Tomorrow A Million Coffins, And One Mourner:
The Boys From Thunder Bay
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This transcript is from a presentation by Lynne Moss-Sharman at The Third Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference, August 4 - 6, 2000 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Windsor Locks, CT. Some of the topics discussed may be triggering. The conference is educational and not intended as therapy or treatment. All accusations are alleged. Our providing the information below does not necessarily constitute our endorsement of it. Home page : http://members.aol.com/smartnews/index2.html
Neil Brick:
Lynne Moss-Sharman is the Canada contact for ACHES-MC www.aches-mc.org In her community, Thunder Bay, Ontario she is a founding member of the regional Elizabeth Fry Society, advocacy for female inmates; a board member of Northwestern Ontario Patients' Council (Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital); she is a survivor of Cold War child psychiatric/military experimentation and ritualized torture. Her topic today will be -- "Tomorrow A Million Coffins, And One Mourner: The Boys From Thunder Bay".
Lynne Moss-Sharman:
I want to thank Neil once again for bringing everybody together, and I also want to thank J. for helping me break my programming so I could be here, and for making me wear a skirt today. [laughter] I feel really stupid. After my daughter was born when I was 32, that's when I started going into flashbacks and getting memories. For 21 years I have worn basically army pants and a plaid shirt -- it's a re-enactment. So Jeanette (Westbrook) I have a skirt on, and I feel like an @#%***@. (laughter) So much for perps, eh? And I want to thank Pete Skafish who is helping me with the technical portion of this presentation.
My presentation today is "Tomorrow a Million Coffins, and One Mourner: The Boys from Thunder Bay - Experimentation on Prisoners in Canada". It's based on a compilation of material that I have collected on the case of Richard Carlson who is the first male inmate in Canada to launch a lawsuit against Correctional Services Canada for having been subjected to CIA experiments while a federal inmate in Kingston area penitentiaries from 1968 to 1974.
[image: Cover of compilation book: Tomorrow A Million Coffins]
You will notice that Rick is holding an owl in the cover photograph -- a year before meeting Rick, I was given a children's bundle and it has a wrapped owl feather inside. (And I was given a floor drum which I am preparing to give to a group of Ojibway boys in Thunder Bay. It has turned out to be a children's drum, for the healing of children who are survivors of trauma and sexual abuse.
I am going to talk about some coincidences that have happened as this has progressed. Rick's Uncle Al, a Finnish bachelor in Thunder Bay in his late seventies -- just happened to bring over this photo of Rick as a young man with the owl. I found it very significant on that level.
[image: Poem - "1984" Glen Landers]
This is the poem that the title came from: "Tomorrow a Million Coffins, and One Mourner". It's a line from a poem written by Glen Landers -- he and his brother Bobby were also from Thunder Bay. They were in penitentiary with Rick -- they became good friends. And both Glen and Bobby died in Millhaven when they were in their late twenties, a year apart.
***********************************************
"1984"
Glen Landers
August 17, 1976 Millhaven Penitentiary
I been disillusioned by dreams of freedom
I been hasseled, by sellers and buyers
I'm surrounded, by the meek and the liars
The wax caricatures, who aren't what they seem
This world is full of wax museums
Dummies, deaf and incapable of seeing
Cold, aloof and with no feelings
Automation, the new man, no longer beings
They sold their souls, to the banks and loansharks
They destroyed nature in exchange for city parks
They drink putrid water to power their rusty genes
And they call it progress, their domination by machines
Epidemic, just around the nearest corner
Tomorrow, a million coffins, and one mourner
Can't believe, what the future does show
It's the end man, cause it's 1984.
***************************************************
Glen and Bobby's sisters live in Thunder Bay. Their mother, Ethel, just died this past spring ... she had been a mother to Rick Carlson after her two sons were killed in penitentiary. Ethel worked as a nurse in women's prisons across Canada including B.C. where the Doukhobor women were being held. She trained in a post WWII Ottawa hospital, the Royal Ottawa I believe. Her first child, a daughter, was born developmentally delayed, and later died.
Coincidentally, Ethel Landers died on April 06, 2000 during the night ... just hours before Rick was transferred from Thunder Bay District Jail to solitary confinement at Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Glen's poems were so prescient, and powerful -- and I learned more about him at the ICOPA conference at Ryerson University in Toronto in May. I didn't realize the impact that he had on the political advocacy and prison movement in the seventies until meeting a Dr. Bob Gaucher, University of Ottawa, who had been incarcerated as a young man with Glen and Bobby in a Saskatchewan federal prison.
[image: Chez Antoinette, 200 Cumberland St. N. Thunder Bay]
Some of you know me over internet during the past five or six years ... I used to live above a place called "Chez Antoinette" with my daughter ... just before she went away to university. That's where I lived, right behind the logging truck. Antoinette was a hairdresser with a bad back who went into natural medicine selling herbs ... but she took a video correspondence course and really didn't know what she was doing. We lived up above Chez Antoinette, the log trucks went by every day and right next to me was the chainsaw repair place and on the right-hand side was the beer store.
I went over there with a disposable camera the other day so I could show you where some of these 'historical' events took place. I was with a fellow who had been in Penetang -- he had so much ECT at Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital in his early twenties before they sent him away to Penetang -- he was in a wheelchair for six months. I stood across the road to take the picture, and thank god this cop car went by, and so did a logging truck. We had hopped off the bus to do it -- and the timing of the vehicles was perfect.
