Note to Reader: Galloway v. A.B. goes to trial on October 5, 2026. Here’s where the case is at. And welcome new readers — you’ll find background links at the end of this post.

Having taken seven years merely to reach discovery, Galloway v. A.B. has earned its own verb: to “Galloway” a defamation case is to delay it through anti-SLAPP litigation. A law meant to let defendants quickly dismiss suits that stifle public debate has instead become a tool defendants can use to drag a trial out. The glacial crawl towards trial has been anything but quiet: the case has consistently delivered twists and turns, if not bare-knuckle legal fights, before a single witness has taken the stand.

The two and a half years since the Court of Appeal cleared the case to proceed have added several more twists: a number of applications threatening further delay, a trial date two judges have held firm, two key defendants settling, and A.B.’s failed bid to be excused from discovery without repercussions.

On January 31, 2025, Chief Justice Ronald Skolrood appointed Justice Amy Francis as judicial management judge, stepping in for Justice Elaine Adair, who had retired more than two years earlier. Francis set the trial for October 5, 2026, and two contested applications followed.

First, Galloway applied to amend his claim to bring it in line with the Court of Appeal’s ruling, and four defendants — Keith Maillard, Annabel Lyon, A.B., and Chelsea Rooney — objected to several paragraphs. But Justice Francis granted all of Galloway’s amendments over their objections, observing that the parties had at times “lost sight of the task at hand” — a reference, in large part, to the defendants’ attempts to argue the merits on what was meant to be a pleadings amendment — and reminding them that such applications are “not opportunities for parties to obtain tactical advantage.”

Second, a group of defendants asked the court to split the trial in two. They called themselves the “Twitter Defendants” — people with no personal connection to Galloway, sued over statements they posted on Twitter — and wanted the claims against the “UBC Defendants,” those directly involved in the events around his dismissal, tried first, with their own cases held back to a second trial later.

Their pitch was efficiency and access to justice: many of the Twitter Defendants were relying on pro bono counsel who could not afford to hold their calendars open for a full twelve-week trial. They told the court the first trial would decide the core issues, including the truth of A.B.’s allegations.

Justice Francis pointed out that if the whole litigation hinged on the truth of A.B.’s allegations, the logical severance would be to try that single issue first. Galloway’s lawyer, Dan Burnett, told the court his client would be “quite happy to consent” to exactly that. A.B. and the other defendants said they would oppose it.

In her reasons, Francis was skeptical that the split the Twitter Defendants actually wanted would save any time — a second trial, she noted, would likely be more than a year behind the first. She was sympathetic to the burden on pro bono counsel, but had to weigh the cost of two trials to Galloway.

“This is not a ‘David and Goliath’ case,” she wrote, “where a well-funded person or company is suing impecunious people for defamation.” Galloway lost his UBC job in 2015, she noted, has made a very modest income since, and no longer works in academia or publishes books — and two trials, even shorter ones, would cost him more than one.

She dismissed the application.

On November 17, 2025, Justice Francis was appointed to the B.C. Court of Appeal, abruptly ending her role in the case. On December 3, Chief Justice Skolrood assigned Justice Neena Sharma as judicial management judge and trial judge in her place.

At an early case management conference Justice Sharma opened by telling counsel, “I know some want to discuss changing the trial date. We won’t be discussing that. I want you to know we will be going to trial as scheduled in October.”

Still, the defendants had not lost their appetite to bring more motions.

Galloway’s former UBC colleagues Keith Maillard and Annabel Lyon — “the Professors” — joined by the defendants Chelsea Rooney and Marcelle Kosman, brought applications seeking to force Galloway to hand over a range of documents: his publishing company’s tax returns, his past correspondence with his publisher, and his clinical records going back to 2013. They also wanted one document that had never been made public — his termination letter from UBC.

The Professors argued the letter was relevant to their defences — that Galloway’s dismissal from UBC, and the reasons behind it, were bound up with the loss of his writing career in a way that bore on damages. Galloway countered that a private letter, never made public, could not have shaped his public reputation, and that the defendants wanted it only to drag in unsubstantiated allegations he wasn’t suing over and, in his words, “inflict further harm on [his] reputation.”

On April 30, Justice Sharma turned down nearly all of it. The demand for his company’s tax returns — already requested from the CRA — should never have been brought to court; the basis for reopening his publisher correspondence was “scant and unpersuasive”; and she saw no relevance in his clinical records going back to 2013. As for the termination letter, Sharma ordered it produced to her alone, for private review. Galloway was, in her words, “substantially successful,” and she ordered the Professors to pay his costs.

Next, the Professors applied to have the claims against their clients thrown out under the Weber defence — a jurisdictional argument that the statements accusing Galloway of rape were really a workplace matter, and so belonged in the faculty grievance process, not in a defamation trial. They wanted it heard before trial, to spare their clients the expense. A.B. and Chelsea Rooney signalled they would bring Weber applications too, and Justice Sharma directed all of them to file together, so the issue wouldn’t be argued twice.

Weber was not new ground: it had already been litigated, and rejected as a long shot, before Justice Adair at the anti-SLAPP hearing and again at the Court of Appeal. Still, Sharma set June 3 to hear the three applications. The Professors filed, and their lawyer, Karen Zimmer, arrived ready to argue the Professors’ way out before trial. But Rooney’s counsel didn’t file, and turned up only to tell Sharma she’d changed her position and would argue Weber at trial instead. A.B.’s counsel didn’t file and didn’t appear at all.

Sharma was not pleased. “There was no ambiguity in what I ordered,” she said. “This is very disruptive.” She would not hear the same argument twice — once now with the Professors, then again at trial with the others. “This application can’t go ahead unless I strike A.B. and Ms. Rooney’s reliance on Weber,” she said — and with A.B.’s lawyer absent, she couldn’t even get an answer from that side.

What was meant to be a hearing on Weber was now a case-management mess, but Zimmer persisted, asking whether she could take the court through her case law. Sharma responded by asking whether counsel really disputed that she was the trial management judge of a sixty-day trial that had been eight years in the system.

She had read the application, she said; the question was the fair way to proceed — and that meant fairness not only to the defendants but to the plaintiff too. She was sure Zimmer had authorities; they weren’t the point. There had been no delay in this case, Sharma said, that counsel had not caused — it had been running since 2018. Directions, she warned, would become orders. “I try not to be critical,” she added. “This is not anyone’s first rodeo.”

Sharma held her line: she would not hear the issue twice. She wouldn’t hear the Professors’ application, though she said they could seek costs against A.B. and Rooney.

Their last bid for an early exit had failed; they were heading to trial.

A few weeks later, the Professors — Keith Maillard and Annabel Lyon — settled with Steven Galloway under confidential terms. Their exit is expected to shorten the trial by about two weeks, and takes two of the best-known names off the roster heading to court. Whatever the settlement entailed, it brought to an end the acrimonious dispute between Galloway and his former UBC colleagues.

The most dramatic of the pre-trial fights was A.B.’s.

She applied to be relieved of any obligation to attend examination for discovery, arguing that being compelled to take part would put her at an unacceptable risk of suicide. And she wanted more than an exemption. As Justice Sharma summarized it, “in essence, A.B. is seeking a prophylactic order that her non-attendance at an examination for discovery scheduled by the plaintiff have no negative consequences on her position in the litigation, procedurally or substantively” — no default judgment, no adverse inference, nothing.

The medical evidence she filed in support is subject to a publication ban, so I cannot report what was said about it in court. What can be reported is how Sharma assessed the evidence, how she reasoned, and what she decided.

She began by taking the concerns seriously. A.B.’s application, she said, “raises important issues relating to this Court’s jurisdiction,” and “implicates what this Court can or should do to respond to witnesses and parties who assert that their participation in the litigation process will have significant and potentially life-threatening impacts on their well-being.” She confirmed the court “takes very seriously the concerns A.B. has raised.”

But she would not be moved from the court’s ordinary footing. The court, Sharma noted, regularly hears from witnesses who have suffered grievous trauma or serious mental illness, which is why it routinely offers accommodations — but it does not rewrite its rules for the party in front of it. Her duty, she said, was “to ensure fairness and maintain strict and absolute neutrality,” and not to decide out of “sympathy or animus toward any party.”

And she was sharp about how the application had been pressed. As she stated in her oral reasons:

Unfortunately, an implicit tenor and underlying theme to both the submissions of A.B.’s counsel, and the tone and content of the evidence adduced in support of the application is that the Court must do something substantively or, essentially, the Court itself would cause potentially life-threatening consequences.

It was beyond the power of this Court or any litigant, she said, to alter the foundational elements of our civil justice system.

The court cannot force a party to attend a discovery, but it can impose consequences for staying away; what it cannot do is use its inherent powers to manufacture substantive relief that contradicts the Rules. A.B. was not asking for an accommodation — she was asking the court to change the terms of the litigation in her favour.

There was also a problem at the heart of her argument: it rested on the premise that taking part would force her to relive an assault by Galloway — but whether that assault happened is the very question the trial exists to decide. On the whole, Sharma found, A.B. had “not adduced sufficient or persuasive evidence” that attending discovery “represents an unacceptably elevated risk of suicide.”

So she refused to excuse A.B. from discovery, and ordered the examination scheduled no later than June 30, on the gentlest terms the process allowed: no more than two hours, by video if A.B. preferred, held non-continuously across a single day, with frequent breaks and a support person beside her. She also dismissed the requests that no default judgment be entered and no adverse inference be drawn — the latter without prejudice, leaving A.B. free to raise it again later. Sharma closed by saying she would be remiss not to acknowledge that the application had been “very difficult for the Court.”

The discovery she ordered did not go ahead by June 30. What follows is another difficult decision for Justice Sharma.

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Welcome new readers

These links will get you up to speed on the origins of the Galloway case.

A Literary Inquisition — my 2018 Quillette account of how the allegations against Steven Galloway arose and collapsed.

Anatomy of an Allegation — the evidence behind the central allegation, and what it shows.

Truth, Lies and Levers of Power — on A.B.’s fabricated claim of a CBC legal opinion.

The Canadian Blacklists — what happened to the ninety-odd Canadian writers who signed the 2016 letter calling for due process.

Malice, Recklessness and a Disaster For All — fourteen takeaways from the anti-SLAPP ruling.

Dear Readers,

As many of you know, I received my first publication as a writer in Geist Magazine circa 1997 and subsequently maintained close ties with the magazine throughout the majority of my literary career.

In August of 2019, Geist received a complaint about me that, in my view, contained a number of unfounded accusations related to the publication of my article, "A Literary Inquisition: How Novelist Steven Galloway WasSmeared as a Rapist, Even as the Case Against Him Collapsed," published by the Australian online magazine Quillette. Anyone who has followed my writing on the Galloway case knows that the public and private dialogue around the case has, at times, been divisive, if not vitriolic.

