Gary Botting | |
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| Born | Gary Norman Botting (1943-07-19)19 July 1943 (age 82) |
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Education | Studied atTrent University (B.A.),Memorial University of Newfoundland (M.A.),University of Alberta (Ph.D., M.F.A.),University of Calgary (LL.B./J.D.),University of British Columbia (LL.M., Ph.D.) |
| Alma mater | Trent University |
| Occupation(s) | Lawyer (retired),legal scholar,journalist,playwright,novelist,poet |
| Years active | 1961– |
| Employer(s) | South China Morning Post,Peterborough Examiner,University of Alberta,University of Calgary,Simon Fraser University,University of Washington,University of British Columbia |
| Known for | Appellate lawyer with expertise inextradition and dangerous offenders; critic ofJehovah's Witnesses; plays; poetry |
| Notable work | The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses,Fundamental Freedoms and Jehovah's Witnesses,Wrongful Conviction in Canadian Law,Extradition between Canada and the United States,Canadian Extradition Law Practice,Campbell's Kids (novel),Crazy Gran (novel) |
| Spouse(s) | Heather Harden (1966–2000); Virginia ("Ginny") Martin (2011–) |
| Children | 4 |
| Awards | U.S. National Science Fair – International; U.S.National Academy of Sciences;American Institute of Biological Sciences; Alberta Culture playwriting awards; University of British Columbia Paetzold Fellow; Canada Council postdoctoral fellowships (law); Trent University distinguished alumni award (2015) |
Gary Norman Arthur Botting (born 19 July 1943)[1] is aCanadian legal scholar andcriminal defense lawyer (now retired) as well as a poet, playwright, novelist, and critic of literature and religion, in particular Jehovah's Witnesses. The author of 40 published books,[2] he remains one of the country's leading authorities onextradition law.[3][4]He is said to have had "more experience in battling the extradition system than any otherCanadianlawyer."[5][6]
Botting was born in Oakley House,Frilford, nearRAF Abingdon nearOxford,England on 19 July 1943. He was christened in the Church of England Parish Church of St. James the Great inRadley, Berkshire. His father,Pilot Officer Norman Arthur BottingDFC, aDam Buster with617 Squadron, was killed in action over Germany on 15 September 1943 when Gary was less than two months old—on his older sister Mavis' second birthday. Following the war, their mother Joan, a teacher, took up residence with Group CaptainLeonard CheshireVC, the father of their younger sister, Elizabeth, atGumley Hall nearMarket Harborough,Leicestershire[7] and later she and the children moved with Cheshire toLe Court, the mansion he had acquired from his aunt inHampshire.[8] After witnessing the bombing ofNagasaki at the end of World War II, Cheshire, who had been raisedHigh Anglican, began to examine various religions.[9] Joan and he agreed about the nature of God as a person.[10] Joan was baptized as a Jehovah's Witness in September 1948 and expected Cheshire to follow; when he converted to Roman Catholicism later that year instead, she moved with the children back to Radley.[11]
Botting attended the Church of England Primary School in Radley. One day when pedaling back from school he found a largesphinx moth, "a rare and portentous Death's-Head Hawk (Acherontia atropos)" at the side of the road.[12] Later, inCambridge, he began collecting moths in earnest.[13] On Elizabeth's eighth birthday, 8 January 1954, the Botting family arrived in Fort Erie, Ontario as immigrants to Canada.[1]
In his early teens Botting began to experiment at home with the hybridization of moths, developing his own technique entailing surgical transplantation of female pheromonal scent sacs.[14] Exhibits of his hybrid moths won top honours at the Ontario (Canada) and United States National Science Fairs two years in a row—in 1960 for "Interesting Variations of the Cynthia Silk Moth", and in 1961 for "Intergeneric Hybridization Among Giant Silk Moths".[15] In particular, he cross-bred the North AmericanPolyphemus moth (then calledTelea polyphemus) with Japanese and Indian giant silk moths of the genusAntheraea, pointing out that the Polyphemus moth really belonged to that genus.[16] The Polyphemus moth was subsequently renamedAntheraea polyphemus to accord with his observations.