These photos are fuzzy. If you are going to buy a disposable camera, don't go generic -- get an Advantix. This is where history started being made. I was sitting up above Chez Antoinette at my kitchen table one Saturday, reading the local newspaper and read, "Carlson asked to be assessed by a psychiatrist to determine whether he was subjected to CIA brainwashing experiments while a prisoner between 1968 and 1974." The headline was "Guilty Verdict in Robbery Trial" (Chronicle Journal, Thunder Bay, Jan. 29, 1998)
I actually wasn't even going to read the article. At that point I had never visited anybody in a jail; I had certainly never been to a prison; and like many others in the general public -- I just thought, oh you know, bank robber = jail. But I noticed the phrase about the CIA experiments and got in contact with Rick and his friends through his lawyer, Lee Baig, and media people.
[image: Thunder Bay District Jail]
I started taking the bus over to visit him -- this is what the District Jail looks like. Rick was held on remand over a two year period -- primarily it was extended because of his asking about the CIA experiments. He was held in solitary confinement in what is known as "The Hanging Cell" -- it's a cell with a trapdoor that they used for hangings before the death penalty was banned.
Again I want to give you a sense of geographical location. At one point he spent more than fifty days in The Hole, in that hanging cell. The Crown launched a Dangerous Offender application against him although he had no prior violent convictions -- we believe they deliberately held him in the hanging cell for fifty days so that he would be -- we believe they tried to completely destroy him before he had to appear in court when they tried to bring Dangerous Offender status.
I don't know if you have that in the States, but in Canada it's a virtual life sentence. Once you've been designated a Dangerous Offender, it is almost impossible to have the designation removed.
[image: "Spend a Day Within the Walls", Thunder Bay Post, March 10, 1998]
This is Rick over on the right hand side. A big media tour of the jail was conducted -- it had nothing to do with Rick. Women were being held in the jail and they weren't supposed to be there -- there is overcrowding -- and I think this was just a media ploy by the municipal government to try and get provincial funding for a superjail. Ontario we have now adopted the US model for superjails in Ontario, and the province is moving to privatization as well. It is really appalling.
That first month when I started talking to Rick [February 1998] I could only see him through plexiglass and talk on jail phones, and he could also call me collect at home. I started writing down everything he told me. His speech, like a lot of other survivors of the CIA brainwashing experiments, was very fragmentary. I had a really hard time understanding him at first, but again, once I started to write things down, and really listened to what he was saying -- I recognized that he was using exactly the same language that hundreds of CIA mind control experiment survivors in the States and Canada have also used -- the same phrasing, and again, the same fragmentation, an almost Tourette's-like quality to the delivery of spoken material.
[image: "LSD Tested on Female Prisoners: Scientists Experimented on Inmates at Kingston Prison For Women in 1960's", Mike Blanchfield, Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 28, 1998]
While Rick was in the District Jail, he had mentioned a Dr. Scott as the primary psychiatrist at Kingston Penitentiary, Collins Bay and Millhaven -- and on the weekend before his next court appearance in March 1998, I found this article on internet. Dorothy Proctor, who had been an inmate at Kingston Prison for Women, had come forward to launch a lawsuit against Correctional Services Canada for having been experimented on in P4W in the early 1960's when she was seventeen years old.
In that article, she named the same Dr. Scott. I made copies of the three articles that appeared that weekend, and took them over to Rick at 7 am at the jail to make sure he had them, for his own personal validation, before he appeared in court.
[image: "Experiments in Pain: Prison Doctor Sheds No Tears", Mike Blanchfield & Jim Bronskill, Sept. 27, 1998]
This was a later article -- there have been over sixty articles now in The Ottawa Citizen by two journalists -- Mike Blanchfield and Jim Bronskill. This is ... Dr. Scott. He is still alive, he is about 86 now. Dr. Scott was a psychiatrist who was seconded to the Army in 1942 and named the head of the Psychological Rehabilitation Program for the Canadian Army. From 1942 to 1945 Scott oversaw an experimental training centre based in North Bay. There was a big US military base connected to NORAD from WWII onwards in North Bay -- there is still a huge military base in North Bay....
[image: "Pioneers of Mental Health and Social Change 1930-1989" Djuwe Joe Blom and Sam Sussman, Third Eye, London Ontario 1989]
I will just read this one paragraph: "Scott has a long history with government institutions." He had the rank of Major in the Canadian Army psychological retraining program. "At the experimental training centre in North Bay, he was preparing selected soldiers for the rigours of army life. The soldiers knew they were getting special training but the psychiatrists didn't stress the fact that they were actually psychiatric rejects, most of them bumped out. Of course you can't keep anything like that secret for long. We had control groups, some of the people were at the level of 'accept for recheck' which was a slightly higher rating. Some of the soldiers were normal. We had three levels, and of course the 'normals' went through with flying colours. Dr. George Scott had success with an experimental training group which he had totally documented."
Major Scott went on at the end of WWII to set up five rehabilitation camps from coast to coast in Canada. These were supposedly for soldiers who were suffering the impact of what we know now as PTSD or shellshock. My assumption is, given Scott's connection to McGill University, Edgewood Arsenal, the way things are tracking through now -- my guess would be that (he may have been)... operating brainwashing experiments on these men who had returned from WWII and the European front.
