Val Bourdon aka Valmyre Bourdon Can Be A Son Of A Bitch. . .

I have already written about how the minister emeritus of the Unitarian Church of Montreal Rev. Charles Eddis once concluded one of his Sunday sermons by declaring "God can be a son of a bitch." It would appear however that most of my posts regarding that rather crude utterance of Rev. Charles Eddis have been "memory holed". . . I can only find one example left on the internet. I believe that most of the other examples were on Beliefnet and were purged along with many of my other posts to the U*U Challenge and Critique sections of Beliefnet. Well now it is time to write a little bit about how the die-hard fundamentalist atheist "Humanist" U*U Val Bourdon (aka Valmyre Bourdon) rather unfortuitously chose last Mother's Day to call The Emerson Avenger a son of a bitch. . .

Val Bourdon was approaching the Unitarian Church of Montreal with his son when I decided to take some photos of him walking on the chalk slogans that I had written on the sidewalk and trudging past the picket signs that he and other U*Us had tried so hard to get rid of by having me arrested on trumped up criminal charges in December of 2000. When he saw that I was about to take a picture of him Val Bourdon did the old splayed hand in front of face gesture and told me not to take his picture. This brought to mind how he so foolishly did the same stupid move when a CFCF 12 camera crew was reporting on my protest in the summer of 1998. Needless to say it was televised. . . I took a picture or two and informed Val Bourdon that I believed that I was within my rights taking his picture. He insisted that I was wrong and snarled, "You son of a bitch" as he passed by me. It would have been nice to have that on video but I managed to get a still shot of his angry snarl in any case.

Val Bourdon then stuck his tongue out and blew a rasberry at me. Looks like my reflexes were pretty good. . . Snap! ;-)



In that Val Bourdon was one of the Unitarian Church of Montreal's perjurious prosecution witnesses during the malicious prosecution whereby outrageously hypocritical Montreal U*Us sought to undermine my civil rights and liberties, my response to his calling me a "son of a bitch" was to assert that that pejorative term was rather more applicable to some of the members of the Unitarian Church of Montreal, including himself, and that he was not only a "son of a bitch" himself but a "perjurious son of a bitch". . . Val Bourdon fumed his way into his alleged "church" with his son vainly trying to calm him down.

Some time later a police cruiser pulled up and I was once again explaining to Montreal police officers what my protest against various U*U injustices, abuses and hypocrisy was all about. The police are often both bemused and amused to learn that the so-called Unitarian Church of Montreal can not only have intolerant and abusive fundamentalist atheist bigots as members of this alleged "church" but can even ordain them as U*U ministers so that they can preach Sunday sermons in which they describe God as a "non-existent being" and declare that belief in God "seems primitive". . . I reassured the police officers that the writing on the sidewalk was chalk and that Montreal U*Us would probably hose it down some time after I left.

I asked the police if they had received a complaint and they indicated that they had indeed received a complaint. I told the police that I was quite certain that everything that I was doing was quite legal and that I had been protesting in this manner for several years. The police asked me if I was taking pictures of people and I said that I was indeed documenting my protest with photographs. They told me that it was against the law to take photos of people without their permission. I responded that I was quite sure that it was legal to take photos of people and that it was only the publication of the photos that might require permission. AFAIAC Photos of people taken for personal use or "news" purposes do not require the permission of the people being photographed. I asked the police to show me the Canadian criminal law that stated that it was illegal to take photos of people without their permission with plenty of confidence that they would not be able to do so. They sat in their car for quite a while looking at their onboard computer while I continued my protest.

At a certain point Val Bourdon came out of the alleged Unitarian Church of Montreal and stood at the edge of the sidewalk waiting for the police. It became apparent that Val had called in a complaint to the police about the fact that I had taken his photo without his permission. This was quite ironic considering how I had not only allowed Val Bourdon to take dozens of pictures of me and my picket signs in the past but had even encouraged him to do so, even insisting that he take photos of some picket sign slogans that he seemed to have missed or had deliberately chosen not to photograph. . . Needless to say my subsequent cross-examination of Val Bourdon about the various picket sign slogans that he had so laboriously photographed proved to be highly educational and more than a little bit entertaining. I really must get around to posting MP3 audio files of the more educational and amusing snippets.

I decided to snap a picture or two of Val Bourdon standing waiting for the police. When I did so one of the police officers who had emerged from the car said that I could not take pictures. Somewhat surprised by this I asked him if he had found a law prohibiting taking pictures of people without their permission. He showed me his little note book of municipal bylaws and lo and behold there is a Montreal municipal bylaw on the books that prohibits taking photographs of people if they are on public property. This offence carries a $100 fine. . . I pointed out that the extremely broad way the municipal bylaw was worded made it pretty much impossible for anyone to take any pictures of anything in the city if the picture included other people in it. I pointed out that if the letter of the law was enforced that photo journalists and professional photographers taking tourism photos of Montreal, to say nothing of zillions of tourists. . . would be committing an offence practically every time they took a picture of anything in the city of Montreal. I made it clear that I would feel obliged to contest any ticket that he issued and he responded that he did not intend to issue a ticket as long as I stopped taking pictures of Val Bourdon or other U*Us who objected to my taking pictures of them. I told the police officer that I would comply for the rest of my protest for that Sunday but that I would most certainly be looking into the legality of this highly questionable municipal bylaw that I was previously completely unaware of.

I then pointed out to the police officer that the Unitarian Church of Montreal, or members thereof, had apparently hired a photographer to take pictures of my protest activities and that this photographer was breaking that rather questionable municipal bylaw every bit as much as I was by taking pictures of me and other people without obtaining our permission. Of course I had previously had no objection whatsoever to Montreal photographer Joshua Radu taking pictures of me and my picket signs and chalk slogans etc. but he was obviously taking pictures of me and other people on municipal property without permission. I pointed to Joshua Radu who was standing on the other side of de Maisonneuve boulevard and the police officer dutifully crossed the road in order to inform him that he was violating a municipal bylaw. . .

A bit later I decided to cross the road myself and join the conversation. I asked Joshua what he thought of the municipal bylaw and he indicated that he thought it was a bit dubious and problematic himself. I concurred but, just to make a point to the dim thinking U*Us at the Unitarian Church of Montreal. . . I then informed Joshua in the presence of the police officer that he no longer had my permission to take any photographs of me and that his professional photo assignment on behalf of Montreal U*Us was effectively terminated. It would be deliciously ironic if Val Bourdon was one of those DIM Thinking Montreal U*Us who had seen fit to hire Joshua Radu to document my protest activities for their dubious legal purposes. Doh!

As far as I am concerned the photos of Val Bourdon posted on The Emerson Avenger blog serve a "newsworthy" informative purpose and thus do not require his permission to be published here. If Val Bourdon believes otherwise he is most welcome to seek legal counsel about my publication of photos of his mug on my blog.