bob tarantino

Under Arrest Reviews

I would be remiss if I didn't note that Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe (available for less than $16 - cheap!) received a couple of favourable mentions during my absence.  Jeremy Patrick, writing at Jhaeman's Detritus, calls the tome a "fascinating, well-written book", and my bud Damian Penny noted it was "very entertaining".  We aim to please.

Under Arrest: Review

The ineffable Dr. Dawg has been generous enough to post a very detailed review of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe.  He was also generous enough (my cup spilleth over) to include in his review sentences like "Bob Tarantino is one of those lawyer/writers whose lucid style and wit can turn a potentially dreary subject into a genuinely interesting one" and "this is a book well worth the read".  But my selective and self-serving quoting does a disservice to Dawg's thoughtful and perceptive review - so check it out.  Looks like I need to add another beer to the tab I owe him.

The Great Canadian Crime Comic Caper

The publication of The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America, written by David Hajdu, has prompted a slew of stories in the media about the mid-1950s efforts in the US to censor the contents of comic books.  Canadians, being innovators in all things, can take pride [/sarcasm] in the fact that we were well in the vanguard on this one: Canada made it illegal to publish or sell "crime comics" nearly five years before the US Congress began looking into the matter.

Chapter One of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe provides a detailed examination of the history of the enactment of the "Fulton Bill", as well as the history of prosecutions thereunder.  Even better, the "crime comics" provisions of the Criminal Code remain in effect, as Sections 163(1)(b) and 163(7) - so it is technically still illegal in Canada to sell a crime comic.

Illegal Sex in Canada

As the Globe reports, effective Thursday, May 1, 2008, the age of consent for sexual intercourse in Canada will rise from 14 to 16.  Unfortunately, the government missed an opportunity to rectify a glaring incongruity in the Criminal Code: the criminality of anal sex.  As I detail in Chapter Four of Under Arrest (*ahem*), Section 159(1) of the Criminal Code makes it a crime (punishable by up to ten years' imprisonment) to engage in anal sex.  Which, if I might be permitted some bluntness, is retarded.  I digress. 

In addition to being nonsensical on its face, the law then gets wince-inducingly complicated.  Introduced in 1969, Section 159(2) carves out certain exceptions to the general prohibition: anal intercouse between (a) husband and wife or (b) two people both of whom is over 18 years of age.  Which means it is still illegal for two people under the age of 18 to engage in anal sex.

There's no apparent justification for this prohibition.  When the issue was last addressed by Parliament in 1988, the only pseudo-argument the government was able to come up with was that the prohibition was required to assist in preventing the transmission of the AIDS virus.

To make things even more absurd/interesting, Section 159 has been declared unconstitutional and of no force or effect in at least two provinces.  In Ontario, the Court of Appeal (in R v M(C) (1995), 98 CCC (3d) 481 (Ont CA)) declared the section to be unconstitutional and of no force or effect.  In Quebec, the Court of Appeal (in R v Roy (1998), 125 CCC (3d) 442 (Que CA)) declared the section to be unconstitutional and of no force or effect.  In Alberta, a decision of the Court of Queen's Bench (R v Roth, 2002 ABQB 145) declared the section to be unconstitutional and of no force or effect.

And yet the law remains on the books.  To summarize, Section 159 is of no force or effect in Ontario, Quebec and most likely in Alberta.  Elsewhere, homosexuals under the age of 18 (or heterosexuals under that same age (or even a 19 year old and a 17 year old) who are inclined to... er... explore) still face the very real possibility of criminal prosecution.  Quite why that should be the case is something that no federal government, Liberal or Conservative, has been forced to answer.  Which is a shame.

On TV 01.17.08

The good folks at Daytime Toronto will be interviewing me about Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 11am (I understand the show will be re-broadcast the same day at 4pm and 11pm).