And I can also say that Mike Blanchfield is writing a book right now, so all of this will be fully documented. Dorothy Proctor is also writing a book -- she is at the negotiation table in Ottawa this past week and this upcoming week with Correctional Services Canada. Dorothy had hoped to attend this conference so that she could speak for herself, but they were called to the negotiating table so she couldn't be here....
Dr Scott set up a psychiatric institute in Kingston which I believe has recently closed down. His son, who also became a psychiatrist, was involved with this 'Institute of Psychotherapy'. This transparency and the next one can be found on the website of The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario -- they describe the incident that finally caused him to lose his license -- and that would have been at age 82. So it took that long for someone like him to be stopped. wysiwyg://46/http://www.cpso.on.ca/articles.asp July 1, 1996....
[image: "Prisoners Used for Frightening Tests, New Papers Show", Tracey Tyler, Toronto Star, Dec. 18, 1999]
From what we can see, Scott was also connected to Ewen Cameron and then again to Harvard University, and it looks like Edgewood Arsenal. This article was published in the Toronto Star in December, 1999 and describes LSD arriving at New Westminster, British Columbia prisons in 1958. [note: Stanley Faulder, the Canadian who was executed in Texas in 1999, was part of the LSD experimentation at New Westminster in the sixties.]
There are 4000 documents that will be released once Dorothy's case is settled and they will show more of these links, but they can't be made available yet. On the second page of that same article -- they actually describe the mind altering drugs being used in 1973 at Collins Bay Penitentiary. One of the things that Rick had described was a group of inmates being given drugs that would escalate their aggression -- they weren't aware of what was actually being given to them at the time. Again, these documents are now surfacing.
[image: photo of Rick Carlson and Tony Vaitelis, Collins Bay Prison]
[image: photo of Rick Carlson and Glen Landers, Collins Bay Prison]
To go back to "The Boys from Thunder Bay" -- Thunder Bay is a microcosm of any other community in North America. Many boys end up in care of either Children's Services, C.A.S. -- back in the old days, they used to be sent to training schools. It looks like the government is introducing schools again in a sense -- [boot camps]. Rick and his sisters lived out in the bush -- they had a very brutal father. They ended up in care of C.A.S. and that's how he became part of the criminal justice system. Tony Vaitelis became Rick's friend -- he was sent to a training school. These were the institutions that (I believe) were targeted for CIA experiments -- Millhaven, Collins Bay, Kingston Penitentiary.
[images: Thunder Bay school photos, Tony Vaitelis]
This is a photo of Tony when he was five or six years old and the other one is just before -- he again, had a very brutal father and he was sent to training school 1000 miles away, at age 13 for 'truancy'.
[image: Jake Ball, Linda Carlson, Pete Cosgrave]
On the left is a man named Jake Ball. He was also an inmate at Kingston Penitentiary at the time. Many of the inmates were given jobs in the penitentiary -- and because there was a psychiatric ward and hospital -- Dr. Scott's private little psychiatric hospital in E.C.B. -- Jake's job as an inmate was as an orderly. Jake had agreed to be a witness for Rick -- and both he and Tony died within one week of each other in February 1999.
Tony Vaitelis would have been the second male inmate to have launched a lawsuit against Correctional Services Canada with lawyer, James Newland who had drafted a letter to CSC saying he had taken Tony's case on. Tony got his files from CSC in December 1998, James Newland took him on as a client, and Tony died mysteriously in early February 1999. A week later, Jake Ball, who was living in Kingston, died. Jake took a long time to make the decision, because he knew he would be putting his life at risk if he said he would come forward as a witness and he did die, a week after Tony....
Pete Cosgrave, on the right, was Rick's... stepbrother. He was also in a training school, and in the penitentiaries with these other boys from Thunder Bay. He died in a confrontation with police in Thunder Bay in the 1980's.
[image: ["The Farm System: From Training School Rookie to Penitentiary Pro" by George Watson, Collins Bay, 1976]
We didn't have the Vietnam draft in Canada, so candidates for experimentation were taken from the prison system by people like Dr. Scott. Tony Vaitelis had retrieved a document from the Toronto library system two months before he died. It was a collection of stories put together by George Watson, who was an older inmate in Collins Bay.
[Case History No. 1, Tony Vaitelis, Age 23, sent to Training School for truancy, age 13]
George had encouraged the younger fellows at that time to write down their stories about the sexual abuse and torture they had undergone when they were in training school. The families - Tony's family and Rick's family - nobody had seen this document until after Tony died.
This is Tony's story ... "every day some kid would receive punching or kicking for one thing or another ... I was flown to Toronto where four brothers from Alfred were waiting to pick me up ... [Christian Brothers] ... the RCMP had kept me handcuffed and I was so small the handcuffs kept slipping off but I was to remain in handcuffs. ... When I returned to Alfred all my hair was shaved off, I was given only a pair of shorts to wear for clothing so I couldn't run away again."
Thunder Bay is over 1000 miles away from Toronto and they were taking these eleven and twelve year old boys 1000 miles away from where their support systems were, and they were basically being groomed by these (alleged) brutal pedophiles -- children's guards, children's workers at Alfred -- St. Joseph's and St. John's Training Schools. They just got on that conveyor belt and ended up as young adults in the Kingston penitentaries' feeder system.