In the summer of 1960 he was sponsored by theAmerican Institute of Biological Sciences on a lecture tour of the US to explicate his experiments.[17] Later that year the USNational Academy of Sciences sponsored him on a lecture tour of India.[18] While in India in January 1961, Botting was befriended byJ. B. S. Haldane,[19] who decades earlier had applied statistical research to the natural selection of moths.[20] In the 1960s, Haldane's wife,Helen Spurway, was also researching the genetics of giant silk moths of the genusAntheraea. Helen Spurway, J.B.S. andKrishna Dronamraju were present at the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Kolkata when 1960 US National Science Fair winner in botany Susan Brown reminded the Haldanes that she and Botting had a previously scheduled event that would prevent them from accepting an invitation to a banquet proposed by J.B.S. and Helen in their honour and scheduled for that evening. After the two students had left the hotel, Haldane went on his much-publicized hunger strike to protest what he regarded as a "U.S. insult".[21] Six decades later, Botting's January 1961 encounter with Haldane and their conversations regarding the peppered moth were still generating controversy, even in the pages of the reveredBiological Journal of the Linnean Society.[22] Botting received the US National Pest Control Award when he demonstrated that his experiments had practical applications beyond producing finer silk.[23] In 1964 he experimented with feeding caterpillars juvenile hormones and vitamin B12 to keep Luna moths (Actias luna) and cecropia moths (Hyalophora cecropia) in the larval stage aninstar longer than normal, resulting in larger cocoons and larger adult moths.[24]
Botting was raised as aJehovah's Witness. At age five, with his sister Mavis (then seven), Botting began going from house to house distributingThe Watchtower andAwake!,[25] and the following year gave his first sermon about "Noah and the Ark" at theCambridgeshire Labour Hall in Cambridge, England.[26] Mavis and Gary attended the semi-official Theodena Kingdom Boarding School in Suffolk, run by Rhoda Ford, the sister of Percy Ford, at that time the head of Jehovah's Witnesses in Great Britain.[27] Botting later documented the harsh discipline by caning meted out to him at the hands of Ms. Ford, who had set up the school in defiance of Thorpeness bylaws; he ran away from school, and contracted double pneumonia. As a result of his mother's intervention, the school was shut down, Ms. Ford was disfellowshipped from Jehovah's Witnesses, and her brother demoted.[28] In 1953, Gary's maternal grandmother Lysbeth Turner, unimpressed by her daughter's choice of religion, attempted to expand Gary's religious horizons by introducing him toGerald Gardner, the principal advocate of "the old religion" ofWicca to which she adhered.
Botting's lay preaching continued after his arrival in Canada at age ten. He entered the "industrial arts" (rather than "academic") stream in high school, majoring in drafting and machine shop.[29] In July 1955, Botting was baptized as a "dedicated" Jehovah's Witness at a convention in New York City.[30] In July 1961, Watch Tower vice-president F.W. Franz assigned Botting the task of smugglingWatchtowers and anti-Francisco Franco tracts into Spain, where Jehovah's Witnesses were banned.[31] From 1961 to 1963, Botting volunteered in Hong Kong as a "pioneer" missionary, supporting himself by working as a journalist for theSouth China Morning Post.[32] Once he returned from Hong Kong, he attendedTrent University to study literature and philosophy. In 1965, thePeterborough Examiner published a full-page editorial on Botting's personal dilemma, "Evolution and the Bible: Faith in Science or Faith in God a Choice for Man."[33] Botting later admitted that his discussions with Haldane in India in 1961 had had a profound effect on his way of looking at the world, although the process of shaking the social imperatives imposed by his religion took decades.[34]
Disenchanted with organized Christian religion in general and Jehovah's Witnesses in particular, in 1975 Botting wrote a semi-autobiographical poem sequence[35] satirizing his experiences as a missionary and the fact that Armageddon had not arrived by October 1975 as Jehovah's Witnesses had predicted.[36] His playWhatever Happened to Saint Joanne? (1982) depicted the existential struggle and moral dilemma of leaving a fundamentalist sect.[37] Another of his plays first produced by the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta depicted the forming of a covenstead in which the protagonist priestess rejects her fundamentalist background and protects herself and those she loves with charms, spells and rituals.[38]
In 1984, Gary andHeather Botting co-authoredThe Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses,[39] an exposé of the inner workings, shifting doctrines, linguistic quirks and "mental regulating" of members of the group. It graphically compared the religion's closed social paradigms to the "Newspeak" and thought control depicted in Orwell's novel.[40] The book sold out its first edition of 5000 copies within weeks of its release.[41] In 1993, Botting publishedFundamental Freedoms and Jehovah's Witnesses, an academic work about Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada and their role in pressing for the development of theCanadian Bill of Rights and what eventually became theCanadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[42]
By 1982 Botting had acceptedDarwinian evolution as undeniable fact.[43] At the same time, he thoroughly excoriated the "Big Bang" theory, maintaining thatAlbert Einstein had prematurely deferred toEdwin Hubble's theory of an expanding universe rather than relying on his own calculations of 1907 in which he predicted agravitational redshift, observable in every massive stellar or galactic body in space.[44] Rather than regarding himself as an essentialist like Iris Murdoch or an existentialist like Jean-Paul Sartre, Botting has described himself as anextensionist: all things, including human understanding, can be explained as extensions of mind and body in space and time.[45] LikeRichard Dawkins, of whose brand of genetic theory—and unabashed atheism—Botting has been a staunch advocate, he was admittedly influenced by the observations and opinions ofJ. B. S. Haldane.[46]