Following the complaint and an unfortunate series of misunderstandings, Geist removed me from their list of contributing editors and later removed all my writing from their website.

I am writing to report that my work has now been restored to the Geist website and that Geist has published a statement regarding my involvement with the magazine, which you can read below.

Additionally, Geist will be implementing a complaint policy to ensure there is a policy in place to deal with future concerns. This strengthens Geist as a magazine and is an act of leadership that will hopefully also benefit the literary community as a whole.

The path to resolving this matter was at times difficult, but I can say unconditionally that it was brought to a close in large part due to the integrity of those at Geist, particularly their former Publisher, AnnMarie MacKinnon. Ms.MacKinnon is a fine editor and a promoter of the arts in Canada, and I wish her and Geist nothing but the best moving forward. They have restored my respect and confidence in them, and I thank them very much.

Geist Statement

“Geist magazine was launched in 1990 by our founders, Stephen Osborne and Mary Schendlinger. In the mid-1990s, Brad Cran was a contributor and volunteer at the magazine, and he played an important role in Geist's formative years. Mr. Cran became a long-time supporter of the magazine and we continued to publish Mr. Cran's work in the magazine into the 2010s.

In 2021, Mr. Cran's work was removed from the Geist website. The removal stemmed from a misunderstanding related to a request he had made. However, Mr. Cran perceived the removal of his content from our website as a form of blacklisting, which was not the case. We want to emphasize that Geist does not support blacklisting or silencing individuals.

The removal of his work was purely an editorial decision, and we regret that it was perceived differently.

This misunderstanding led to an allegation of a breach of contract. We have recently reached a settlement that addressed Mr. Cran's concerns. As part of the resolution, we are developing a complaint policy to prevent such misunderstandings from happening in the future, and we have republished Mr. Cran's work on the Geist website.

Editorial choice is important to Geist. We curate a Canadian essence, a certain spirit that we are very proud of publishing. Mr. Cran's work in Geist was part of that, and we value our past editorial decisions to print his work.”

Click here to read Science Fiction first published in Geist Magazine.

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Science Fiction

Click here to hear a 2014 Reading of Science Fiction

In writing school we were all so in love with ourselves
that we wanted to be someone else, someone good enough
to reflect our egos back to us in pleasing ways.
We had a Gwendolyn MacEwen type, who had windswept eyes
and a penchant for rowboats that she would fill with candles
and use to sail out of the classroom and down the street
in a funeral procession led by her own mother’s hate.

We had a Paul Theroux who would never shut up.
I suppose at the time I wanted to be Raymond Carver.
But of all my classmates the person I remember clearest
was the one everyone respected the least: the small awkward
student who wrote science fiction.

He was perhaps the most passionate person in the class
but his passion for science fiction made him even more absurd
to a group of young people already dreaming
about the composition of their literary obituaries.

To introduce a story he said:
What you need to know is that there are three moons
that revolve around the planet of Andor.
Then he was gone into the science of his plot: the effect
of the gravitational pull on character development,
the available ballistics, how they’d have guns
but preferred to fight with sabres and his hero who shall,
by the end of his story, slaughter the orc-like villains
and send them back to a life buried in clay.

His work was widely dismissed.
He was given suggested readings:
serious books by serious authors.
He came back to the next class
with a poem he had written about karate.

He stood up, took off his coat and from his bag he
unfolded, and then put on, a white karate jacket,
which in all honesty made him look even smaller.

He squared his feet back, braced his body in battle position
and shouted his poem while punching the air.

He may even have had good style but the sight
of this tiny science fiction writer, dressed for karate
and punching his poem into being, was too much
for our group to handle. When those who were trying to
hold back their laughter simply could not anymore
it blew out of our chests uncontrollably until
everyone was openly laughing.

He simply stopped, picked up his jacket,
walked out of the room and never came back.

Officially we were told that he had dropped the course
to find something that was “a better fit.”
Unofficially we talked about “the moons of Andor,”
his karate position and whether or not he was the kind
of person who would come to our class and shoot everyone.

At that time, in our early twenties, we just couldn’t see past
our own self-delusion, but in thinking about him now,
I understand he was just a young man
who desperately wanted to make himself stronger.

We were all so wrong about science fiction.

Three times in my life, in very real ways, I have felt
the knowledge that I have super powers. You see, one day
I became a super villain and had the power
to shoot beams of energy from my chest.

I have also glimpsed portals
and occasionally I can see through them.

Lastly, when certain elements line up with my body,
I gain the perception of perpetual speed and I do indeed
become the Flash, the fastest man in the world.

On April 17, 2007, at approximately 5:14 pm in front
of my house my daughter, age five, waved at a friend from the sidewalk.
When she stepped off the curb and ran to go see him,
a speeding SUV struck her and knocked her down the street.

I saw the impact from our living room window.
I may have flown off the front of my steps.
I may have teleported to her.
I can’t be sure how I got there,
but when I picked her up
blood trickled out of her mouth
and I went into shock.

As it turned out, the blood from her mouth was not
internal bleeding but ran from a deep cut
where she bit through her tongue.

Three ambulances and two fire trucks came.
She had muscle pain and road rash up one side of her body
but otherwise was fine. Gillian held her and I went outside
where the driver of the SUV was in our front yard
with her camera. She was taking pictures of the street
and her vehicle. She kept repeating to my neighbour
that she wasn’t going to have to pay.

This is when I became the super villain.

As clearly as I have the power to walk,
I could feel the hate in my chest coagulating
into a ball of energy that I was sure I could shoot
from my chest to vaporize her.

I could feel the power to kill her
through the strength of my hate.

I charged at her and my neighbour intervened.
I thought about releasing a beam of hate
and vaporizing them both but instead I told her
to leave my neighbourhood or I would kill her with my bare hands.

My neighbour insisted that she stay until the police arrived
and I went back inside to get Gillian because I was certain
Gillian would want me to kill her too—but instead
she told me to calm down. I couldn’t understand her.

A police officer came in to check on Rory and question us.
Gillian started by apologizing for me and telling the officer
I was just upset. She told him about the woman taking pictures.

The police officer said he would have been equally angry
but we should keep in mind “the driver of the vehicle
was in shock.” I said, yes I was sorry, that I got caught
in the heat of the moment, that I was just worried
about my daughter. But really I was lying to them
and I wanted them to believe me so I could leave
and follow the woman home, because even then
I still wanted to kill her.

Gillian began to cook. I usually do the cooking
in the house but in this moment she began to cook
and cook and cook. She could not stop cooking.

Her mood was jovial which frustrated me because
I wanted to convince her that we should burn the world.

She invited the police to stay. She would make pineapple
and red pepper shish kebabs, with a teriyaki glaze.
Garlic mashed potatoes and all of Rory’s favourite food.
There would be enough for the ambulance drivers
and all the neighbours. Really they should all stay.

It was as if the accident had cheered her up.
It wasn’t until three months later that her hair
began to fall out. At first we noticed just a little,
but then it became clear that her beautiful hair
was falling out in large clumps.

We took her to the walk-in clinic and the doctor
asked her if she had suffered a trauma within the past
few months and she told him, Three months ago,
if only for a moment, we thought we were going
to lose our daughter.

That fall Gillian and I finished collecting oral histories
for a book called Hope in Shadows. We would take turns
going to the Downtown Eastside to interview
disadvantaged people about their lives. We alternated
so neither would have to take the full emotional burden
of hearing stories of abuse that are so common
in an impoverished neighbourhood.

Sometimes the stories would inspire us, but often they
would open us up to a narrative we weren’t
prepared to hear. One day I listened to the story
of a woman I assumed was about forty years old.

She had started working as a prostitute at the age
of thirteen. She was in a wheelchair because someone
had thrown her down the escalator at the Granville SkyTrain
and one of the striped metal steps crushed her vertebrae.

Recently she had been panhandling outside the Roxy
nightclub and some men came out of the bar
and threw her out of her wheelchair. I asked her age
and found out she was actually twenty-four years old.

When I got home I had two goals: to keep calm
in front of my kids and drink as much wine as possible.
I must have poured half a bottle into my first glass.

I prepared myself to put up with my kids’ misbehaviour;
I would do everything I could to hold it together,
but Rory could tell something was wrong.

She hugged my legs and said, Daddy, you’re the best daddy
in the world. And that is what set me off, bawling
like a child in front of my own children.

Sometime that fall, my friend Ian introduced us
to the music of Jonathan Richman. I wasn’t familiar
with Richman’s music but Ian had tickets to see him
and he assured us we’d love his show. So we went.

I now own many of his albums but it is Richman’s
Rockin’ and Romance that became an important part
of our lives. This album is a sonata to happiness.
It is sunshine and beach sand. It is the human condition
told through the quest for a new pair of jeans.

On days we had hard interviews it was our cure, our cleanser:
to go for a run and listen to Rockin’ and Romance.

Three years later the book was going into a second
printing and I was at my publisher’s. He said he had forgotten
to tell me but we had received a letter. It was a letter from
Jonathan Richman. He wanted us to know that he had been
in town performing and a homeless person had sold him
a copy of Hope in Shadows. He was writing
to say how much he enjoyed it. This was more important
than just receiving a note from someone we admired.
It was a convergence. I couldn’t have been on my bicycle
fast enough. I was pedalling as quickly as I could.

I had to get home to show Gillian
this letter from Jonathan Richman.

I was biking down Abbott toward BC Place
and the road was blocked. People were standing around.
There was a baby stroller in the street under a yellow tarp.

I asked someone what had happened and was told
a mother was waiting at the light to cross the street,
and when she stepped off the curb a tow truck hit
and killed her baby.

Panic set in. Again I couldn’t get home fast enough.
I needed to get home as quick as possible.
Every molecule of my body was water.
It was as if I could slip into the ocean.

This is how it happens. A mother’s life
changes forever one afternoon.

Where could that mother place herself
after such a horrible loss?

Sometimes all we have is fantasy.
Sometimes we need science fiction.

Throughout the city you can see memorials
built for people who have been killed by motorists.
Each memorial has its own distinct energy.
The memorials with the strongest pull
are the two I have seen in the city
that were erected for children.

One is framed around a teddy bear
tied to a pole with purple ribbon.

The other is a perpetually refreshed stack of flowers
above a large Tonka truck.

I haven’t yet figured the science out, how exactly they work
but I believe they are portholes to a second chance,
an alternate universe or a world with different gravity.

What you need to know is that there are three moons
that revolve around the planet of Andor.