"Children should be sent to homes that are staffed by people who care about children, and not to places where the staff try to prove how tough they are by punching and kicking children." Tony had received, I believe, $25,000 compensation for the sexual abuse he had undergone at training school and he gave his last $2,000 to Rick Carlson's lawyer at the bank robbery trial. We'll get into the corruption there later -- but I guess I am talking about solidarity and friendship among people who have been abused and institutionalized, and how horrific -- after Tony died -- it was just heartbreaking to think that the only thing he had to help his friend try to get some sort of legal representation....
[image: "Case History No. 3, Peter Cosgrave, age 35, Sent to Training School for stealing from parking meter, age 11"]
It turned out that Pete Cosgrave was Rick Carlson's stepbrother. It was so interesting to see the family's reactions because Pete had never talked to any of his family members about what had happened to him when he was in the training school and you could see that grandchildren, children, nephews, nieces -- it's so important for people to write down their stories because they are passed on and they help the surviving generations understand that Uncle Pete wasn't this 'crazed cop-killer' - Uncle Pete had (allegedly) been raped as a kid by cops - and the kind of rage and re-enactment that came about at some point in his twenties or thirties had a reason. I will never, ever believe for a minute that there is a genetic basis for violence. I will never, ever believe that men or women are incarcerated for any genetic predisposition.
[image: "A Prison Guinea Pig Speaks Out", Jim Bronskill, Ottawa Citizen, October 13, 1998]
In this article, Rick talks about being given twenty different drugs including truth serum that would induce hallucinations - he would imagine his food talking to him, he would see polar bears in his cell, and other wild animals. He said he received electroconvulsive shock therapy. Actually Tony wanted to say in defense of Rick what he observed when Rick was returned from ECB in Kingston Penitentiary, and Jake Ball was also going to describe what he saw.
Some of the things Rick talks about are very reminiscent of what you will find if you read a book by Allen Hornblum called "Acres of Skin" [Routledge Press, 1997] about the inmate experiments in Philadelphia conducted at Holmesburg Prison.
Edgewood Arsenal had set up trailers right on the grounds of the prison. When Rick talks about the polar bears and the icy wind - they were doing exactly those kinds of experiments in trailers. There were pharmaceutical and allergen experiments going on inside the prison for decades - but the brainwashing experiments were carried out in trailers on the grounds of the institution.
[image: "Go Boy!" Roger Caron, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978]
One of the worst descriptions of ritual torture, and one of the earliest, is found in this book by Roger Caron. He wrote about being taken to a place called The Limbo Room in 1955 in Guelph Reformatory which is just a bit northwest of Toronto. He was 16 years old. They strapped the boys to these contraptions, nude, and then whipped them. And what really struck me when I read what he wrote was that 12 uniformed guards would stand around in a horseshoe shape in front of this contraption, and while the boy was being whipped, they would shuffle their feet - which I found just chilling to read.
And the next time Roger was supposed to go to The Limbo Room for some sort of infraction, he was given the choice of either going to The Limbo Room as punishment, or he could become part of a psychiatric experiment upstairs, where they had just constructed a 'hospital' unit. The psychiatrist, a Dr. B, whom we haven't been able to track down, was conducting drug brainwashing experiments. Roger Caron described an experiment that I had drawn pictures about in recall of child experiments.
I grew up about 30 miles away from Guelph Reformatory in Hamilton, Ontario - I guess I would have been about eight years old at the time when Roger Caron describes the experiment taking place 30 miles away.
[image: photo Rick... Carlson, with their mother, Nolalu, Northwestern Ontario, early 1950's]
The day after "A Prison Guinea Pig Speaks Out" was published in The Ottawa Citizen, James Newland, Dorothy Proctor's lawyer, sent a fax to Correctional Services Canada confirming that he had accepted Rick Carlson as a client -- and this photo from the early 1950's shows Rick and his two sisters and their mother in the bush in Nolalu. The father would leave them alone for days with no food. We're talking bush, in the early fifties -- he would leave them there and go off drinking. Rick's mother was found dead at age 70, out on a place called Mission Island, about ten years ago. Nobody knows what happened to her. Thunder Bay is a really weird place.
[image: Cover of blank writing notebook depicting two cartoon figures in striped uniforms, one with a ball & chain - "We are Twins! A: How many times have you visited this prison? B: Forty-seven. How about you? A: Me? much less than you. Thirty-eight?" copyright Art Box]
Another one of the coincidences that has happened over time -- I worked part-time at a battered women's shelter. Tony Vaitelis had rented a car in October 1998 and he said, "I want to thank you for what you are doing for Rick. I rented a car, and where would you like to go or what would you like to do?" I take the bus everywhere so one of the things we did was go to Walmart and I bought bulk toilet paper and a big bottle of Javex - stuff like that. It's really hard to bring those things back on the bus. Tony and I went around the store with our shopping carts, and we had a good laugh getting our 'heavy' supplies.
The other thing I said was, "well jeez Tony - I have to do a late shift at the battered women's shelter" and he gave me a ride to work. I go into the women's shelter, and it's about three days before Hallowe'en. I had already learned so much in eight months about Tony, about Rick, I sat in on all the court proceedings. I was just overwhelmed by what I was learning, and what I was feeling about the 'justice' system - about jails, and about prisons. I was at a low ebb and I just wasn't sure if I was strong enough to carry on and do what needed to be done.