In September 1961, Botting left Canada for Hong Kong initially to become a missionary for Jehovah's Witnesses; but he had to support himself, and soon became first a proofreader and then a full-time reporter for theSouth China Morning Post. This led to many adventures which he chronicled in his serializedOccupational Hazard: The Adventures of a Journalist.[47] Soon journalism became a priority and he became one of the main feature writers for theSouth China Sunday Post-Herald.[48] He returned to Canada and in 1964 began to work for thePeterborough Examiner,[49] then owned byRobertson Davies, at the same time attending Trent University, where he was editor of the student newspaper,Trent Trends, and literary magazine,Tridentine. He became fast friends withFarley Mowat and wrote several features about the popular author, describing their shared escapades onThe Happy Adventure ("The Boat that Wouldn't Float"), including speculation as to whether sharks had invadedLake Ontario via the newly opened St. Lawrence Seaway.[50] As an investigative reporter, in 1966 Botting opted to serve time in jail rather than pay parking fines so that he could write an exposé on security and sanitation problems at the notorious Victoria County Jail in Ontario—eventually forcing the prison to close.[51] His later work ofpopular history,Chief Smallboy: In Pursuit of Freedom, published in 2005 by Fifth House Books, discusses the life of mid-twentieth centuryCree leader Bobtail ("Bob") Smallboy of theErmineskin Cree Nation. Laurie Meijer-Drees, writing forThe Canadian Historical Review,[52] praised the book for its use oforal history andfamily history in shedding more light on its subject, but criticized its portrayal of Smallboy as a "lone leader" with few peers and in particular its failure to put Smallboy in context with major First Nations political movements of the time such as theIndian Association of Alberta.[52]
Commencing in the 1960s, Botting published poetry in various literary magazines includingCasserole,Hecate's Loom,Issue,Legal Studies Forum,New Thursday,Tridentine—andUmwelt, a Canadian literary magazine which he later satirized inBumweltS: Poems Written in Sexy '69.[53] His third collection of poems,Streaking! (1974)[54] helped popularize that fad in Canada.[55]Monomonster in Hell (1975)[56] —based loosely on Botting's experiences as a missionary in Hong Kong—satirizes the failed prophecy of Jehovah's Witnesses, who had anticipated that Armageddon would come by October 2, 1975.[57]Freckled Blue (1976),[56]Lady Godiva on a Plaster Horse (1977)[56] andLady of My House (1986)[58] are collections of love poems which explore different poetic forms from experimental and concrete poetry to more conventional sonnets and ballads.[59] His complete published poems, including a risqué assortment that appeared in a limited edition ofIsabeau: Poems of Lust and Love (2013), were gathered together inStreaking! The Collected Poems of Gary Botting (2014), edited by screenwriter Tihemme Gagnon.[60]
Beginning as playwright in residence with People & Puppets Incorporated in Edmonton, Alberta in the 1970s, Botting wrote some 30 plays, a dozen of which received awards from the governments of both Canada and Alberta as well as private sponsors such as theEdmonton Journal.[61] He first became active in theatre in the 1960s, when he acted in Academy Theatre and Peterborough Theatre Guild productions in Ontario, Canada. In the late 1960s, he became a theatre and movie critic for thePeterborough Examiner; his essays on and reviews of contemporaryOff-Off-Broadway productions were collected in his critiqueThe Theatre of Protest in America.[62]
His first play, written in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1969, wasThe School of Night, later published as the award-winningHarriott!,[63] about the occult club formed in the 1590s byThomas Harriott,Christopher Marlowe andSir Walter Raleigh.The School of Night andWho Has Seen the Scroll? were first produced in Peterborough, Ontario in 1969–70.Prometheus Rebound,[63] written for the Open Theatre in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1969, was first produced by People & Puppets Incorporated in Edmonton, Alberta in 1971. A sequel to the dramatic poems of Aeschylus and Shelley, Botting's version of the myth portrays Prometheus' punishment for granting man access to nuclear energy. During his two-year stint as playwright-in-residence for People & Puppets he produced and directed several "Happenings," writing of that movement, "Happenings abandoned the matrix of story and plot for the equally complex matrix of incident and event."[64]
Botting studied drama, including dramaturgy, in 1971–72 as a minor for his Ph.D. in English Literature, and a decade later received the Master of Fine Arts in playwriting from University of Alberta. Several of his plays were produced by the drama department, including his thesis production,Whatever Happened to Saint Joanne?, exposing the tendency of fundamental Christian ministers to exploit promising members of their sects.Edmonton Journal theater critic Keith Ashwell calledSaint Joanne an "incredibly imaginative play": "In dramatizing his experiences he has written a very disquieting piece, that becomes positively uncomfortable at the end."[65] Botting's most popular award-winning plays wereCrux (1983), about a nude woman who steadfastly refuses to be talked down out of her tree by her materialistic husband;[66]Winston Agonistes (1984), a sequel toGeorge Orwell'sNineteen Eighty-four;[67] andFathers, first produced in a federal penitentiary by William Head on Stage in Victoria, British Columbia in 1993.