From a hundred yards back of a roadside shrine,
I can spot the flicker of another world, the glimmer
of something as easy as a second chance. As I get closer
the portal fully opens; a child is again standing
by the road, everything depends on this. I am the Flash.

My thoughts are lightning, my heart beats
by its thunder. The child fidgets and I am running.

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On Thursday, October 10th, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) rejected three applications for leave to appeal filed by eight defendants in Galloway v. A.B.. The defendants had accused writer and former UBC Chair of Creative Writing Steven Galloway of rape and/or sexual assault and he subsequently sued them for making those accusations. The original accuser was A.B., whose name is protected by a publication ban.

The defendants brought an unsuccessful application in BC Supreme Court to have Galloway’s case dismissed under British Columbia’s Protection of Public Participation Act PPPA), also known as “anti-SLAPP” legislation. Enacted in March 2019, this law provides a mechanism for dismissing frivolous lawsuits that could stifle public discourse on matters of public importance.

In her December 2021 decision, Madam Justice Adair cleared the way for Galloway’s case to proceed against all but two defendants: writer Alicia Elliott and Galloway’s former colleague at UBC, Annabel Lyon. The anti-SLAPP application then went before three justices at the BC Court of Appeal (BCCA) in March 2023, in a series of appeals and cross-appeals brought by the defendants and Mr. Galloway. In January 2024, the BCCA upheld the bulk of Madam Justice Adair’s decision while allowing Galloway’s appeal to add Ms. Lyon back to the lawsuit.

The SCC was the final avenue of appeal for the defendants. The SCC only grants leave in cases involving matters of significant public importance or legal issues deemed worthy or requiring the Court’s consideration (or in some cases, oversight). When denying applications for leave to appeal, the SCC provides no reasons or commentary and generally does not award costs, except in specific situations, such as frivolous or vexatious applications, bad faith dealings, or when, for any reason, fairness justifies an award of costs.

Galloway was awarded costs by the SCC.

In the absence of written commentary from the Court, we can only conclude that the Court reviewed the defendants’ applications and found no matters of public importance, nor any legal issue justifying or requiring their intervention, but determined that some aspect of the applications warranted an award of costs to Galloway.

As insight into the Court’s decision, we have the three applications filed by the defendants to support their appeal, one of which states, “This case cries out for this Court’s attention.”

Here are three issues raised by the defendants:

Application 1: Permissible Lies

Up until this SCC application, the most legally and socially dangerous idea presented by the defendants was the proposition that sexual assault allegations should be protected speech to encourage women to come forward with such allegations – truthful or not.

As A.B.’s lawyer submitted to Madam Justice Adair during the initial anti-SLAPP hearing in BC Supreme Court:

“What if it is a false report?” Ms. Birenbaum said. “We don’t have a systemic social problem of false reports; we have a systemic social problem of under reporting.”

Madam Justice Adair rightly rejected this submission in her decision:

“The implication of the Applicants’ submissions is essentially that any public statement, the natural and ordinary meaning of which would be understood to be that a sexual assault was perpetrated by one person against another (in this case, that Mr. Galloway raped A.B.), and regardless of the circumstances in which the statement was published, must be protected. There would be no legal consequences of any kind attached to publicly calling someone a rapist…”

A.B.’s application for leave to appeal to the SCC contains an equally dangerous (and tautological) proposition: That those making allegations of sexual assault should be permitted to lie without a finding of malice because “sexual harassment and sexual assault complainants are likely to harbor ill will towards their abusers, with good reason.”

As I have previously reported, A.B. admitted under oath to fabricating, spreading and leveraging a false claim that lawyers at CBC had vetted her rape allegations. Madam Justice Adair was unequivocal in her ruling:

The CBC Document was a tissue of lies, which A.B. knew was going to be presented at the November Meeting. Indeed, its purpose was to provide “evidence” to “build the case” against Mr. Galloway. The CBC Document was a deliberate fabrication, designed to persuade those attending the November Meeting that Mr. Galloway was guilty of rape, that lawyers at the CBC who had heard A.B.’s story had accepted it as reliable and true, and that the story would be taken to a national audience unless the faculty acted. Thus, in the CBC Document, A.B. manufactured a story for the occasion.

In her application for leave, A.B. asserted that Justice Adair’s findings on malice perpetuate a detached, unrealistic and problematic view of how a survivor ought to disclose an assault and specifically that:

In terms of the “CBC vetting” email, the chambers judge wrongly conflated the truth of that email with reckless indifference as to the truth of the underlying allegations.

The national issue of importance that A.B. wanted the SCC to consider was an ability for people who accuse others of sexual assault to be given wide latitude to lie without a finding of malice because “ill will towards abusers” is a likely outcome of having been raped or sexually assaulted.

A.B. submitted to the Court that if telling a “peripheral lie in order to be believed” was sufficient to establish malice on a PPPA application then the PPPA would rarely protect sexual assault allegations except for “the perfect victim.”

We’ve now come full circle since 2016 when A.B.’s supporters publicly attacked the writer Margaret Atwood for having the gall to write in Walrus Magazine:

To think that members of a group called “women” are always right and never lie does a great disservice to accusing women and abuse survivors

A.B. asked the Supreme Court of Canada to create a legal exception that not only accepts that women lie but expects and excuses lies from them on matters as serious as sexual assault. They declined.

Application 2: Honest Belief

The second application was brought by Mr. Galloway’s former student Chelsea Rooney and his former UBC colleagues Keith Maillard and Annabelle Lyon. All three were directly involved in the scandal at UBC, so I will refer to them as the “UBC Three”.

In the opening paragraph of the application for leave to appeal, the UBC Three assert that in Hansman v. Neufeld, the SCC held that subjective honest belief in an alleged defamatory statement negates the possibility of finding malice. Put more simply, what they are saying is that if you honestly believe an allegation of rape, you can repeat without legal consequences because you honestly believe it to be true.

The UBC Three submitted to the SCC that the BC Supreme Court and the BCCA erred when Madam Justice Adair found, and the BCCA upheld, that there was reason to believe they had acted with malice. Their application states:

The Courts below in this case carved out a surprising exception to this rule, holding that the failure to “intensively examine” a sexual assault complainant when she discloses the assault creates an inference of malice.

The UBC Three further claimed that Justice Adair found that “conducting an investigation in response to a complaint, and voicing support for, or belief in, a complainant are defamatory, reckless, and (in direct conflict with the honest belief rule) malicious acts.”

In response to this claim Galloway’s lawyer Dan Burnett KC states:

…the applicants erroneously assert in their very first paragraph that the BC Court of Appeal decision created a special sexual assault exemption to avoiding a malice finding, and assert that the decision below held that the failure to “intensively examine” the rape claim before repeating and endorsing it resulted in a finding of malice.

…The quotation marks around “intensively examine” suggest that these were the words of the court below. They were not. No such phrase appears in either decision below.

The UBC Three submitted to the SCC that it was a matter of national importance to weigh in on their honest belief:

The applicants ask this Court to grant leave and confirm there is no sexual assault exception to the rule that there is no malice when a defamation defendant honestly believes their statement.

In reply, Mr. Burnett argued that neither of the lower courts found that the UBC Three held honest beliefs. Madam Justice Adair found grounds to believe that Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon were reckless enough to meet the legal test for malice. Once the erroneous descriptions within their application are corrected, the issue they claim to be of “national importance” vanishes.

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Application 3: Non-Criminal Rape

In their application for leave to appeal, the defendants Marcelle Kosman, Mandi Gray, Kiera Anderson, and Ari Rombough refer to themselves as the “Online Defendants” and define themselves as “strangers participating in a heated online debate about institutional responses to reports of gender-based violence.”

What the Online Defendants have in common is that they all publicly stated that Mr. Galloway had committed sexual assault or rape without knowing him or any details about the allegations against him. All four also present themselves as academic or public authorities on sexual assault. At times, their application for leave to appeal reads like the back of a paperback novel:

This application is brought by four strangers, separated by geography, circumstance, and time, who each thought they were participating in a robust—and important—public debate, but have instead found themselves the targets of litigation.

The majority of their application outlines what they call the “firestorm” of public debate following the publication of the UBC Accountable Letter, which defended Mr. Galloway’s right to due process. Their application also names Margaret Atwood nine times, cites her previously mentioned comments in the Walrus magazine as the inspiration for Ms. Rombough to publicly state that Mr. Galloway committed sexual assault, and rehashes arguments about the “chilling effect” of Galloway’s lawsuit that have already been meticulously dismissed by both lower courts.

The novel issue they present as worthy of the SCC’s intervention is their assertion that Madam Justice Adair relieved Galloway of his burden to prove harm because the defamations they made against him (committing sexual assault and/or rape) were criminal in nature.

The Online Defendants argue that Justice Adair’s decision sets a precedent where any criminal allegations (i.e. rape) will automatically defeat a motion to dismiss under the PPPA. They further argue that rape is on a spectrum of which the criminality of the various types of rape are uncertain. As they write:

…the line between criminal and non-criminal conduct is far from clear. Indeed, what constitutes sexual assault—including the meaning of consent between a professor and a student—is itself part of the public debate. Does the PPPA require that such conversations be parsed, and that different results flow depending on where the line of “criminality” is drawn?

What the Online Defendants are saying is that one could discuss various types of rape including rape that is non-criminal. They continue:

The BCCA’s carve-out for criminal allegations is of national importance. #MeToo was an “unprecedented international movement protesting sexual violence against women”, and it caused lasting societal change. Yet the BCCA’s decision makes the PPPA unavailable in public debates about sexual misconduct—solely because the subject matter of those debates relates to an offence in the Criminal Code. This cannot be what the Legislature intended.

What they are getting at in this specific case is that Madam Justice Adair made an assumption about their statements being criminal rape when it could feasibly be that Mr. Galloway engaged in other types of conduct that were rape-like but not classified as such under the Criminal Code. They submit, as they did in the lower courts, that their public discussions should not be hampered when their commentary drifts into issues of criminality.

This is an issue which Madam Justice Adair covered in her decision:

I do not accept that, unless Dr. Kosman is permitted to publicly label Mr. Galloway as violent, a rapist and criminal, she is unable to carry on her work. This, again, is a false dilemma. There is no public interest in promoting the careless or reckless use of Twitter. Rather, in my view, the public interest lies in promoting the opposite.

In dismissing their application for leave to appeal, it’s safe to assume that the Supreme Court of Canada agreed.

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This lawsuit is about false allegations; it is about defamation and not about the reporting of sexual assault. I sincerely hope no one who has experienced sexual assault views this case as a barrier to reporting. None of the defendants are being sued over any statements made as part of the reporting process set out by UBC policy guiding such allegations. This has been directly stated by both the BC Supreme Court and the BC Court of Appeals.