It was more than a coincidence that the first male inmate to come forward about the C.I.A. experiments was in Thunder Bay. I just lived five bus stops away from the jail where he was and here I was sitting with this huge library -- I had been collecting information and was in touch with people all the time. I went into the shelter that night, and I just wasn't sure if I was spiritually up for the battle, because I knew this was going to be a big one.
As I walked down the hall of the women's shelter, I came to the doorway of the room where a childcare worker had the kids going through boxes of donations and selecting things to make Hallowe'en costumes with. I'm standing in the doorway thinking "oh, that's so cute - the kids are safe here, they are really having fun" - and there were twin boys, about eleven years old. [And I always think of Mengele when I see twins now] One boy was going through a box of donations, the other with another box - and one of the twins pulled out a black-and-white prisoner's costume out of the donations and he said, "I'm going to be a prisoner" - and the other twin pulls out a white lab coat and a black plastic witch's hat and puts it on, and says, "Yeah! and I'm going to be the witch-doctor!!" And I just thought, "Okay. Children's bundle, owl feather; children's drum; the help I have had from the Elders." It was like, "Okay Creator. Okay God. If you want me to take this on I'll take it on." That was my signal.
[see above image]
And my daughter sent me this notebook - said she couldn't believe it when she found it in a little stationery store down in London, Ontario. Rick is the same age as I am, we were both born in 1947 -- and then you have Mengele -- and once you take on something like this with an inmate, you are twinned in a sense, because there is no getting away from it. The quote I use on my e-mail message is "Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor." (Author unknown)
[image "Convicted Robber's Sentencing Case Opens: Crown wants dangerous offender status for Carlson" by Phil Andrews, Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, April 26, 1999]
As punishment for talking about the C.I.A. experiments, the Crown sought Dangerous Offender status against Rick Carlson.
Another coincidence - I sent a letter on December 7, 1998 to some of the major newspapers saying there 'might' be a conflict of interest in McGill University being asked to produce a report about whether there had been experiments on prisoners or not - given McGill's role in Ewen Cameron's C.I.A. experiments in the 1950's where the Canadian victims were successfully compensated.
[image: "Ex Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's Father-in-law and Military LSD Funding" Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 8, 1998]
And the coincidence is that the next day there was an article in The Ottawa Citizen about Brian Mulroney's father-in-law, Dr. Pivnicki, who was a psychiatrist at the Allen Memorial with Ewen Cameron - he's still alive, he is still a Ewen Cameron supporter. Jim Bronskill and Mike Blanchfield are fabulous - they found an article in a German journal about Pivnicki having been involved in LSD experiments. More to come. I can't wait until the documents are released, when the books come out.
["Carlson gets access to prison file: Dangerous offender candidate has chance to prove 'brainwashing'" by Phil Andrews, Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, May 1, 1999]
One of the big battles that Rick went through in the Dangerous Offender application which dragged out over two years - he could not get his medical files - they were hidden, everything from 1968 to 1974 was missing. The local judge refused to entertain any information about Rick having been subjected to government experiments as a defense for why this Dangerous Offender application was invalid. This was a coup in terms of the legal case because the judge was forced to demand that C.S.C. produce the files, which they didn't - but the files never did appear.
[Image, cover: "thanks For The Memories: The Truth Has Set Me Free! The memoirs of Bob Hope's and Henry Kissinger's mind-controlled slave" by Brice Taylor/Sue Ford, self published 1999]
Another coincidence - Sue had sent me disc copies of her book to take a look at it before she published it and I was again at one of the low ebb moments - I've had death threats and the heat really goes up when you get involved with something like this. I just randomly had picked a disc, just as Rick called from the District Jail the night before a court appearance - and this came up on the screen.
[image: see page 75, Chapter Eleven, "Mind Control in the Prisons"]
I had no idea Sue had been taken to a prison near Ottawa, I am assuming it was Kingston, and she ... in the early seventies, went into a prison, and she did programming on prisoners. I am assuming that Rick would have been one of the prisoners that Sue Ford is writing about....
[image: photo by Sandi Krasowski,Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, Dec. 19, 1999 - caption:
"Andrew Coffey displays his collection of framed photographs of numerous presidents, movie and television celebrities and other famous people he has been photographed with. The collection of more than 150 pictures covers a span of a 20 year friendship that he shared with Bob Hope. The pair travelled the world golfing with numerous celebrities, some of whom became Coffey's clients at his clothing business on Brodie Street. Coffey is leaving his longtime business and taking the photos to be displayed in his home."]
Here's his collection of Bob Hope photographs. They are good buddies. Bob Hope came up to Thunder Bay about five times before he got too feeble - people saw the limousines going around, once so he could attend a 'wedding'.
[image: "On Behalf of Our Brother" Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, Oct. 28, 1999]
This is a letter that... Rick's sisters, sent to the local newspaper, talking about their brother being used "as a political football" in the system. "It is very hard to sit on court benches for 2 1/2 years watching our brother being passed around the Thunder Bay court like a political hot potato." Andrew Coffey, whose photo you saw before this article, has been appointed as a Lay Advisor to the Law Society of Upper Canada in Ontario which gives him a tremendous amount of power.
