ROUGH STUFF IN CANADA

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Pat Houde, reputedly the biggest
horse feedlot operator and buyer of horses
for slaughter in Manitoba, was reportedly
charged on March 17 with assault, theft, and
uttering threats against Project Equus
founder Robin Duxbury and Walter Powers,
a freelance photojournalist who apparently
caught most of the incident on video.
Duxbury and Powers were videotaping for a
documentary about the Premarin industry,
they said, and were taking video from the
road of the Houde feedlot at Elm Creek when
Houde used a truck to run them into a ditch,
took the keys from their car, tried to take
Powers’ camera, and hit Duxbury in the head.
Powers called police from a cell phone while
still videotaping. “Both Powers and Duxbury
had to receive minor medical treatment at the
Victoria Hospital in Winnipeg,” said Project
Equus assistant director of cruelty investigations
Anita Vongelsang. “Powers suffered a
few minor cuts to his face, leg, and back.

Duxbury sustained a ruptured ear drum and
severe bruising to her left hand.”
Purported Animal Liberation
Front activists Darren Todd Thurston, 28,
and David Nathan Barbarash, 34, both of
Vancouver, British Columbia, have been
jointly charged by the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police with 27 counts of mailing
objects with intent to do bodily harm.
Barbarash and Rebecca Rubin, 23, were
also charged with possessing an explosive.
Barbarash, arrested on March 25, was further
charged with possessing a prohibited weapon,
while Thurston, arrested March 27, was also
charged with illegal impersonation. All were
reportedly released on bail. The charges
allege that beginning in April 1995 Thurston
and Barbarash sent numerous razor blade
devices to furriers, hunting guides, and hunting
columnists, as well as allegedly sending
pipe bombs to Holocaust denier E r n s t
Zundel, of Toronto, and white supremacist
Charles Scott, of B.C., who both escaped
injury. The day before Scott received a
bomb, however, a mail bomb severely
injured animal researcher Terry Mitenko, of
Cochrane, Alberta, in a case believed to be
part of the same sequence. The day after the
Scott bomb arrived, Greg Middleton of T h e
Vancouver Province reported in June 1997,
“an employee of a right-wing think tank in
Toronto got a similar pipe bomb in the mail.”
The “right-wing think-tank” was apparently
the MacKenzie Institute, indirectly associated
with a faction that took control of the Toronto
Humane Society in the early 1990s and ousted
all staff involved in animal rights advocacy.
Barbarash reportedly did research under contract
for THS circa 1987. Barbarash was
apparently first convicted of a crime in
Toronto in 1987 for allegedly vandalizing
Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, but the
original charges, reduced by plea-bargain,
also accused him and associate Kenneth
Quayle of possessing explosives, carrying
weapons, and vandalizing the University of
Toronto dentistry school in January 1986.
Thurston, wrote Rick Ouston of the
Vancouver Sun, was “nicknamed The Mad
Bomber at Harry Ainlay High School in
Edmonton after an unidentified student
exploded a pipe bomb under a bridge.”
Thurston and Barbarash were both convicted
of committing a June 1992 break-in at a
University of Alberta, reportedly taking 29
cats and doing $50,000 in damage. Thurston
had already served most of a two-year sentence
for his alleged role in the break-in, plus
the December 1991 firebombings of three
trucks belonging to the Billingsgate Fish
Company, before Barbarash was caught and
extradited from the U.S. in May 1994.
Thurston and Barbarash both briefly worked
for the Vancouver Island anti-hunting group
Bear Watch in 1995 and 1996, but left apparently
due to tactical disagreements. While
with Bear Watch, Thurston and Barbarash
alleged in May 1996 that they and other
activists were twice pursued by gangs of
hunters led by Don Rose of Trophy West
Guide Outfitters in Campbell River, B.C.,
and that their cars were vandalized with rocks
and an ax handle as they sat inside, including
at one point in the local RCMP parking lot.