Speaking of Under Arrest (which is back in stock at amazon.ca *ahem*), and it's startling (*ahem*) relevance to your daily life, Chapter Two (entitled, rather unimaginatively, "A Gunfight at High Noon? Too Uncivilized") should have been required reading for this guy, charged as he is with 42 counts of promoting and/or being present at an illegal "prize fight".  Charges for illegal prize fighting are fairly rare these days: in my research the most recent reported case I found was from a 1998 mixed martial arts tournament in Ontario.  Among other things, Under Arrest covers the history and law of duelling in Canada, along with prize fights (which used to be prosecuted with a fair bit of vigour), hockey violence and animal fights.  I quote:

Immersed in a world where on-demand savagery is available for download, saturated with violent imagery from boxing matches, bench-clearing brawls on television, movies, mixed martial arts tournaments and the exploits of their peers, perhaps the lifting of the cap on consensual violence has led to its normalization as part of the social fabric.  The assessment of whether that is good or ill, and the inevitable legal response to the problem, is likely to resemble the legal history we have already seen.

Pick up the book to find out what that legal history is.

Under Arrest - Update 12.15.07

If you want to quickly transform yourself into an obsessive self-Googler, publish a book.  I digress.  Anyways, I'm happy to report that both Amazon and Chapters Indigo have recently sold out of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe - I understand that both have more copies ordered, which should be in stock soon.  (Amazon's last five copies sold over the past few days, complete with online countdown - which means that, with my royalties, the last week will have provided me with funds enough to buy a cheeseburger.  Before taxes.  Woohoo!)  Also, the Pickering Public Library has listed Under Arrest as a recommendation for "Entertaining Non-Fiction" in their November 2007 newsletter.

"cast of lowlifes"

And here I thought the book would have no relevance to anyone.  As I explain in Chapter Five of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe, it remains a crime in Canada to publish blasphemous material.  That provision of our Criminal Code, as with so many, is derived from English law - where it appears that free speech is due to get a bit of a workout:

The leader of a small evangelical group went to Britain's High Court on Tuesday in a bid to sue the producers of ``Jerry Springer: The Opera" for blasphemy.

... Earlier this year, a lower court rejected a request to issue summonses against "Springer" producer John Thoday and Mark Thompson, director-general of the British Broadcasting Corp., which televised the show in 2005.  Green's lawyers are asking three High Court judges to allow private prosecution for blasphemous libel.

Evidently the English anti-blasphemy law has been successfully used as recently as 1977.

"should not have to pretend otherwise"

Father Raymond J. DeSouza had a post up at Full Comment (presumably mirrored in the print edition of the National Post) last week which bore the editorial lead-in "Canada’s permissive abortion regime should not prevent laws that address crimes against pregnant women".  What has prompted DeSouza's column is a lacuna in Canadian criminal law which I touched on in Chapter Eight of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe - namely, that it is not a crime to kill an unborn child.  To take the most egregious example, if someone stabs in the stomach a woman who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant thereby killing her unborn child, the attacker could not be charged with homicide (assuming, of course, that the mother survives the attack).  This is the result of a curious, but deliberate, interplay of various provisions in the Criminal Code: "homicide" only occurs when there has been the death of a human being, and a child only becomes a "human being" once it has "completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother".  Prior to that "complete procession", there isn't a "human being" which can be killed for purposes of the Criminal Code (there is one minor exception, which requires some pretty odd circumstances to be triggered: section 223(2) provides that if a person has caused an injury to a child before its birth which causes it die after it has already emerged alive from the womb, then a homicide charge can be made out.

This gap in the law, which was recognized as problematic by the Law Reform Commission of Canada in its 1989 Working Paper Crimes Against the Foetus, arose in the 1969 amendments to the Criminal Code.  Prior to that year, the Criminal Code made it a specific crime (section 271(1)) to cause the death of a "child" which had not yet become a "human being".  The 1969 amendments, which sought to replace the previous outright prohibition on abortion with a "therapeutic abortion" mechanism (which involved seeking approval from a committee of doctors), also resulted in the deletion of the earlier quasi-homicide language of section 271(1) - and when, in the Morgentaler decision in 1988, the Supreme Court struck down the therapeutic abortion provisions, the old provisions didn't, of course, magically spring back to life.  And so, we have the result which obtains today: there is no "crime" of killing a fetus, even if such killing occurs against the will of the mother.