[image: letter to Gino Richer, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa Nov. 9, 1999]
I sent this letter to the Human Rights Commission basically saying that Rick was a victim of political torture - being held in solitary confinement in the local district jail. He and other psychiatric inmates were being held in cells with no mattresses, literally for days or months on end. They were not allowed to see a psychiatrist or mental health workers. One of the fellows who was in with Rick - and Rick was more worried about this fellow than he was about himself - he has two degrees, he's 38 - he had 1000 self inflicted wounds on his arms and legs, and he carved the word "HELP" in his abdomen. All they did was stitch it up, put peroxide on it, and returned him to the jail. They wouldn't let the forensic psychiatrist, Dr. Sheppard, who is a really good man, in to see him or anyone else. We are talking about the most extraordinary human rights violations and again, Rick's case is 'extraordinary' because (I believe) he is a victim of C.I.A. brainwashing experiments - he is a political prisoner.
["Triumph Over a Tortured Past: Canada is a Pioneer in Helping Survivors of Physical and Psychological Tactics Come to Terms With Experiences Too Terrible to Discuss" by Stephanie Nolen, Globe and Mail, Nov. 10, 1999]
I sent that letter on November 9th and the next day, at the Toronto airport before K. and I drove down to Kentucky to visit J., I found this article in the Globe and Mail - lauding Canada's wonderful services for victims of political torture from other countries. And I thought the irony was just extraordinary.
[image New Year's Eve: "17 Years in Jail for Robber" by Phil Andrews, Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, December 31, 1999]
Rick was given a 21 year sentence for a bank robbery, $10,000, no shots fired, he wasn't even in the province. I think it's probably the longest conviction given in Canada for a bank robbery. 17 years reflects the four years deducted for two years hard time on remand. Rick is now in Edmonton Institution, he was in solitary confinement for three months at Stony Mountain in Winnipeg, Manitoba. (I believe) has a 17 year sentence for speaking out about the C.I.A. experiments.
[image: "District Prosecutors on the Move" by Phil Andrews, Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal, Jan. 14, 2000]
The Crown Attorney who brought the Dangerous Offender application forward (but did not bring forward the fifteen witnesses who would testify that Rick was not in the province when the bank robbery took place) was suddenly transferred to North Bay. So he has disappeared. As has the jail guard who brought the threat charges against Rick - this guard was in Thunder Bay for fifteen years and all of a sudden, Alain Godin, the Crown Attorney, leaves town; the guard gets transferred for the first time, both in the same month (January 2000).
For the one of the court appearances for the bogus threat charge, Rick had a Hollywood escort across our small town -- four cruisers and one unmarked car, and a SWAT guy with a machine gun. Made for primetime TV. How do you get bigger and better courthouses and more SWAT teams?
[image: from a letter I sent to defense lawyers Sandberg/Williams/Greenspan Jan. 16, 2000:
" ... not only was this excessive in terms of manpower, the cruisers had their sirens blaring and they went through red lights all the way across town ... The American TV-like cavalcade across the city must have cost a few bucks ... Rick has been used as a media Police Services PR object ..."
This is a copy of Rick's defense lawyer's letter of opinion, appealing the bank robbery:
[image: from Norman Williams to Legal Aid Ontario Feb. 1, 2000, cc to Edward L. Greenspan, Q.C.]
- " ... in my view it may very well be seen that Mr. Baig erred to such an extent that a new trial would be in order ... it is my opinion that Mr. Baig was negligent in the handling of the situation. Alibi is crucial to the defence ... Alibi was never told to the Crown by the defence counsel ... there were a plethora of witnesses who were prepared to give evidence that at the time of the commission of the offence Mr. Carlson was in British Columbia ... Mr. Carlson has always expressed to me the fact that he wished to give evidence at the trial stage to indicate that he was not in Thunder Bay when the robbery was committed but in fact was in British Columbia ... the conviction may very well be set aside if the reality of alibi is a possibility and is considered as "fresh evidence" in the special circumstances outlined above."
Legal Aid is the funder who will provide money for Rick to have a defense to launch an appeal. It went to four sessions for Legal Aid review in Thunder Bay - each time the lawyers assembled said there was a conflict of interest. Then it was sent down to Toronto in May. It was passed around each of the Legal Aid review jurisdictions in Toronto - for two weeks solid the defense lawyer was on the phone every day - he said he's never seen anything like it. Rick still doesn't have Legal Aid for his appeal. It has now been shipped back to Thunder Bay.
image: "The Judge, the Locksmith and the Cloud of Smoke: Smoked cigar, not joint, judge protests" Globe and Mail, Front Page, by Kirk Makin, February 8, 2000]....
[Court File No. 98-CV-006618 Superior Court of Justice, Case Management, Master Robert Beaudoin, Tuesday, February 29, 1000 between: Dorothy Mills Proctor Plaintiff and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, George Scott, Institute of Psychotherapy Limited, and Mark Eveson, Defendants]
Dorothy Proctor was successful when the judge who is reviewing her application for compensation for having been subjected to experiments in 1961 awarded $65,000 costs to James Newland, her lawyer, for CSC's refusal to provide documents about the experiments, the medical files.
[image: "A Report on Research on Inmates in Federal Penitentiaries" prepared for The Correctional Services of Canada by M.A. Somerville and N. Gilmore 14 February 2000].
And on February 14, 2000 - it was a nice Valentine, eh? - Margaret Somerville of McGill University Medical, Ethics and Law .... released this report.
