to argue his appeal. They ended up in his property bag.
He said, as part of his probation, a propaganda course on anti-social behaviour. He looks forward to this as he hopes to convert the teachers.
"I was a first time offender," he said, "but I was sentenced to a year in prison -- the maximum! One of my cellmates, who wished me the best of luck as I left, had been sentenced to nine and a half weeks. He'd stabbed a man, stolen a truck and had been found with a quantity of fentanyl." Just as in the old Soviet Union, common criminals are seen by the state as a sympathetic class. On the other hand, political dissidents receive the harshest treatment of the law. "Hate speech," he said, "is considered the worst of the worst."
It was a warm sunny Autumn morning: "I have been released from one prison into a COVID prison," he said to applause from the free speech supporters.
He promised that he'd be writing about "the toxic culture" among the prison guards.
In this video, Dr. James Sears was greeted by compatriots at the Toronto South Detention Center. He was wrongfully convicted of hate speech and sentenced to 1 year in jail.
Thank you to Leslie Bory for making this video at the scene in Toronto.