The defendants are being sued for statements made outside of UBC’s reporting process, often on social media, which carried the factual assertion that I was guilty of one of the most serious crimes there is. As the court has affirmed, it is entirely possible, and even desirable, to engage in public discussion and debate without resorting to defaming people.

All I have asked for is the chance to prove in a court of law that the allegations made against me, and repeated as truth by the defendants in this case, are false. I have not taken this step lightly, and while the past 5 years of litigation has been taxing for myself and my family, I intend to see this process to its conclusion.

Dear Readers,

Moments ago, the BC Court of Appeal released its decision in Galloway v. A.B., noteworthy for its complexity and significance in Steven Galloway's legal journey to clear his name amid false allegations of rape.

Summarizing the outcome of multiple appeals and cross-appeals, the Court agreed with Galloway on most issues, apart from appeals involving Alicia Elliott and aspects of Mandy Gray’s application, which had limited success in the lower court. This means that Alicia Elliott's SLAPP application remains successful and she is released, while all other defendants, including Gray, will proceed to trial.

Notably, Annabel Lyon, whose dismissal application was initially granted due to a limitation period issue, is now back in the litigation. This is undoubtedly a blow to Ms. Lyon but also a potentially devastating blow to the reputation of the University of British Columbia where Ms. Lyon is the Director of their School of Creative Writing.

The full decision is available at the link below and stay tuned and click subscribe for a comprehensive update to come.

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Click here to read the full BC Court of Appeal decision.

On April 19, 2022, the Canadian literary community suffered a devasting loss when the novelist, poet and musician Steven Heighton suddenly passed away at the age of 60 following a swift bout with cancer. The reaction on social media to his passing was a mixture of shock, sadness and genuine esteem, captured by one writer who tweeted:

“Almost a decade ago Steven Heighton taught a poetry class at McGill that changed my life. The sharpest, smartest, sweetest man this planet had to offer. Zero ego and cool as hell too.”

The writer Amanda Leduc published an equally touching tribute on Twitter:

“He was unfailingly kind and generous and sweet, always. So very kind to new writers especially. What grace. What wisdom. What a treasure.”

Heighton was one of our finest and most disciplined writers whose contagious love for writing and the writing life spilled into the lives of so many of us who were lucky enough to call him a friend. But there is another aspect of Heighton’s final years that has gone unmentioned.

Steven Heighton was a blacklisted writer.

Like most of the writers who signed the UBC Accountable Letter that defended the novelist Steven Galloway’s right to due process, Heighton barely knew Galloway and signed it as a matter of principle.

“It seemed clear to me from the start that UBC was railroading him,” he wrote to me back in 2017, “and that's why I signed a letter in support of someone I barely knew. What an unholy alliance--a bunch of MFA maoists and a multinational-affiliated corporation waging war on an employee.”

Through Galloway’s ongoing defamation lawsuit we now know that Heighton’s suspicions were correct and that the signatories’ call for an inquiry was valid. In her 2022 decision on a motion to dismiss Galloway’s case, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Elaine J. Adair found Galloway’s accuser to be a liar and found that there are grounds to believe that Galloway’s colleagues at UBC were motivated by malice and recklessness.

Heighton took the backlash against the letter hard. As pressure mounted on signatories to withdraw their names and disavow the letter, he wrote to me, “I fear that what's coming for me is a choice between following my conscience, which says stay, and obeying the pleas of my body and mind, which says walk away and find peace again, health.”

The attacks on signatories of the UBC Accountable letter included blacklisting, calls for burning books and in some isolated cases threats of violence. Female signatories took the brunt of the abuse. Perhaps it speaks to Heighton’s likeability that while many signatories were written off as persona non-grata, he still received some invitations to speak at universities and festivals.

In March of 2018 Heighton gave a talk in the Creative Writing department of his alma mater, Queen’s University. The event was a success and went off without a hitch until a few days later when the poet and Queens Creative Writing professor Carolyn Smart posted a brief note on the Department Facebook page describing the event and saying Heighton had spoken to a packed room.

Among the comments attached to the Facebook post, were some by Erin Flegg. Ms Flegg was Galloway’s former teaching assistant who brought a frivolous complaint against him that was dismissed in the private investigation held by retired BC Supreme Court justice Mary-Ellen Boyd. Ms. Flegg wrote, “Disappointing to see Queen's Creative Writing hosting a writer whose name is still on the UBC Accountable letter.”

Smart responded, “I addressed this with him, believe me!”

“I appreciate that,” Flegg replied, “but I would appreciate it more if the program decided it would not host anyone whose name is still on the letter. There are plenty of other talented writers to choose from. As both a Queen's creative writing alum and a UBC creative writing alum, it’s hurtful to see this.”

“Thank you, Erin,” Smart wrote, “I have heard this, appreciate your situation, and will act upon it… it's difficult. But I am trying. And I hope you know that despite my stumbles, you have my full support.”

In that brief Facebook exchange Erin Flegg successfully campaigned to have over 90 Canadian writers blacklisted from Creative Writing at Queen’s University.

I contacted Ms. Smart for comment in 2022 and she said that she could not provide comment on the blacklisting of Steven Heighton, in part because she was grieving Steven Heighton. Additionally, before he passed away, Heighton confirmed that Smart had not brought up the UBC Accountable letter with him at all as she had claimed in her response to Ms. Flegg.

The same month that Heighton passed away I sent out a survey to 82 of the signatories of the UBC Accountable Letter seeking information about their experiences as signatories. 32 signatories responded, with 9 of them willing to go on the record and the rest requesting anonymity in order to avoid further personal and professional backlash.

56.3% of respondents believe they have been blacklisted, cancelled or deplatformed by a university or literary organization with 18.8% being certain of it and 37.5% believing so but not having the ability to prove it. 64.5% report having received hateful or threatening emails, text messages, DM’s and/or mail. 61.3% experienced online abuse for having signed the letter, with a number of those claiming that they haven’t, but only because they do not use social media.

Carmen Aguirre is an award-winning playwright, non-fiction writer and Canadian refugee whose family escaped death and torture when they fled Chile for Canada in the wake of the 1973 Chilean coup. As a young woman, Aguirre also fought in the anti-Pinochet resistance, an experience that instilled in her an unshakeable commitment to due process.

“People were systematically imprisoned, tortured, murdered, and disappeared without charge or trial,” Aguirre wrote regarding this experience in an op-ed defending her position as a signatory. “Due process has been, and is, one of the most important principles of my life. And due process was what Galloway was denied when he was called a rapist.”

At the age of 13, Aguirre was also raped at gunpoint by the notorious serial rapist John Horace Oughton. By any measure of logic, free speech or identity politics, Aguirre is uniquely qualified to speak on matters of sexual assault. Yet she was painted as a rape apologist. In response to her op-ed, UBC’s Keith Maillard denounced Aguirre’s defense of due process as “a nasty bit of self-righteous agit-prop that would fit easily into an MRA (Men’s Rights Activist) site.”

After the publication of Aguirre’s op-ed, Room magazine told her that members of their board had requested that she be fired as an adjudicator of one of their writing contests. Aguirre travelled to Calgary to participate in a literary panel but when she arrived organizers told her that a poet on the panel had written a letter protesting her participation and saying that she never would have agreed to share a stage with someone as “unsafe” as Aguirre.

“Friends and colleagues regularly come to me with tales of what is being said about me at events and gatherings,” Aguirre says. “I have been called (behind my back) a rape apologist, crazy, bowing down to the white man, jumping to the other side, brainwashed, stupid, etc.”

Lorna Crozier is one of Canada’s most beloved poets and teachers of Creative Writing, appointed to the Order of Canada for “her poetry and for her mentorship of the next generation of Canadian poets.”

“A magazine celebrating a significant anniversary was pressured to ‘uninvite’ me from the event because of my signing of the letter,” Crozier says, “--social media postings suggesting my books be burned --social media postings threatening to attack me at a public reading.”

“It is the thing that will not go away,” says a woman I will call Ellen, who also signed the letter out of principle and without any strong personal ties to Galloway. “It is like the Scarlett letter. A brand burnt into me. When I enter a public space my stomach flip flops with anxiety and I do a quick scan of the room, for enemies and trolls.”

Thomas is a writer with an international reputation who experienced online abuse including calls to burn his books. He still gets invited to international festivals but since signing the letter he has only attended one Canadian literary festival which took a bad turn.

“I was confronted by a writer in the festival common room” Thomas says, “who admitted to not knowing any of the parties involved in the UBC affair yet told me in an angry and aggressive tone that she believed Galloway guilty and I was an effin liar for defending him. She then walked out leaving me somewhat gob-smacked in the crowded room.”

Tessa is an award-winning writer who has also been active in programming literary festivals. As a program consultant for an international festival she couldn’t book signatories. “The media attention this cause attracted made it difficult for me to invite some of the most deserving authors because they were seen to be too controversial. My arguments (in support of booking signatories) were not successful, and finally I had to end my affiliation with the festival.”

A prominent literary festival in Ontario cancelled a book launch for Alistair two weeks before it was scheduled. He was directly told that the cancellation was due to the fact that he had been “dismissive of victims” by signing the letter.

Greg had a longstanding relationship with a Canadian Literary festival. “After a long history of very successful hosting of events, I was abruptly no longer invited to host -- no explanation, no contact, not even the decency of a thank-you for past performance.”

Hal Wake was the Artistic Director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival and has 40 years of good standing in the literary community going back to his time as the book producer for CBC Radio’s Morningside with Peter Gzowski. Like Lorna Crozier, Wake was one of the signatories who was physically threatened on social media. When asked if he received backlash from signing the letter he said, “Does someone saying he wanted to punch me (amongst others) in the nose count?”

David is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers. He was informed by a reliable source that at a meeting for a prominent writers’ organization in his province, the chairperson attempted to pass a motion banning anyone who signed the UBC Accountable letter from teaching in their writing school since students “would not feel safe.” The motion was promptly shot down by other board members. Yet it’s impossible to gage the effect these conversations have had on hiring practices, festival bookings and the allotment of grant money.

The problem with blacklisting is that it is most often done in secret making it incredibly hard to prove. 37.5% of responding signatories feel like they have been blacklisted but can’t prove it.

Wake cites three lost job opportunities that he knows about. In one instance he was dismissed from a position at a major literary organization who assured him that their decision had nothing to do with his having signed the letter. Roughly two years later, Wake found himself at another literary event with a board member from the organization who told him that the board had lied to him and he was indeed dropped because the board had “objections” to his politics.

“I have not been able to get a poem published in a literary magazine since signing the letter,” Eric says. “Poetry publishers used to approach me looking for work, but my current manuscript has been quickly rejected by every house I have sent it to.”