McGill University basically retracted the report they had released two years previously. They admitted that experiments were conducted on prisoners in Canada from 1958 to 1983. That report was submitted to CSC, but unfortunately no one (outside of CSC) found out about it until May 29, 2000.
Dorothy and I spoke on a panel chaired by Hal Pepinsky at the ICOPA conference in May at Ryerson University. The Monday before Dorothy spoke about her court case at Ryerson, she had been, again, at the table with CSC. That was in early May. CSC had received the McGill report on March 31, 2000. So, CSC went to court proceedings with the claimant and did not bring this report forward - it was suppressed.
[image: "Compensate Jailhouse Guinea Pigs, report says: Corrections service consultants say experiments on inmates 'should never have been undertaken'" by Jim Bronskill, Mike Blanchfield, The Ottawa Citizen, May 29, 2000.]
Jim Bronskill and Mike Blanchfield, the two journalists, got a leaked copy and the report did exist and CSC has stamped it as received and read.
[image: June 9 2000 ... "Winnipeg lawyer Mark Wasyliw is challenging the further brainwashing of Mr. Carlson by isolating him from other inmates with implicit sensory deprivation and what amounts to the torture of Mr. Carlson. We firmly believe CSC and the Federal Government of Canada are attempting to re-brainwash Mr. Richard Carlson in an attempt to silence him."]
This is a letter I wrote to Jim Bronskill about Rick being held in solitary confinement at Stony Mountain penitentiary, and again a Human Rights violation. Not only does CSC have the report admitting the experiments were conducted, they know he is a survivor of brainwashing experiments and they held him in solitary confinement without even a pair of glasses for over two months.
At the same time, I got a package of information from a woman in Hamilton, where I grew up, who is the same age as me. She grew up five blocks away from where I did - she is the first survivor I have been in contact with who is actually from my neighbourhood. I can't believe it. She was actually in my sister's class in high school. I had talked about having been at some rituals at an Eaton's Department store in Hamilton - I won't go into what was going on at that time.
And when I opened this envelope from Hamilton - the top image was this - Eaton's had sponsored children's costume parties twice a year - one at Christmas, one at Hallowe'en. This is another one of those coincidences. The two little girls in the prisoners' costumes are cousins - on the right is the woman from my childhood neighbourhood, on the left is her cousin.
[image, before 1955: "Eaton Good Deed Radio Club Marks Two Big Parties of Their 20th Year" "Over two thousand children, most of them in costume, attended the Hallowe'en Theatre Party on October 25th. Members of the Eaton Store staff were on hand to judge the semi-finalist costumes in each of the seven age groups -- there were small tots dressed up as Christmas presents, pumpkins, snowballs, winged fairies, Mother Goose and Christmas trees. There were the classic masquerade favourites: doctor and nurse; bride and groom; Mickey Mouse ... First prize winners were thrilled with two tickets each to see the Ice Capades in Toronto and have the opportunity to go back-stage ..."]
I have been praying over the years to run into someone from my era, someone from my city - we all do. I have been waiting for ten years - and what do I get but this photograph of children in costume - two by two - and my neighbour in a little prisoner costume in the midst of all these other children, twinned with her cousin.
[image: "Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber" by Alston Chase, Atlantic Monthly, June 2000]
This article - go to the June 2000 issue of Atlantic Monthly - there is an article about Ted Kaczinsky having gone to Harvard University when he was 16 years old - he describes returning to the Annex, a laboratory in which staff members of the Department of Social Relations conducted research on human subjects. "There, from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962, Harvard psychologists, led by Dr. Henry A. Murray, conducted a disturbing and what would now be seen as ethically indefensible experiment on 22 undergraduates. To preserve the anonymity of these student guinea pigs, experimenters referred to individuals by code name only. One of these students, whom they dubbed "Lawful," was Theodore John Kaczynski ..."
I am guessing Henry A. Murray would have been Dr. George Scott's peer. He was involved in developing psychological tests for the O.S.S. during WWII. Get a copy of that article. It is very significant.
[double image: #1 "Code Orange: The Prisoner & the Witchdoctor: Psychiatric brainwashing experiments on Thunder Bay man - Richard Carlson - 1968-74" #2 "...will not be held at Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital"]
I have been involved with Patients' Council at the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital ... lots to dig up at the LPH. We were given permission to do a presentation about Rick's case once the McGill Report was released. The inmates in Ontario wear orange jumpsuits, so we called it "Code Orange" - and printed the notice on orange paper. It was while Rick was briefly back in Thunder Bay from Stony Mountain for a court appearance. We just wanted to show solidarity and support for him.
Well, the hospital got orange paper and put up notices all around the facility - "Patients' Council will not be holding a session" - but we had been given permission by our administrative staff liaison, P. He is actually the Chaplain, and he gave us the Chapel, organized the equipment, everything. I thought it was pretty hilarious that the hospital would go to those lengths.
[image: Welcome to Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital, Thunder Bay]
Very quickly - this is a floorplan of the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital. It is right across from the district jail.
[image: "Symbol for the demon Beli"; "LPH ECT stats 1990-94" - from The Stone Angels Journal Vol. 5, 1995]
The floorplan looks like the symbol for the demon Beli, extraordinarily similar. [laughter] Scary place, man. They are so unhappy that I am volunteering there [much laughter]. I'm like a terrier. Go in there every day [laughter]. And this is from when Rick was on probation in Thunder Bay in the early nineties - the forensic psychiatrist believed what Rick said about the experiments. He was very supportive of Rick.