On the Radio Redux

In the "house-keeping" department, more than a month ago Peter Anthony Holder was kind enough to host me on his radio show, and we spent about twenty minutes talking about Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe.  Holder is a dream come true for authors with books to plug: informed, engaging and happy to provide you with sufficient airtime to get into the meat of your work.  He was also kind enough to provide me with a recording of the segment.  Anyone interested in taking a listen can download it here.

On TV 10.29.07

Since I'm at my most ravishing very, very, very early in the morning, you'll be lucky enough to enjoy the sight as the nice folks at Toronto's Breakfast Television will be having me on their show on Monday, October 29, 2007 to chat about Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe.  Evidently I need to be at the CHUM/City building at 6:30am, and then I kind of kick around for a while waiting to be put on the air, during which time I will bother the people working there about whether they knew Steve Anthony when he was a MuchMusic VJ , because he was the best.  Shouts to the publicity team at Dundurn for putting this together.  Pace Kevin Frankish, I will not be wearing suspenders.

On the Radio 09.16.07

Mike McIntyre has been gracious enough to host me tonight at around 8:30pm (EST) on his radio show Crime and Punishment - you can listen live at various stations across the country, including CJOB.

On the Radio 09.13.07

Lotta love to the Dundurn publicity team (with special shouts to Ali): the radio onslaught continues unabated.  On Thursday, September 13, 2007, the following have been gracious enough to host me:

• at 1am (!) Peter Anthony Holder (CJAD AM 800 - Montreal and CFRB 1010AM - Toronto)

• at noon (EST) / 9am (PST) Joe Easingwood (C-FAX 1070AM - Victoria)

On the Radio 09.07.07

The good folks at AM800 (CKLM) in Windsor, Ontario have booked me for an interview to discuss Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe on Friday, September 7, 2007 at around 3:48pm.  Hosting will be Melanie Deveau.

On the Radio 09.05.07

Under Arrest promotional activities are beginning in earnest, with the good folks at the following radio stations being gracious enough to host me this coming Wednesday, September 5, 2007:

• Tim Denis in the Mornings on 610 CKTB (St. Catharines) - 7:55am
• Eddie Matthews and Marianne Zahoruk on CJCS 1240 (Stratford) - 8:15am

Under Arrest - Update 08.28.07

Hi.  You may remember me - I used to blog here.

One of the funny/annoying things about practicing law is that everything can be progressing along all hunky-dory, you answer some phone calls and open some emails, then suddenly it's six weeks later and you realize you've been spending fourteen hours a day at the office - and September is around the corner.  It's a grand ol' profession.  I digress.

Look what came in the mail today:

Woot.

I have to commend the design group at Dundurn: the book looks great (I'm responsible for the interior, so I'll leave the merits of that to others to decide).  And it should be making its way to a bookstore near you over the next few weeks.  Feel free to write in with any mentions of sightings, and, if you get a chance to read it, with any corrections, admonishments, criticisms, words of support or items related to the subject-matter which you think other readers might be interested in hearing.

While the opportunity still presents itself, readers are encouraged to purchase Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe from Amazon.ca, where it is currently on offer for the very reasonable price of $15.74, a 37% ($9.25) savings off the cover price.  I assume the price will revert to the cover price after August 30 - so get while the gettings good.

At some point I'll return to blogging at a relatively regular pace - it's been frustrating to have been out of the loop during some interesting happenings (like, say, the Canadian Bar Association and the organized bar losing its collective mind over Phillip Slayton's Maclean's interview and its accompanying cover), but such is life.  Hope y'all are enjoying the summer - and have a good final long weekend!

Under Arrest - Update 07.16.07

Received word today that Under Arrest is now at the printers.  Which means... well, actually, I don't have any idea what that means.  But most likely it means the book will be printed, back from the printers and available in bookstores before the end of, say, August.  I think. 

I received the proofs a couple of weeks ago and everything looked fine, with two quibbles:

• the endnotes are in the same sized text as the body of the work, which to me smacks of padding - I sort of thought that 70,000+ words would look a little more fulsome in print, but these aren't exactly a dense 224 pages in the .pdf file in which the proofs are delivered; and
• I'm still not completely sold on the presence of the illustrations (plus, in what I'm pretty sure was entirely unintentional, the illustration which graces the Introduction looks an awful lot like Conrad Black with his hands bound - you'll need to see the final printed version to see what I'm getting at).