Linda is another prominent writer with a major literary prize to her name. She was told that she was unlikely to receive a residency she applied for because she signed the letter.

“I was pretty anxious as a result,” Linda says, “It has made me reluctant to apply for writing jobs or even submit writing to places where the people involved were vocal in their opposition to the UBC Accountable letter.”

Ryan is an award-winning writer and long-time teacher of creative writing. He’s been a mentor to numerous successful Canadian writers and has long had the reputation of being a kind and approachable writer. 

“Invitations to festivals have lessened by at least half, again with no evidence of any connection” Ryan says. “I used to get at least half, or two thirds of the Canada Council grants I applied for over time--I have applied for three since Accountable and have got none of them.”

While the uncertainty and nebulous nature of blacklisting has caused great stress to signatories, the loss of friendships has perhaps been the most devastating part of the conflict with 71.9% of respondants indicating that they lost friendships by signing the letter.

“I lost a university job,” an acclaimed fiction writer I will call Mary says, “I received anonymous emails accusing me of supporting rapists; been shunned at public events. I had old friends pretend they do not know me/will not speak to me. Lost close personal friends. Had strangers who know nothing about me make ridiculous, stupid and incorrect assumptions about my life."

“I was openly attacked on social media," says novelist Susan Swan. “During that time, I lost two friendships with women writers that I mentored, and another younger writer accused me of having blood on my hands.”

“I lost what I had previously thought was my closest friend because of this,” Linda says.

“An old female friend I hadn't seen in two decades emailed me accusing me of pulling a Roman Polanski,” Ryan says.

“I have had nightmares about being cancelled,” Ellen says. “It's like living an underground life now. I just serve my students, try to keep writing and keep my head low.”

The hardest part, Mary says, is the total loss of control. “I spent decades building my reputation as a writer. Then in an instant people who I have never even met suddenly took total control of my identity as if I no longer had any input into what I actually thought or even who I am as a person.”

While most of the signatories weren’t friends with Steven Galloway, the most notable exception to that was Joseph Boyden. Boyden stood accused of writing and spearheading the letter but in fact he had nothing to do with it aside from agreeing to put his name at the bottom when asked at the eleventh hour before its publication. Boyden would become the first to feel the backlash when Briarpatch magazine dropped him as a judge for one of their writing contests.

“In light of the open letter to the University of British Columbia initiated and signed by Joseph Boyden,” the Briarpatch statement reads, “the staff and board of Briarpatch Magazine have collectively decided that our partnership with Mr. Boyden as one of the Writing in the Margins contest judges cannot continue.”

Boyden would then be thrown into his own maelstrom where his attempts at dialogue on the issues of his identity and place in CanLit led to the unjust and disproportionate punishment of wiping out his career. “There is room in our circle for Joseph Boyden,” Wab Kinew wrote in a 2017 op-ed, and it is unequivocally true that as one of our finest novelists Boyden deserves, and therefore should be entitled to, a lasting place in CanLit. 

“I don’t think there is a literary culture in this country anymore,” says signatory Patrick Warner. “There is a media culture as a political culture in its place.”

Attacks on free speech hurt all writers. A community wide acceptance of blacklisting threatens to put the entire body of Canadian writers in disrepute. Recently a number of writers signed a letter in support of the protesters who disrupted the Giller Prize to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. They are free to express themselves. They are free to protest. For better or worse they are also free to offend others as their letter has done.

But 100 of the signatories who signed the Giller letter had also signed the UBC Accountable “Counter Letter” which called for signatories to renounce their defense of due process and delete the UBC Accountable Letter because it had caused offense. What standard now applies to these 100 writers? Since their own letter has caused offence, do they believe they ought, morally, to delete their Giller letter or remove their names from it?

The damage caused by blacklisting is incalculable. Of the 90+ signatories to the UBC Accountable Letter, 17 have been awarded the Order of Canada for their contributions to Canadian Culture, many of whom specifically received the honor for their work in teaching, mentorship and inspiring the next generation of writers. 70% of signatories state that negative treatment they experienced has caused them to reduce their involvement in the writing community with 36.7% indicating that they did so in a profound way.

With her late husband Patrick Lane, Lorna Crozier published two anthologies called Breathing Fire and Breathing Fire 2 that are widely credited with launching the careers of two generations of poets. She says she wouldn’t do them today.

“I remember the delight of the launches when those who could attend were so excited to meet each other. It felt like the start of something,” she says. “I don’t feel that way anymore. If I or he (Lane) were editors, they may choose not to submit and there’s such anger out there, that there might be a backlash rather than an aura of excitement.”

Universities have been particularly hostile to signatories.

“I had the ugly experience of a female university student publicly proclaiming that from here on in she would not dare to be alone in a room with me,” Ryan says.

The most bizarre academic backlash came from Dr. Lorraine York, a “leading scholar of Margaret Atwood” who disowned the subject of her professional career in an essay called, “How Do We Get Out of Here? An Atwood Scholar, Signing Off.”

In her essay Dr. York apologizes for having engaged with the subject of her life’s work, as if scholarly essays on the literature of Margaret Atwood are now a deep embarrassment akin to trading in blood diamonds. “I continued to reap the benefits of having made Atwood a distinct part of my academic career,” Dr. York wrote. “This essay is my seeking of an equilibrium of fairness, balance, and justice.”

In her bio on the McMaster website, Dr. York no longer presents herself as a “leading scholar of Margaret Atwood” but instead defines herself as a specialist in literary celebrity who has “become increasingly concerned with the way in which various relations of power have formed, and continue to animate, the institution of ‘CanLit.’”

Ms. Atwood says that she was attacked “very publicly” for signing the letter and for writing two essays. The first was a defense of her position on due process and the second was an essay called “Am I a bad feminist?” which she included in her 2022 book Burning Questions.

“Interviewing journos ask about it (“Bad feminist”) regularly, in a positive manner,” Atwood said in the survey. “In 2022, due process is in fashion again.”

In March of that year, Atwood was also awarded The Christopher Hitchens Prize which is annually bestowed on “an author or journalist whose work reflects a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence.”

Ms. Atwood says that she believes she received the Hitchens award at least in part for the two essays and her role as a signatory. So her defence of due process that garnered her attacks in the halls of Canadian academia brought her praise abroad. Despite being the signatory who was most frequently (and most harshly) attacked, Ms. Atwood’s growing international stature combined with the continued and dependable loyalty of her domestic readership makes her impossible to “cancel.”

The saddest part of the backlash to UBC Accountable has been the impact on writers who are at the end of their careers and should be looking back on their accomplishments with pride, unfettered by the idea that there are those who want to erase their contributions to Canadian literature.

“This thing ushered in a whole new kind of loneliness,” Ellen says. “Unfortunately, the combined timing of UBC fallout and the sorrow of aging I experience has been a difficult admixture. I no longer think of a 'writing community' since UBC, only small pockets of collegiality and support.”

Despite everything that the signatories have gone through, 90.4% of those who responded to the survey indicated that they had no regrets about signing the letter, with 58.1% indicating they were proud to have done so.

“I never doubted signing the letter asking for due process,” says Swan. “Now all these years later Justice Adair has found in her decision that the people who continuously accused Galloway of rape on social media had harmed rather than helped public discussions of sexual assault.” 

Only three authors surveyed said they regretted signing the letter, with one of them writing, “I only regret signing the Letter because of how the fallout impacted my mental health and overall quality of life. I held my head high the times I was iced out in public…but it took a toll.”

“I feel like a lot of things I've tried to do in support of the writing community were for nothing so I just keep to myself now,” Ellen says, “a nervous recluse, with only a small select number of friends I trust.”

"I have mostly checked out of the Canadian literary community,” Mary says. “But after Steven Heighton's death, I kind of feel like I will check back in, because his passage has reminded me that Canadian letters and literature actually still exist, or, at least, once existed.”

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Blacklisting and other forms of censorship are an affront to all writers. I encourage all Canadian writers to contact their local and national literary organizations to request that they make a public statement in support of free speech and unequivocally denounce the practice of ideological blacklisting writers for expressing their views on matters of public importance.

If you are a Canadian writer or artist who has experienced blacklisting or if you believe you may have been blacklisted, you can email me confidentially at truthandconsequences@substack.com.

Within days of publication some of the signatories withdrew their names from the letter following accusations that they were “gate keeping” and silencing victims. At the same time more writers signed on to the letter knowing that doing so would come with risk.

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The risks were real. Those accusing the UBC Accountable signatories of “gate keeping” appointed themselves gate keepers and began exercising that power against signatories but also against others, and eventually against themselves. For having defended the principles of due process and the presumption of innocence, writers were blacklisted from literary festivals, universities, and publishing houses among other acts of illiberalism and censorship.

CanLit was not oppressive, instead it was fragile and ripe for the taking.

While we knew relatively little back in 2016, if the UBC Accountable Letter were written today it could be crafted with scathing precision towards exposing the depths of UBC’s corruption. In July of 2018 UBC’s Philip Steenkamp broke the terms of Galloway’s arbitration subjecting UBC to $60,000 in fines when he published a statement claiming: “The faculty and staff charged with management of this matter were professional and principled in all of their dealings and were guided throughout by the relevant policies and prescribed processes.”

The facts on the record now contradict Mr. Steenkamp’s claims of professionalism in no uncertain terms; they are as unequivocal as they are damning.

While those at UBC vilified Mr. Galloway under the stain of guilt by seeking out any possible story about him that could be twisted into a transgression, these same colleagues buried transgressions of their own that were in fact incriminating. This includes the shocking revelation that Keith Maillard and Annabel Lyon signed off on Galloway’s accuser’s thesis despite knowing that it was incomplete, thereby engaging in what likely amounts to academic fraud. Galloway’s accuser also extorted UBC into acting against Galloway with threats that our courts have now deemed “a tissue of lies.”

Steven Galloway was falsely accused and from the earliest moments UBC knew or should have known this. Galloway’s accuser lied to everyone at UBC and did so in a manner so sloppy that her inconsistent and unbelievable accusations fall apart with even the smallest amount of scrutiny. This is the embarrassment that UBC has been unable to face.

Instead of coming clean UBC stood by while CanLit tore itself apart. Blacklisting and “cancellations” have since become the new norm in CanLit. Today a writer with decades of work in our community can be wiped out and deemed persona non grata for writing a single literary review that some disagree with.  

In 2018, I was invited as a past Poet Laureate of the city of Vancouver to read a poem at the Word Vancouver literary festival (formerly Word On The Street). Days before appearing organizers informed me that they had received numerous complaints against me and requested that I agree to drop out. I of course refused and made it clear I would not go quietly.