Now a full-time novelist, Botting wrote his first semi-autobiographical novelThrough Freedom's Curtain, in Hong Kong in 1962.[68] There, a Canadian journalist in Hong Kong, having entered Mao's China illegally to get a story on the refugee problem, finds himself imprisoned and facing serious charges. "His eventual escape is a metaphysical flight beyond the conventions of job, security and national pride. He discovers himself, but first must learn to live with the anguish of self-realization."[69] Limited runs of 100 copies of two draft novels, printed privately for distribution to agents—Campbell's Kids (2015),[70] set in Alberta, about an amnesiac pyromaniac who has an affair with a cheating journalist;[71] andCrazy Gran (2016),[72] set in upstate New York, where in the week after 9/11 the protagonist discovers, to her peril, that her Syrian uncle helped plan the attacks on the World Trade Centre,[73]—were assigned ISBN numbers without permission of the author.[74] Pirated editions of both novels have been widely distributed ever since.[75]
An Oxfordian both by birth and by long-held conviction that "William Shakespeare" was the pen name of the 17th Earl of Oxford, Botting graduated with a B.A. from Trent University with a joint major in philosophy and English literature, with a focus on Shakespeare.[76] He obtained his Master of Arts degree in English fromMemorial University of Newfoundland,[77] where his focus was largely onShakespearean authorship and textual criticism of the quarto and folio editions of de Vere'sHamlet. He proposed that "Gulielmus Shaksper" of Stratford was virtually illiterate (as were his children), while "William Shake-speare" was the pen name ofEdward de Vere, the 17thEarl of Oxford andLord Great Chamberlain of England—who was forbidden by Queen Elizabeth (whom he often excoriated in thinly-disguised caricatures) to publish his plays and poems under his own name.[78] De Vere was a polyglot with formal training in English, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian and Greek and experience travelling continental Europe, especially France and Italy[79][80] Botting went on to receive his PhD in English literature and Master of Fine Arts in drama (playwriting) from theUniversity of Alberta in Edmonton, where he taught English literature at the University of Alberta and was producer and playwright-in-residence for People & Puppets Incorporated and Edmonton Summer Theatre—precursors to theEdmonton Fringe Festival. His PhD dissertation was onWilliam Golding,[81] author ofLord of the Flies.[82] From 1972 to 1986 Botting taught English literature (including "Shakespeare") and creative writing atRed Deer College. He was at various times the college's media relations coordinator, chairman of the English department, editor-in-chief of Red Deer College Press,[83] and president of the Faculty Association. He was later remembered by college librarian and fellow thespian Paul Boultbee (who had acted in Botting's playsCrux (1983)[84] andWinston Agonistes (1984))[85] as being a "creative,rebellious faculty member."[86] Be that as it may, Botting was named "Citizen of the Year" by the Central Alberta Allied Arts Council on 5 May 1984.[87]
In the 1970s, Botting was vice-president of Central Alberta Theatre, sat on the executive of the Literary Presses Group and the Canadian Publishers Association, and was founding president of the Alberta Publishers Association.[88] He taught English and creative writing atMaskwachees Cultural College in Hobbema, establishment of which he had initially proposed in the early 1970s.[89] While first setting up his law practice in Victoria in the early 1990s he taught creative writing and English literature atSimon Fraser University in British Columbia.
In 1985, Botting came to national attention when he warned of a threat to academic freedom after the RCMP removed copies of banned books from the stacks of university libraries, including University of Calgary Library.[90] Botting objected to the move in a widely-recirculated letter to theCalgary Herald.[90] That letter brought Botting to the attention of Victoria lawyerDoug Christie, who nominated Botting as the first recipient of the George Orwell Free Speech Award.[90] In 1986, Botting resigned as professor of English at Red Deer College and entered law school. He eventually articled for Christie in Victoria, at the same time continuing to teach English literature and creative writing at Simon Fraser University. However, once he was called to the bar, he went to great lengths to distance himself from Christie.