I should note that the cover, of which I was also provided a proof, looks great - they have a heck of a design department over at Dundurn.  More updates shortly.

Under Arrest - Update 07.02.07

When your book gets delayed, you rely on James Bow to rather adroitly recast what was to have been a launch party into a joint launch / "promotional event" - and it works rather nicely.  On Saturday I was pleased to join James as he presented the Toronto launch of Fathom Five at the Front Street East location of Nicholas Hoare Books - a fantastic store which rather elegantly makes the argument for the primacy of independent booksellers.  A cozy group gathered to hear James read from the second volume of his Unwritten Books series, and to listen as I gave a brief teaser presentation about Canadian laws on sex drawn from Chapter Four (entitled "Keep Your Pants On") of the forthcoming Under Arrest.  As succinctly reviewed by Mr. Bow, the discussion of prostitution and tax deductible expenses incurred by brothels, coupled with the ongoing narrative of Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister, made for an "eclectic" afternoon.  Which is as I prefer it.

From Nicholas Hoare, a small group retreated to the Flatiron and Firkin.  Conversation was joined by a motley crew which included Jason Cherniak, Brian Mertens and Mark Dowling.  Many hours and drinks later, an even smaller group retreated further to a rather fetching Irish bar which I had absolutely no idea existed, whereat Mr. Mertens was disappointed by the crisps and Mr. Dowling schooled me on how to pronounce the name of the Irish county of Laois (which pronunciation is, I'm still pretty sure, a joke that the Irish are playing on the rest of us - akin to how "Houston Street" in NYC is pronounced, a quick way to determine if someone has spent any amount of time in that great metropolis).  We were chased out of that bar by a synthesizer-playing musical duo, but I look very much forward to reconvening when the book is actually, you know, released.

Under Arrest - Update 06.25.07

I think it's probably safe to say that I'm no longer down with the publisher - the previous publication date of June 30 is obviously not going to happen, I still don't have galley proofs (the final stage before printing), and it's just come to my attention that Amazon has now changed their page to indicate a release date of August 30.  *grump*  Anyone interested in publishing my next book is invited to email me.

In any event, make sure you don't miss out on the quasi-book launch/blogstravaganza scheduled for next Saturday, June 30.  From 2pm to 4pm, join James Bow and myself at Nicholas Hoare Books at 45 Front Street East in Toronto.  James will be hosting the launch of Fathom Five, the second volume in his Unwritten Books series - and I will be the guy looking like his publisher should have had a book ready for sale.  The assembled masses will then proceed across the street to the The Flatiron and Firkin for drinks, discussion and (*searches thesaurus for another "d" word*) diversion.  See y'all there.

Under Arrest - Update 06.07.07

First the bad news: the publisher informed me today that Under Arrest will not be available for release on June 30, 2007, but will likely be delayed a couple of weeks.  Why?  I'll let y'all figure it out - I handed in the manuscript back in November.

Now the good news: it takes a lot more than a taciturn publisher to stand in the way of a blogstravaganza!  On Saturday, June 30, 2007, join us for the launch of James Bow's Fathom Five at Nicholas Hoare Books at 45 Front Street East in downtown Toronto (just west of Church Street).  From 2-4pm, James will be hosting the launch of the second volume in the Unwritten Books series - and I will be doing... well, something in connection with Under Arrest, though there won't be copies available for sale (you can pre-order, though!).  Immediately afterwards, we will rampage across the street to The Flatiron and Firkin, where a blogstravaganza will unfold.

I had the privilege of reading a late draft of Fathom Five, and I can safely say that anyone who enjoyed The Unwritten Girl is in for a treat: James has a gift for pitching the tone of his writing to match the emotional weight of the circumstances his characters encounter.  Fathom Five is thus darker, richer and more compelling than The Unwritten Girl - just as its characters mature, so has the prose.  And if you missed The Unwritten Girl, this is a great point to jump into the series: the volumes are all self-contained.