The board of directors for Word Vancouver were apparently split on whether or not I should be allowed to appear at their festival (where I am myself a former board member) until a fellow participant threatened to step down in solidarity if my invitation were rescinded. A day later I received an apology from the festival and appeared without incident.

Word Vancouver considered the matter closed; however, I still had no idea what had been said about me and by whom. The board refused to provide me with copies of the complaints and even refused to forward to the complainants offers to settle the matter outside of the courts. So, I began legal proceedings against the anonymous authors and in February of this year I obtained a court order for Word Vancouver to produce the letters. While I will be proceeding in a defamation action against two of the complainants, I was able to bring closure to the issue with a third.

Sierra Skye Gemma was a student at UBC who was most prominently featured in Marsha Lederman’s Globe and Mail article “Under A Cloud,” which details how Ms. Gemma came forward to support the allegations against Mr. Galloway and the havoc doing so has wreaked on her life and career as a writer.

Over the years of writing about this scandal, I interviewed numerous students who were in Ms. Gemma’s cohort and one of them described her as one of the bravest and most principled people in the program at the time. Ms. Gemma has, in my view, lived up to that description by settling this matter with an apology and a confidential financial settlement.

I would like to thank my legal counsel and legal counsel for Ms. Gemma for working together to bring closure on this for both of us. I also thank Ms. Gemma. None of this has been easy on anyone involved and I’m keenly aware that this debacle has caused Ms. Gemma harm.

The full text of Ms. Gemma’s apology is included below but I want to highlight the two paragraphs that I believe provide value to the literary community. As Ms. Gemma writes:

“You and others are entitled to criticize and challenge the positions and information disseminated by persons and institutions, including UBC, and doing so is not evidence of spite or ill will towards any person, movement or belief.

I also acknowledge that you, as a signatory to the UBC Accountable letter, had a right to call for due process and a public inquiry into the related scandal. The healing of the very public wounds in the literary community related to these events will only be possible with open and respectful dialogue.”

With closure on this issue, I move to litigation against Geist Magazine. In 2019 Geist received a complaint against me for having written the article “A Literary Inquisition: How Novelist Steven Galloway Was Smeared as a Rapist, Even as the Case Against Him Collapsed,” in the online journal Quillette. The complaint resulted in my removal from Geist’s editorial board. When I inquired about my removal, I was told that I was “obviously foundational” to the magazine but that I was removed as a matter of editorial housekeeping and that I shouldn’t take it personally.

Geist lied about the existence of the complaint that they acted on. After I filed an information request to determine if a complaint existed, Geist deleted roughly two decades of my writing from their website without my consent.

I have filed a notice of civil claim against Geist and their former publisher AnnMarie MacKinnon for breach of contract, breaches of the Personal Information Protection Act and intentional infliction of emotional suffering. During the process of obtaining orders for document disclosures I learned that Ms. MacKinnon’s sister-in-law Emily MacKinnon was acting against me at Geist without my knowledge while also representing Marcel Kosman, a defendant in Galloway v. A.B. who I swore evidence against and wrote about here and here.

Cran v. Geist is set to be heard in the Supreme Court of British Columbia for five days starting on February 24, 2025.

Cran v. Geist Notice Of Civil Claim

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In my Notice of Claim I am seeking punitive damages, which are damages awarded to punish a defendant for wrongful conduct and to deter others from engaging in similar conduct. It is my hope that this case will help bring sanity, liberalism and free speech back to the Canadian Arts. As my notice of claim reads:

[19] Geist's conduct constitutes blacklisting. Ideological blacklists are an affront to freedom of expression, a direct attack on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a barrier to public participation on matters of public interest.

[20] The malicious actions of Geist have happened in tandem with other acts of blacklisting, including writers being blacklisted from universities and other publicly funded publishers.

[21] The defendants’ misconduct, as described above in all sections, was malicious, oppressive, and high-handed, and departed to a marked degree from ordinary standards of decent behaviour. The defendants’ actions are part of a pattern of willful disregard for freedom of speech in the Canadian arts. The defendants’ actions offend the moral standards of our country and warrant the condemnation of the Court such that an award of punitive damages should be made against Geist.

[22] It is in the public interest for this court to award punitive damages to send a message to all publicly funded arts organizations that ideological blacklists will not be tolerated in this country.

In 2016 when signatories signed the UBC Accountable Letter we thought we were solely defending the concept of due process. Quickly it became clear that we were also fighting a battle to protect free speech. Seven years later this remains a battle that must be won. On this seventh anniversary of UBC Accountable, I thank all the writers who signed the letter, including those that removed their names. In the coming days I will be publishing accounts of what many of them have endured since.

To the literary community at large I would like to stress that each of you has the right to express your views on matters of public importance without fear of reprisal from those that engage in ideological blacklisting. The best way to defend that right for yourself and for your fellow writers is to exercise it vigorously. I hope you do so.

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The BC Court of Appeal decision in Galloway v. A.B. could come any day now. I will update you as soon as the decision is released.

An Apology from Sierra Skye Gemma

August 14, 2023

Brad Cran

Re: Brad Cran v. John Doe et al, B.C.S.C. Action No. S-230503, Vancouver Registry

I write to express regret and unequivocally retract and apologize for the false and defamatory allegations I made about you to the Board of Word Vancouver in September, 2018. My conduct was reckless and I accept that it has caused you harm and embarrassment.

As part of making amends, I wish to acknowledge that you have a history of social activism and have published on issues of gender equality, homelessness, and free speech. You and others are entitled to criticize and challenge the positions and information disseminated by persons and institutions, including UBC, and doing so is not evidence of spite or ill will towards any person, movement or belief.

I also acknowledge that you, as a signatory to the UBC Accountable letter, had a right to call for due process and a public inquiry into the related scandal. The healing of the very public wounds in the literary community related to these events will only be possible with open and respectful dialogue.

I wish you the best in your future endeavours as a poet, writer, and activist and I am sorry that my intemperate remarks and false allegations caused your reputation and standing in the literary community to suffer.

Sincerely,

Sierra Gemma

“Unfortunately,” Madam Justice Pepall writes in Park Lawn, “it would appear that the practice has evolved into quite a different state than that anticipated by the Legislature… ironically a procedure intended to avoid costly, unmeritorious, protracted defamation lawsuits has developed into a platform for sometimes costly, unmeritorious and protracted litigation.”

Madam Justice Pepall calls the high financial cost of litigation “a plague that has infected our system of justice” and outlines how anti-SLAPP motions are contributing to the problem through the over-litigation of motions that were intended to quickly and efficiently dismiss frivolous lawsuits without going into a deep dive.

Madam Justice Pepall recommends that anti-SLAPP motions should cost no more than $50,000 and be heard within 60 days, as the Ontario legislation stipulates (B.C.’s legislation states “as soon as practicable”). Her recommendations contrast with Park Lawn, where one side delivered a bill of costs for the motion in the amount of $376,567.78.

Anti-SLAPP motions are now virtually a given in defamation cases, as is appealing unsuccessful motions. The Ontario Court of Appeal has heard as many as 15 appeals from anti-SLAPP motion decisions in a two-year period. This is happening even though the “standard of review” for appellate courts to overturn anti-SLAPP motions is narrowly prescribed. The standard of review establishes the degree of scrutiny that an appellate court applies in reviewing a lower court decision. The Supreme Court of Canada established that a motion judge’s determination on an anti-SLAPP motion “will be entitled to deference on appeal absent an error in law or palpable and overriding error.”

This means that a ruling on an anti-SLAPP motion, such as Madam Justice’s Adair’s ruling in Galloway v. A.B., will stand unless counsel can convince the court she made a significant error. Attempting to reargue the motion before a court of appeal is therefore futile.

This is the legal context underpinning what happened in Courtroom 60 of the BC Court of Appeal during the week of May 1st, when Justice Anne Mackenzie, Justice Elizabeth Bennett and Justice Peter Voith heard appeals from the anti-SLAPP motion that has frozen Galloway v. A.B. in its tracks for over four years.

The Desperate Extension of the Truth

Joanna Birenbaum, one of A.B.’s lawyers, began her submissions to the BC Court of Appeal, seeking to overturn Justice Adair’s ruling on A.B.’s anti-SLAPP motion, by telling the court that sexual assault is like no other crime because the tenacity of deep-rooted biases in society serves to silence victims. Victims, Ms. Birenbaum told the court, fear retaliation by the perpetrator and lawsuits are “increasingly on the list of retaliation.”

A.B.’s art show that she mounted in 2018, Ms. Birenbaum asserted, was aimed at overcoming centuries of silence and silencing. “Artistic expression about sexual assault and harassment,” Ms. Birenbaum told the court, “is the highest artistic expression.”

A.B.’s factum describes her exhibit as follows:

The Art Exhibit at issue in this action was “derived from” A.B.’s statement in the Boyd investigation, which A.B. calls her “Rape Narrative” (a term initially used by UBC). The Art Exhibit features large scaled-up black panels, like tombstones, containing suspended words and fractured glimpses of a depicted experience. Some panels contain no words other than “no”. The Art Exhibit is a “radical redaction” of the statement, evoking the silencing, powerlessness and erasure experienced by survivors of sexual violence.

Ms. Birenbaum described the “force of the photography” in A.B.’s exhibit, which is interesting because up to that point I had no idea that the show claimed to be photography. I cannot link to the panels due to the media ban on A.B.’s name but they are simply enlargements of her statement to Boyd that appear to have been redacted with some desktop publishing or photo editing software. Nothing about the exhibit resembles photography, while it could be argued that the redaction process is artistic in nature no artistic skill was required to create them, and a novice user of Photoshop could replicate one of the panels in a matter of minutes.

Among the readable words of the exhibit and its accompanying written materials are the following statements which Madam Justice Adair found to be defamatory:

1. “It’s not just what he did, but that he was able to do it for so long. The Rape … spans six years, and the losses keep piling up. It makes you sick and sad and filled with rage that it went on for so long. But that’s not on you. That’s on him”

2. “It’s terrifying to try to exist in the world again, because not only is the man who raped you determined to punish you, so are many powerful people who support that man”

3. “Exhibition by A.B. … derives from what A.B. refers to as her Rape … a narrative… after she disclosed being sexually assaulted, assaulted and abused by a professor”

Ms. Birenbaum told the court that A.B. was encouraged by two of her therapists to make the art and that she went into debt to do so, although other than A.B.’s testimony no evidence was put to the court to support this assertion. The therapeutic artistic journey, Ms. Birenbaum told the court, was akin to that of a war vet, cancer patient, and a myriad of other trauma survivors who have used art to overcome shame, depression, isolation, and stigma.