Botting entered theUniversity of Calgary Faculty of Law on a Brunet scholarship in 1987. Shortly afterwards he joined the staff of the Institute of Natural Resources Law as a legal researcher. He was elected vice-president of Victims of Law Dilemma (VOLD), an independent watchdog group designed to keep lawyers responsible and to pressure Canadian law societies to appoint lay benchers. As a first-year law student he representedJoel Slater, an American man who became stateless afterrenouncing US citizenship.[91] When he was in second year, the Law Society of Alberta "investigated" Botting for representing Howard Pursley, an alleged white supremacist refugee claimant who was eventually flown directly from Calgary to Texas in a form of disguised extradition later known asextraordinary rendition.[92] Botting was cleared of any wrongdoing.[93] In his third year, Botting was enlisted by Calgary lawyers Don McLeod and Noel O'Brien to assist them with research in connection with the extradition ofCharles Ng—who faced the death penalty for allegedly murdering as many as 25 men, women and children in California. That year Botting also represented the first dozen Chinese students in Canada to be granted refugee status after they publicly protested China's 1989 clampdown on demonstrators inTiananmen Square.[94] After graduating in 1990, Botting articled in Victoria forDoug Christie. Botting pioneered the use of video appearances of witnesses in jury trials before Canadian courtrooms were equipped with video machines, in one instance convincing the judge that she and the jury should move from the courthouse to a nearby hotel in Victoria, B.C. to hear the live evidence of a witness in New Brunswick.[95][96]
Notable clients whom Botting has represented include:
Long a strong advocate of advanced education for practicing lawyers,[125] Botting completed his Master of Laws in 1999 and a second PhD, in law, in 2004 at theUniversity of British Columbia,[126][127] and went on to publish a number of scholarly works onCanadian and international law.[128] He was recognized as "Canada's leading legal scholar on extradition law" by Larry Rousseau, executive vice president of thePublic Service Alliance of Canada.[129] His U.S.-publishedExtradition between Canada and the United States,[130] cited by theSupreme Court of Canada,[131] criticized Canada's level of cooperation with the United States in international criminal matters, arguing that Canada's policy of placing international comity over individual rights had dangerously expanded executive discretion and damaged human rights protections.[132] The book received favourable reviews in theLaw & Politics Book Review and theRevue québécoise de droit international.[133] Another of his works on extradition law,Canadian Extradition Law Practice, which has gone through five editions, contains broader criticisms of Canada's network of extradition treaties, in particular of the erosion of thedouble criminality requirement.[134] HisExtradition: Individual Rights vs. International Obligations, published in Stuttgart, Germany, was released in 2010,[135] andHalbury's Laws of Canada: Extradition and Mutual Legal Assistance the following year.[136] HisWrongful Conviction in Canadian Law (2010)[137] examines Canadian commissions of inquiry intomiscarriage of justice. The book's foreword was written byDavid Milgaard, who was convicted of a murder he did not commit and spent 23 years in prison.[138] Botting spent four years as a visiting scholar and post-doctoral fellow atUniversity of Washington School of Law in Seattle and another year as research associate at the University of British Columbia – where he is a Paetzold Fellow – before returning to private practice in British Columbia in 2009. In April 2015 he was granted a Trent University Distinguished Alumnus lifetime achievement award for his legal scholarship and literary skills.[139] The citation noted that Botting "is recognized as one of the most prolific legal scholars in Canada, the 'go to' expert in Canada on extradition, and a writer of immense talent."[5][6][140] In 2016 and again in 2017 he was invited to join an exclusive Oxford think-tank deliberating on the future of extradition and the European arrest warrant in the wake of Brexit.[141] He proposed "a single, simple multilateral extradition treaty to replace the European arrest warrant and the thousands of variable, and mostly unworkable, bilateral treaties now in existence."[142] He called the proposed treaty the "Unified Multilateral Extradition Treaty" or UMET, and stated that half the countries of the world would already qualify to "sign on" by virtue of being signatories to current treaty arrangements. "The other half could sign onto the new UMET in due course, once they met specific minimal standards of justice, including protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms."[143] His most recent legal texts areDangerous Offender Law[144] andCanadian Extradition Law.[145]
Botting has four children by his first wife, DrHeather Botting. Married in 1966, they were divorced in 1999. In 2011, Botting married Australian-Canadian speech language pathologist Virginia ("Ginny") Martin.[146] Now retired from active practise, he continues to write novels[147] and legal texts.[148][149][150]
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