What's a blogstravaganza, you ask?  A gathering of bloggers, blog readers, friends and hangers-on.  This will be the first blogstravaganza I've hosted that has the added element of a book launch, so it should be interesting to see how it goes (reminder to self: drink after the book launch ... after).  We're looking forward to seeing y'all there.

Under Arrest - Update 06.03.07

On Friday afternoon last week I handed in my comments on the edits on the Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe manuscript.  Meaning the publisher, Dundurn Press, took the manuscript I had submitted back in November and did their work on it, then sent it over to me to (a) review (and either confirm or complain about) the changes they had made, and (b) check (again) the accuracy of quotations and citations.  One of the funny dynamics of the publishing industry is that events proceed at a pace which is either glacial or frenetic - despite the last six months, we're now firmly in the "bug-eyed-panic" stage in anticipation of printed copies of the book being available for the end of June.

I was somewhat suprised (but pleasantly!) to see that my editor exercised a relatively light hand in going through the manuscript - and the changes he made were decidedly for the better.  Because so much of my writing (such as it is) to date has been done either for a philosophy undergrad, law school or academic publication, coupled with a probably unhealthy affection for the work of Jacques Derrida, my writing style tends to be heavy on the parenthetical, the semi-colon, the colon and the em dash.  Short declarative sentences (notwithstanding this one) are not my forte.  That style doesn't lend itself to easy reading, however - and one of the big challenges for me in writing Under Arrest was (a) finding the correct "tone" to my writing (e.g., what's a concise way to explain stare decisis?) and (b) marrying that tone to the somewhat baroque tendency in my writing style.  I've never been a "multiple drafts" writer - I tend to write once, review for obvious typos, then submit.  Thankfully, I think my editor did a great job at simplifying my occasionally ponderous prose and helping me to combine the aforementioned (a) and (b).

Anyways.  I'm sure there will be a couple of items still to be discussed between the editor and myself - should references to "the Queen" always be capitalized? (Yes, I say.)  What about "the Charter"? (Yes, I say.)  Is it acceptable to use the stylization "(in)famous"?  (Guess.)  The next step, once any stylistic disputes are addressed, is proofs (i.e., a mock-up of the actual type-set and printed volume).  And then the printer.  Should be worth a laugh.

Under Arrest - Update 05.30.07

I received the edited manuscript from my editor last Friday - when I just happened to be in the middle of a roadtrip to Chicago (remind me to tell you about the time I got nailed for speeding in Michigan...).  I'm just going through the process of checking the edits, double-checking the citations, questioning whether anyone is going to care enough to read the damn thing...  You know, the usual.

Anyways, it's been a bit of a treat to read something which I last looked at in November of last year - I had forgotten about some of the nuggets of Canadian legal history which had been unearthed in the process of writing the book.  It's also ... wordy.  Lots of words.  But some of the cases discussed are pretty funny (well, to me) - the chapter on sex laws contains a great one about some prostitutes in Toronto being charged with "maintaining a common bawdy-house" ... after being caught having sex in cars.  So, can a Prius be a brothel? Find out June 30th when Under Arrest is released.

Under Arrest - Update 05.22.07

I had lunch with my Dundurn editor last week, and he was kind enough to show me copies of the illustrations which are being inserted into Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe.  As I mentioned in this post, the use of illustrations is something that I haven't quite gotten my arms around - but I'm pleased with the illustrator's work: witty and distinctive, in some cases looking as much like something you'd see on the op-ed pages as anything else.  There are ten illustrations in all, one for each chapter plus one for the introduction.  I'm not sure, but I think the one of the Queen holding Stephen Harper's smiling (but decapitated) head may be the best of the bunch - a drawing which, I swear, makes perfect sense in the context of Chapter 3 (Saying Bad Things About People in Power - Crimes Against the State). 

Ultimately, the threshold has been exceeded for what would have made the illustrations acceptable to me: I was worried that they would distract from the text - to the contrary, though, I think they enhance it.

The use of illustrations when not provided by the author are basically entirely an editorial prerogative: the publisher decides which illustrator to engage and which illustrations to commission.  In the case of Under Arrest, the process was fairly simple: they gave a copy of the manuscript to the illustrator and she took her inspiration from what she read.