At this early stage, just a few minutes in, the court began to lose patience.

“Where does this go with the legal analysis?” Justice Voith interjected.

Ms. Birenbaum told the court that Justice Adair didn’t properly engage in any analysis of the dominant issues regarding sexual assault. She then walked the court through the exhibit.

“They’re layered,” Ms. Birenbaum said as she held up print outs of the exhibit. “Too few images, that is why this exhibit is so important. Too few images… Dream or hallucination…Creating stories… Many many panels. Only a few of which that have been focused on… Nothing more than black, erasure and silencing.

“The next page is self-explanatory,” Ms. Birenbaum said. “No no no no. I didn’t want to be in his office.”

Ms. Birenbaum told the court that this was something anyone who had experienced sexual assault could relate to.

“The panel is about the stark disparity,” Ms. Birenbaum said. “The famous author. It’s depicting the experience of not mattering.”

“This is a court of review,” Justice Voith interjected again. “Either you or your colleague are going to have to identify error. The judge made findings. She heard what you said…What is the legal error?”

Ms. Birenbaum told the court that she was splitting her submissions with her co-counsel David Wotherspoon and would let him address the issue of legal error, but this did not satisfy the court.

Ms. Birenbaum, who is from Toronto, then improperly addressed the court and Justice Mackenzie corrected her on the protocol of the BC Court of Appeal. Ms. Birenbaum apologized.

“You have to anticipate that we have questions and want them answered,” Justice Voith said. “What do you say that legal error is? What is the legal error so I have it?”

“I’ve perhaps tested your patience,” Ms. Birenbaum acknowledged. And she had; instead of identifying any error in fact or law on the part of Justice Adair, what Birenbaum presented was an attempt to re-argue the case on ideological grounds.

Ms. Birenbaum then shifted to Justice Adair’s finding of malice and began the heavy lifting of explaining why A.B. fabricated a claim that CBC lawyers had vetted her rape allegations. In their factum presented to the court, Mr. Wotherspoon and Ms. Birenbaum called A.B.'s lies about the CBC a "desperate extension of the truth."

“I’ll make the submission that the social context was that A.B. was fearful that UBC would not listen,” Ms. Birenbaum said.

“That’s not fair either,” Justice Voith responded. “This was her objective in going to professor Maillard to assemble a case. She’s not an innocent on the side who did something passive. She was the engine of this.”

“I disagree that she was the engine,” Ms. Birenbaum shot back.

“At least portions of what she said the judge found were fabrications and tissues of lies,” he said. “You have understated the degree of what was done. She [Justice Adair] looked at the record and was deeply concerned. The purpose of that lie…”

“There was no lie,” Ms. Birenbaum said.

“I say respectfully,” Justice Voith said, “Your submissions have ignored one side of the equation. Something went extremely wrong. This case is not what the PPPA is about.”

The hearing hadn’t even made it to the morning break and the court had already delivered a devastating blow to the defendants, while making it clear to all counsel that they intended to show deference to Justice Adair’s decision unless a palpable error could be identified. What happened next was like watching a theatre troupe who had spent the last year rehearsing Much Ado About Nothing only to be told five minutes before curtain that they would now be performing Macbeth.

Careless, Not Reckless

Karen Zimmer was one of the strongest lawyers who went before Justice Adair. Her client Annabel Lyon was one of two defendants, along with Alicia Elliott, who had been completely released from the suit pending this appeal. Ms. Zimmer is clearly a competent lawyer but when she stepped up to make her submissions for her client Keith Maillard she simply fell apart.

Ms. Zimmer struggled through all her submissions by introducing points that never materialized. She referenced material while seemingly telling the court what was going to come as a way to avoid articulating an actual point.

“Tell us what you want to say,” Justice Bennett interjected. “You don’t have to keep taking us to it.”

With each comment from the bench Ms. Zimmer became more flustered. She took the court to an article by Zoe Whittall that she claimed gave important context that Justice Adair failed to consider when assessing the defamatory meaning of Professor Maillard’s statements.

“We say that she erred,” Ms. Zimmer submitted. “She gives no meaning to the quotations I took you too. She’s not giving any meaning to ‘allegations.’ The context is being lost.”

“Just so I understand that,” Justice Voith said. “She referred to other context. She’s clearly aware that context matters. It is your submission that a reasonable reader wouldn’t glean that?”

Ms. Zimmer struggled to answer and seemed to be searching for papers for an answer.

“I think we agree,” Mr. Justice Voith said. “She says yes and you say no. She went through it. She came to a conclusion. Is there more to what you are saying?”

“She’s missing the facts,” Ms. Zimmer blurted. “The word ‘Fact Check.’ Sorry I thought I was more organized than I was.”

“You know, I’ll figure it out,” Justice Voith said. “I’ll look at your factum. I’m content. You should move on.”

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Ms. Zimmer then mentioned the standard of deference and Justice Voith said that he had not seen counsel state the standard of review. He asked Ms. Zimmer to identify it and she told him she would find that for him later.

“You don’t have to find it,” he said. “You can just tell me. Do you know the standard of review?”

Her submissions were going so badly that Justice Mackenzie attempted to get her back on track. “You wanted to take us to the malice,” she said. “Your factum was very good and thorough. So highlight the points.”

Ms. Zimmer turned to a decision from the Supreme Court of Canada but became so flustered she referred to The Honourable Suzanne Côté as "he," requiring a correction from the court that Côté is a woman. This did not come across as a case of misgendering but rather gave the impression that Ms. Zimmer had no idea of the identity of the Supreme Court justice she was attempted to quote.

“It’s hard to, uhm, there’s a strong presumption. I’m going to pause,” Ms. Zimmer said.

Ms. Zimmer then submitted to the court that Justice Adair erred in determining that Professor Maillard’s conduct was “reckless” when she should have found that his conduct was “careless” because Professor Maillard’s conduct was rooted in an honest belief of A.B.’s allegations. Justice Adair had found that there were grounds to believe that Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon were reckless so as to meet the legal test for malice.

Again, however, the court bristled. Ms. Zimmer was not arguing that Justice Adair had made an error in fact or law, but instead were arguing with her findings.

“What you appear to be arguing about is that you disagree with the judge’s findings but the judge found that they [Maillard and Lyon] were unreasonable,” the court said.

“The whole criticism of Prof Maillard not going to Mr. Galloway is problematic,” Ms. Zimmer said. “She [A.B.] was terrified. Let’s say Mr. Maillard went to Mr. Galloway. Which is what he’s been criticized for not doing.”

“He’s criticized for many things,” Justice Voith shot back.

Ms. Zimmer attempted to make the point again.

“The point is. The point is. The point is.” Justice Voith said. “She understands the distinction [between carelessness and recklessness]. It’s not that she got the question wrong. You have to establish that. That is respectfully a much more difficult proposition for you.”

Into The Weeds

Chelsea Rooney’s lawyer Sarah Whitmore is a skilled litigator who had the difficult task of following Ms. Zimmer. The hearing was still on its first day and the submissions to the court had all been flayed. Ms. Whitmore was able to change the tone. She presented her arguments with conviction and professionalism, but her submissions still lacked substance.

Ms. Whitmore told the court that Justice Adair erred in in assessing the defamatory meaning of Ms. Rooney's statements by not properly contextualizing them as statements made during the height of the “Believe Women” movement.

She argued that Rooney’s statement that she believed the allegations of sexual assault and violence made against Galloway did not mean she was saying that Galloway had committed sexual assault, but rather simply that she supported A.B.

The movement, Ms. Whitmore argued, changed the meaning of the word “believe” into a word that meant support, so that it could not therefore convey a meaning of guilt as Justice Adair had found. Justice Adair erred in finding Ms. Rooney’s statements defamatory, she argued, because she did not explicitly mention in her ruling that Rooney’s statements were made in the context of the “Believe Women” movement.

“In a case with 7,000 pages,” Justice Bennett responded, “If she went into everything she’d still be writing.”

Ms. Whitmore agreed with the court that the case was large but laid the blame with Galloway for commencing an action against “25 random defendants” – overlooking, conveniently, that the only half of those were involved in the current proceeding.

“The time that is passed is unfortunate,” she said. “It was a result of how the lawsuit was structured.”

Ms. Whitmore took issue with the defendants presenting their SLAPP applications concurrently. Had they not been done in this manner, however, they would have been able to each present them consecutively, enabling them to delay a trial even longer.

Ms. Whitmore also seemed to suggest that the structure of Mr. Galloway's lawsuit took a toll on her personally, since she worked pro bono for Ms. Rooney and invested significant time in fighting the case. She then firmly restated her submission that to “believe” an allegation of sexual assault against a person was not about guilt and innocence and that a reasonable reader would have known this.

Ms. Whitmore then submitted to the court that Justice Adair erred by not considering that one of Ms. Rooney’s defamatory tweets only had two “likes.”

“How is that not a deep dive?” Justice Voith asked. “For my own personal reasons, I feel strongly that this is not a SLAPP.”

“Not when he had power,” Ms. Whitmore countered. Justice Voith was now visibly frustrated.

“He was done,” Justice Voith said, pointing out that the statements in question were made long after Galloway was fired. “He was on his knees. He had no power. He didn’t have the power that you describe. This exercise in this context is completely unreasonable.”

Justice Voith told counsel that everyone accepts that victims of sexual assault have a right to speak and need to be supported in coming forward. This is clearly stated in Justice Adair’s reasons for judgment. But defense counsel couldn’t assist the court in grappling with the tension at the heart of defamation law which is the need to protect freedom of expression and the right of citizens to defend their reputation.

“You are wed to your positions collectively with an inability to do that”, Justice Voith told defendants’ counsel while again making his position known. “This may sound firm…I don’t see this as reeking of a SLAPP suit from the get-go.”

“This is supposed to be quick,” he added. “Five years into this and we are into the weeds. I disagree as strongly as I can. This does not advance access to justice. It is arguably an inability to rectify harms.”

It’s been a fiery first two days at the anti-SLAPP appeal in Galloway v. A.B. and in the coming days I will post a full update on all the arguments as well as details on the pushback from the Justices on defence submissions.

In the meantime I want to let you know that Steven Galloway’s lawyer Dan Burnett K.C. will start his submissions tomorrow morning.

The lawyer for Arielle (Ari) Rombough will open the hearing tomorrow at 10am by briefly finishing her submissions from today. Mr. Burnett is expected to start at 10:15 am.

I highly recommend logging in to view Mr. Burnett’s submissions. You can do so by doing the following:

1. Install Zoom on your desktop or mobile device.

2. Go to https://www.bccourts.ca/court_of_appeal/media/broadcasting.aspx

3. Click on the “Courtroom 60” Zoom Link.

4. If you don’t yet have Zoom installed it will prompt you to install it.

5. Once Zoom is launched you will enter your name and be given access to the livestream. Your mic will be set to off by default so not to worry about making noise.