[image: ECT Statistical Highlights, Ontario, 1995-98, compiled by Don Weitz dweitz@interlog.com, host CKLN Ryerson University Radio, "Shrinkrap"]
Here are the stats for Ontario for ECT - electricity and ECT have been a huge component in brainwashing experiments and torture. And you'll see that figures went from 100 in the early nineties to 2,325; 12,390. Down at the bottom you'll see 780 ECT's were administered to 138 women over 80 years of age.
I've got a pretty damn good idea - I noticed that ECT went up in Ontario about 1993-94 - it went from zero to 100 in our municipality - at this hospital. To me, it coincided with False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the CIA. What I noticed was around 1994-95, survivors of childhood ritual abuse were suddenly being given electric shock. And this has to be experimental - why would 138 women over the age of eighty be given ECT, and what kind of informed consent could they possibly give? Why did they have to give 12,390 rounds of ECT in the middle of the decade?
[image: drawing of Glen Landers by B. Beaudry]
This is a drawing of Glen Landers, who wrote the poem, '... tomorrow a million coffins' ... the drawing was done by another inmate, B. Beaudry. This is one of the notes I found in Glen's papers, he was marking off how many days he had left to get out.
[image: Freedom and Its Price, poem by Glen Landers 1975]
And this is a poem he wrote a year before he died - and it was exactly how he died. He got shot in the back during an escape attempt.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FREEDOM AND ITS PRICE
Glen Landers
December 1975
I stood in that prison yard, and looked
Out upon the field of clover, so young and green
Inside my heart, I wanted to scream
Knowing that the guns and guards kept me hooked
I thought of the good times and bad
I thought of the happy times and sad
Then the decision came, better dead, than here
For my freedom, the price to pay can't be considered too dear
And so I ran at that fence
And all I heard was noise and tears
I felt no tears, I finally felt no fears
I was happy as I ran on and on
I felt a blow, that put me down
My face was pressed to the ground
And all around me were fields of clover
So red, like flowing wine
And my past came to my mind
It lasted forever, that time
As I lay, lying in a field of red clover
Free at last.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[image: school photos, Thunder Bay; graveyard, Kingston]
This is a photo of Bobby, age 13, and Glen, age 14, when they were boys in Thunder Bay, and these are their tombstones - Bobby, 1947-1976; Glen, 1946-1977.
This is another poem by Glen. He wrote about one hundred of them altogether.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OUT OF TIME
Glen Landers
August 16, 1976
I walked through, this whole world in my sleep
And found nothing, worthy to keep
I saw misery and pain everywhere I went
Yet couldn't figure out, what it meant
Could of been a vision, a sign
A symbol of the time
To come, for this civilization
Unless the people united, as a nation
Closed my eyes, and saw
Beauty and the beast
Famine and feast
Millions kneeling before Him, in awe
Is this true, what I think, is real?
People ruling, who can't feel?
The music of the times, goes blaring on
While the Pied Piper comes on strong
Puppets dance to the tune of crime
As evolution runs out of time, runs out of time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
... Puppets Dance as evolution runs out of time ... self explanatory for many of us here, and certainly in terms of what's happening to the planet.
I had a tobacco vision a couple of months ago - and I got this message when I was with the drum - it said to hold ceremonies, Calling The Prisoners Home. I was sitting over at the LPH in
Patients' Council one day with a young Ojibway man from forensics, and I drew this picture while I was sitting with him. On August 10th, National Prison Justice Day - and I didn't know this until ICOPA - it was actually named after Bobby and Glen Landers and it's a day when all the prisoners
across Canada fast and pay silent tribute to inmates who died in prisons.
[image: National Prison Justice Day, August 10, 1000 Calling the Prisoners Home]
I am really strongly feeling that each of us who are survivors of mind control experiments and trauma - each of us walks around every day - we are not prisoners - but we certainly have an invisible prison in our psyches - in our heads. Whatever means you use to get better, whether it's through therapy - whatever you are using to get better to heal. I feel we have a lot in common with prisoners.
And in Thunder Bay, like many other communities across Canada, young men and women enter the prison system on what seems like a human conveyor belt. National Prison Justice Day began in Millhaven Penitentiary .... Thunder Bay brothers, Bobby and Glen Landers, both died in Millhaven, Bobby in 1976 of a 'heart attack' in a segregation cell. Glen was shot to death trying to scale Millhaven's fences in an escape attempt.
Rick is currently being held in Edmonton Institution and I made up some notices with the address so people can send him postcards, cards or letters of support. You don't have to put your return address on it if you need to keep your identity unknown.
RICHARD CARLSON C/O EDMONTON INSTITUTION
21611 Meridian Box 2290
Edmonton Alberta
T5J 3H7
CANADA
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As A Very Complex Photographic Plate" 1957 G.H. Estabrooks FOR K A R E N #01182 who died fighting 4/23/99
lsharman@microage-tb.com - www.aches-mc.org - 807-622-5407
For people like me, violence is the minotaur; we spend our lives wandering its maze, looking for the exit. (Richard Rhodes)
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor. (Author unknown)