Up next: I'm awaiting an edited copy of the manuscript which I review, followed by the final page proofs (i.e., a .pdf file containing the type-set pages as they will look in printed and bound form).  We're evidently still on track for a June 30 publication date (i.e., the date on which copies will be available from the warehouse).  So don't forget the blogstravaganza!

Blogstravaganza! (Stay Loose)

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blogstravaganza!

Damn straight.  For a few months now, fellow Dundurn author James Bow and I have been covertly planning a series of joint in-store and library appearances to promote our respective books: Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe and Fathom Five (being volume two in the Unwritten Books series).  Originally, we had hoped to start our grand tour of southern Ontario venues in late May.  Then we realized that our books were coming out nearly two months apart, that the "official" promotional efforts for them were unlikely to overlap, and that if James was going to wait until I had an actual book to flog, he'd lose precious time to promote his own work.  I like to think that my relative cluelessness about how the book industry works is part of my charm.

Anyways, we largely abandoned joint appearances until later in the summer, when we would both have copies of our books in hand. 

However. 

On Saturday, June 30, 2007, from 2pm to 4pm, James and I will be hosting a book launch at Nicholas Hoare Books, located at 45 Front Street East in downtown Toronto.  Immediately following the happenings at Nicholas Hoare, the assembled horde will flood like lemmings across Front Street to The Flatiron and Firkin, where a blogstravaganza will commence with great enthusiasm.  Because he is a righteous dude, Joey (Accordion Guy) deVilla has agreed to assist us in "hosting" the blogstravaganza - if we play our cards right, an eclectic group of us may just once again end up mowing through greasy Chinese food at a brightly-lit restaurant on Spadina at 2am, fighting over whether Ferris Bueller's Day Off was the best movie of the 80s.  (Yes, it was.)

[photo credits: Dundurn, Dundurn, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Where You At, Rock?

Back in November, when I decided to resume blogging, it was intended that this blog would function at least in large part as an exercise in narcissism self-promotion for various writing projects.  For a variety of reasons, but mostly due to laziness on my part, the extra-curricular writing hasn't proceeded at quite the pace I would have liked.  However, now that the release of Under Arrest is in the (relatively) near future, and having been inspired by a variety of sources (among them: James Bow's frequent progress reports on his latest book, and the news that Canadian sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer's recent announcement of his inking of a six-figure (!) deal for republication rights to his previous novels), it's time to ramp up both the writing and the blogging about the writing.  Or something.  A few snippets, none earth-shattering:

• I had the pleasure earlier today of doing a seminar-style presentation on Canadian defamation law to the good folks at The Weather Network, at their offices in Oakville, Ontario; very cool building they're headquartered in, and the attendees had some perceptive and pertinent questions - hopefully I was able to provide some marginally interesting information
• Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe is evidently still on schedule for a June 30, 2007 release; as I navigate the creator side of the publishing industry (as distinct from the legal side) I'm learning some interesting tidbits; f'rinstance: amazon.ca lists the book (currently at #448,905 in sales! woohoo!) with a June 30 "release date" - but that just means the date the book is available for shipping from the warehouse - actual copies likely won't be in bookstores until early in July
• notwithstanding what I just told you, James Bow and I are finalizing plans for a big book-related blogstravaganza at the end of June
• I'm hoping to have a sample chapter from Under Arrest available for you to, er, enjoy (fingers-crossed) some time soon
• I found out earlier this week from my editor at Dundurn that Dundurn has followed through on plans to commission some illustrations for Under Arrest - I had initially been somewhat hesitant when the idea was presented to me, but I think it could work out quite well; I was somewhat concerned about the tone of the book being compromised by the illustrations - I tried to avoid having the book read like a "bathroom reader" of quirky laws, and the notion of illustrations seemed to weight the balance away from a more sober reading experience; in the end, though, while striking the right tone in the text was one of the most difficult tasks I confronted, I think I may have veered too far towards dustiness - so hopefully the illustrations will have the effect of correcting the sobriety of the writing; I'm expecting to see samples of the illustrations shortly and will report back here on the results
• here is the goal for the rest of the year: one short commentary piece on mechanical royalties in the Canadian online context; one long academic piece on copyright duration for Canadian film and television projects; one novel, currently entitled A Garbled Syntax; total progress on each to date: actually, this bullet point is pretty much it - time to go get started

Shouts to TPL

It's my understanding that some writers are inclined to bemoan the borrowing of their books from the public library system - presumably on the theory that each such borrowing represents what otherwise could have been a (royalty-generating) sale.  I take the point of view that I'm stunned anyone, anywhere, would want to read anything I've written, and I'll take readers wherever I can find them.  Hence, lots of love to the Dundurn team for their promotional work and to the Toronto Public Library system for ordering forty-two (count 'em) copies of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe.  Readers may also be interested to note that Canadian writers are able to receive compensation from the Public Lending Right Commission of Canada, which remits royalties to authors on account of borrowings from public libraries.

Under Arrest - Update 03.15.07

Peopl say to me, Hey! Bob! What the f*#% is going on with the book?  (I paraphrase.)  To which I can only respond: I don't have the faintest clue.  So far as I know, it is still scheduled for release in June 2007 - but beyond that, I'm as in the dark as anyone else.  The manuscript was handed in last November, I've received the portion of the advance to which I'm entitled at this point, and I'm awaiting edits from the publisher.  Maybe they hated it so much that they've decided to just entirely cut off communications with me.  We'll see.  In the meantime, at the risk of attempting to generate interest in a book which may never be released, I figured I would start giving people an idea of what they can expect when reading Under Arrest.

A couple of the themes which (hopefully) come out in the book are that the law (a) is contingent on current social circumstances and (b) has an odd habit of continually revisting (and revising its assessment of) societal issues.  The complete title of the book - Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe - is actually a truncated version of my preferred title: Under Arrest - Canadian Laws and Legal History You Won't Believe.  While there are some decidedly odd laws currently on the books, we've been subject to some even stranger ones in the past - or, if "strange" isn't the proper descriptive, at least "surprising" should cover it.  Because history is such an undervalued (and undertaught) discipline, many Canadians have little information about what the legal system once looked like in this country.

I come to this because of this story:

[Quebec]'s human rights tribunal has fined a Montreal-area bar $16,000 for refusing to serve two black men in 2003 because it would be bad for business.

... Seydou Diallo and Mamadou Gologo, both of Malian origin, were told on the night of Sept. 13, 2003, and again six days later, that Le Surf bar had a no-blacks policy because their presence would hurt business.

I trust no one is surprised to learn that it is now illegal to refuse to serve a customer on the basis of that customer's race.  While I can't promise insight, I can hopefully offer "interesting": up until roughly the 1960s it was perfectly legal in Canada for a business to discriminate on the basis of race (or various other grounds like religion, national origin, etc.).  In an eerily exact precursor to the matter reported above, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed in 1940 in the case of Christie v York Corporation, [1940] 81 SCR 139, that a Quebec bar was perfectly within its rights when it refused to serve a black customer (there were some decisions which went the other way, usually on the basis of breach of contract, i.e., on entering a bar or retaurant, a customer had created a "contract" by accepting the "offer" made by the establishment to provide a service - if the business then refused to serve the customer, they had engaged in a breach of contract - but the dominant trend of the cases went along with the finding in Christie v York Corporation).  It was only with the advent of provincial human rights legislation in the 1960s that matters changed.

If reading about that sort of legal anecdote is something you find compelling, Under Arrest provides nine chapters and nearly 70,000 words of similar stuff.  Buy early! And in bulk!

Under Arrest - Getting Here (Pt 2)

So, where was I... Part 1 of Getting Here, an occasional series chronicling how the book Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe (scheduled for publication in June 2007), can be found here.  We left off the (no doubt thrilling) tale at the point just after the National Post published the column which formed the kernel of the eventual book: some musings on the fact that it is still technically a crime in Canada to publish blasphemous material [note: link is to .pdf document].

A few weeks after that column was printed, while walking through Toronto's Kensington Market, I came across the next building block in the process of writing the book: a used book being sold off a blanket on the sidewalk.

Pay Attention!

As I touch on in one of the chapters from the upcoming Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe, sometimes clients get grumpy at their lawyers for paying so much attention to such seemingly trivial matters as spelling and punctuation.  The tendency is completely understandable: lawyers tend to get paid by the hour, after all, so you generally want them to be worrying about material matters, and not whether a semicolon is in the correct spot.  But sometimes, it's really important where the comma goes, as Rogers has learned much to their chagrin:

It began as an arcane legal dispute between two Canadian companies, but a fight between Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc. over the placement of a comma in a multimillion-dollar contract has ignited an international debate over the importance of language.

… The comma quarrel — which threatens to cost Rogers at least $1-million because of a simple grammatical issue in the contract — has been called an English teacher's delight, reinforcing the value of basic punctuation and grammar in the business and legal worlds.

Or consider the case of this poor bastard, who meant to go to Sydney, but ended up in the rather less enchanting Sidney.

I Knew It Wasn't Just a Dream

Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe, scheduled for publication in June 2007, has been added over at amazon.ca.  You are gently encouraged to buy in bulk and often.

Under Arrest - Getting Here (Pt 1)

Hold onto your seats.  This is the first of an occasional series of posts tracing the backstory to one of the primary reasons for me getting back into blogging: the scheduled June 2007 publication of Under Arrest - Canadian Laws You Won't Believe, brought to you by the good folks at Dundurn Press.  Set aside reading time now! Buy lots of copies! Feel the love! Woooo!

The story begins with one condition, two sources of inspiration and some cartoons.  (Since this entire series of posts is an exercise in unrestrained self-adulation, you'll forgive the fact that they may be staggeringly indulgent.)

The condition is compulsive writing.  Always wanted to write.  Can't explain it.  Need to write.  I'm not afflicted by any sort of retrograde Vedder-esque I'm an artist, maaan hang-ups, and thus am completely unconflicted about the notion of making money from writing - but I've also been virtually incapable of actually making money from the endeavor.  Happily, that changed a couple of years ago when I was able to leverage the miniscule attention paid to my blogging efforts into a couple of paid articles.  I said above that we would be dealing with one condition; I'll need to amend that to two conditions.  Editors, like the rest of us, generally prefer to keep aggravations in their environment to a minimum, so once they're relatively satisfied that you can (a) come up with a decent idea on which to hang an article or column and deliver it on deadline, and (b) string sentences together in a fashion which puts you somewhere above the average monkey with a keyboard, you can often count on them to be at least open to hearing about new ideas with which you may come up.  Let's call this the "Fool me once..." condition of the editing universe.

Before I get to the sources of inspiration, we'll need to deal with the cartoons.  You may recall them.  If you need a refresher, this CTV news story and this National Post story should bring you up to speed.  Back in January and February of 2006, Canada's Western Standard newsmagazine decided to publish eight of twelve cartoons which had originally been published in Denmark, and which were argued by some to be offensive to Muslims.  All kinds of brouhaha erupted: Indigo refused to stock the magazine, Air Canada refused to place the issue in their lounges and histrionic crank Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress thundered that he was going to seek to lay "hate crimes" charges against the magazine's publishers. 

All of which led me to ponder, Fine, but how can I get some action out of this?

The way the brain works is funny.  Every once in a while, a long-forgotten tidbit of information burbles to the surface, sometimes for no discernible reason, sometimes because relevant circumstances prompt it.  This was one of those times.  You're certainly not taught this in law school, and I can't say that I open the Criminal Code with any regularity during my practice, but at some point during one of those Criminal Law lectures or while passing time searching desperately for anything but what I was supposed to be studying, I came across Section 296 of the Criminal Code - which makes it a crime to publish a "blasphemous libel".  This, I thought, this would make an interesting column.  I'll leave it to you to decide whether that was an accurate assessment [note: link is to .pdf document; also available in .pdf at the articles page].

So I emailed the editor of the National Post and pitched the idea.  He had published some of my stuff previously, the "Fool me once..." condition operated as it should, and he, bless him, fell for it.  The piece was published on February 13, 2006.

[Next time: the sources of inspiration, the (purportedly) on-going series and the sweating begins]