I’ll be back soon with your full update.

Brad

It has been 17 months since Madam Justice Adair’s SLAPP ruling and Galloway v. A.B. is finally heading to the British Columbia Court of Appeal today Monday, May 1st.

The hearing will be broadcast via livestream, which you can watch by clicking here and joining courtroom 60.

The defense kicks things off this morning at 10 am Pacific Time. This will begin with counsel for A.B., and then we will hear arguments from counsel for Keith Maillard, Chelsea Rooney, Mandy Gray, Marcelle Kosman, Theresa Smalec, Keira Anderson, and Arielle Rombough. Britt Bachman and Glynis Kirchmier have both abandoned their appeals. It’s expected that defense will take two days to present their arguments.

On Wednesday, Galloway’s lawyer, Dan Burnett K.C., will present rebuttals, cross-appeals (for A.B., Maillard, Gray and Rooney), and two additional appeals from Galloway concerning Annabel Lyon and Alicia Elliott, who both had the proceedings against them dismissed in full by Madam Justice Adair.

Lawyers for Lyon and Elliott are expected to finish up with rebuttals to Galloway’s appeals on Friday, May 7th.

The Judges

This past Friday afternoon, the British Columbia Court of Appeal announced that Mr. Justice Peter G. Voith, Madam Justice Anne W. MacKenzie, and Madam Justice Elizabeth A. Bennett will hear the appeals.

Mr. Justice Voith was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2020 and had previously sat as a BC Supreme Court Judge since 2009. His main practice areas were civil and administrative law. It is important to note that he was also one of the three justices who ruled on Neufeld v. Hansman, an appeal on a previous SLAPP motion that will undoubtedly be referenced throughout this hearing.

Both Madam Justice MacKenzie and Madam Justice Bennett are Supernumerary Justices with backgrounds in criminal law. They are two of the most accomplished and respected jurists in British Columbia.

Madam Justice MacKenzie is a former crown prosecutor, the first woman to be Associate Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia and the third person ever to be appointed to Associate Chief Justice in the history of the Supreme Court.

Madam Justice Bennett was called to the Bar in 1982 and appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1994. She served with the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves, 6th Field Engineer Squadron, and was the Chair of the Canadian Bar Association National Criminal Justice Section. She presided over Casinogate and Railgate, the two most high profile political corruption cases in BC history.

This is an inspired selection of justices for this hearing. They bring a wide range of experience in both civil and criminal law which will surely be an asset in a civil case involving the handling of allegations of criminal conduct and sexual assault.

Stay Tuned & Query Below

I’ll be posting full analysis and breakdowns of all the appeals as the hearing proceeds. Feel free to post questions in the comments section below.

Brad

This is a quick note to let you all know that the appeal on the Galloway v. A.B. SLAPP motion is set to be heard this coming May in the British Columbia Court of Appeal.

Regrettably, I must also let you know that this newsletter is on hiatus until the new year while I deal with a personal health issue in my immediate family.

I have a lot of new content to share with you (both in regard to what happened at UBC and what has happened in court) and I look forward to doing so at the earliest possible date, certainly prior to the appeal being heard.

For paid subscribers, all memberships are paused and any paid current or past subscribers will be receiving a link in the future to claim a complimentary signed book once it is published.

Any new readers interested in the appeal and forthcoming trial coverage can sign up for a free account by clicking the button below.

Thank you again for your support. I’ll see you in 2023.

Brad

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This morning I awoke to a Twitter alert informing me that a twitter user had “liked” an April 2021 Tweet that I was “mentioned in” by the Canadian writer Natalee Caple in which Caple writes:

#MeToo ended because of the massive chill caused by the UBCA letter — my career was threatened and I had to fight for it — numerous people were threatened — you and all the famous names on that letter got to speak freely in the press and call us anything you wanted.

Caple’s tweet was sparked by the Carmen Aguirre article I published on this Substack in which Aguirre argues against the idea (as presented during the SLAPP hearing for Galloway v. A.B. by Joanna Birenbaum, counsel for A.B.) that false allegations should be protected speech in Canada in order to encourage women to report sexual assault. Aguirre also made the clear, if not plainly obvious point, that taking such a position is not only an act of injustice but an act of racism that would disproportionately harm men of color, as well as the mothers, sisters, cousins, and friends of the accused who would become collateral damage if our courts sanctioned false allegations of rape.

But there is a lot more going on in Caple’s tweet, specifically that 1) the UBC Accountable letter which defended Steven Galloway’s right to due process brought such a “massive chill” that it had in fact ended #MeToo, 2) that the authors of that letter were allowed to speak freely and in doing so were able to call Ms. Caple “anything” they liked, and 3) this all culminated in Caple fighting for her career.

Being reminded of this tweet was pertinent because I am currently finishing a follow-up to my first published piece on the case, “A Literary Inquisition.” Utilizing research from years of freedom of information requests and other research, this new long-form piece documents blacklists, de-platforming campaigns and even threats of violence against the signatories of the UBC Accountable letter whom Caple suggests have been free to say whatever we want.

I would document any threats to Caple’s career, but they don’t exist.  Caple is not the only writer to claim their career has been threatened in some way. In their affidavits and court testimony, several of the defendants made similar claims. None were able to provide a concrete example of any threat, overt or not, and my extensive review of social media has failed to turn up a single credible instance of any sort of threat against a critic of UBC Accountable.

This is not to say that Caple and others are fabricating their fear for their careers, although I do believe that it would be more accurate to say that they are instead fighting for “reputation.”

The fact is that in Canada, speaking up for the basic principles of justice (if you are applying them to a politically inconvenient recipient) can cause someone to be cancelled and blacklisted, whereas speaking out against these basic principles of justice is not only permissible but sought out in Canadian media (if the person being denied rights is a politically acceptable target).

In a recent article about Galloway v. A.B. in the CBC, Jason Proctor cites Toronto lawyer Lillianne Cadieux-Shaw as stating that there is “a rise in the number of men — like Galloway — suing women who accuse them of sexual assault.” I followed up with Cadieux-Shaw to ask if this was based on Ontario numbers or national numbers and was told that there were no numbers at all, aside from one “quasi-empirical” and obviously biased paper by Mandi Gray, who is herself a defendant in Galloway v. A.B.. Ms. Gray was found by Madam Justice Adair to have engaged in “reckless and malicious” conduct towards Galloway but she regularly speaks as an expert on sexual violence including to young lawyers, and even held a fellowship at the Institute for Feminist Legal Studies at Osgoode Hall Law School.

So despite there being no data supporting Cadieux-Shaw’s assertion, the CBC printed it as if it were fact. The truth should matter, but when it comes to the ability to enter public discourse the truth does not seem to matter as much as presenting a politically acceptable view. For many people in the media, Caple and Cadieux-Shaw hold politically acceptable views.  Even if their assertions have no basis in fact, they are clearly free to make them and even have them published by the CBC without even basic journalistic scrutiny.

What has challenged the reputation of individuals like Caple is the publication of the true details of the Galloway scandal, which are now exposing the unethical behaviour of those who cast judgement against Galloway before learning the true facts of the case. It has become clear that despite efforts to frame it as such, the culture war surrounding Galloway v. A.B. is not being waged by defenders of sexual assault survivors versus rape apologists exerting their power to enable professors to rape their students. Instead, one side is advocating for a uncritical belief in the veracity of all sexual assault allegations while the other believes that everyone involved is best served by fundamental principles of procedural fairness and natural justice.

To put it in terms that cut to the heart of what it means to be a writer: the truth matters.

The UBC Accountable letter was published on November 14th 2016. The MeToo movement as we know it began on October 15th 2017 when actor Alysa Milano tweeted, “If you've been sexually harassed or assaulted write 'me too' as a reply to this tweet.” To claim, as Caple does, that the UBC Accountable letter ended #MeToo nearly a full year before #MeToo started is of course untrue and borders on absurd.

If #MeToo had a definable end as a campaign to believe “all” allegations of sexual assault without adherence to the facts or any need for investigation, then it came in April of 2020 when Milano endorsed Joe Biden (and the ethical principles expressed in the UBC Accountable letter), when she said, “I just don’t feel comfortable throwing away a decent man that I’ve known for 15 years in this time of complete chaos without there being a thorough investigation.”

Perhaps Milano said it best when she elaborated for POLITICO, “I will continue to fight for the most vulnerable amongst us and for things I feel are right and just. There is no such thing as a perfect movement. Things will break. Things will get ugly. Mud will be slung. Regardless, movements evolve and grow hopefully out of a place of empathy and compassion. #MeToo should not be about believing women at the expense of a man’s innocence. The hashtag #BelieveWomen is about shifting the cultural norm away from our default being *not* to believe women. It means we should start by believing women and then investigate.”

For balance, let me also share actor Rose McGowan’s retort to Milano on Twitter which aligns strongly with much of the discourse Caple has herself added to the public conversation, “You are a fraud. This is about holding the media accountable. You go after Trump & Kavanaugh saying Believe Victims, you are a lie. You have always been a lie. The corrupt DNC is in on the smear job of Tara Reade, so are you. SHAME.”

Shifting back to Caple’s feeling that she is fighting to save some aspect of her career (or reputation) amid an attack on her character by people she believes want to do her harm,  let me be a bit presumptuous and assume that since I have been publishing the true facts of the case that I’m someone Caple believes is out for her career, whatever that means. Not only is this not the case, I can offer Caple quick relief by pointing out that she is not being personally attacked by anyone; her beliefs are being attacked by the truth.

The truth only attacks that which denies it. So my advice is to stop denying the truth; accept that you got it wrong.

The ethical issue surrounding this scandal actually has little to do with Galloway (although his story and innocence are convenient for the purposes of illustrating an injustice). The so called “Literary Civil War” is being waged, in the simplest of terms,  between those who think that process matters and that the facts the process has revealed about the case matter, and those who think that you can arrive at an iron-clad belief about a situation without requiring any sort of fact-finding process because what actually happened doesn’t matter.

This case is driven by hard truths. Relief, both professionally and personally, is as simple as a mea culpa or just an adoption of the basic principles of justice such as we saw from Milano in 2020. There is no limitation period on letting the truth change a mind. I personally look forward to the time when this mess is behind Ms. Caple because that will mean it is behind us all.

As for the specifics of Galloway v. A.B. and where the case goes from here? As predicted, Justice Adair’s decision has been appealed by the plaintiff and all eleven defendants who brought SLAPP motions, although the defendant Glynnis Kirchmier recently abandoned her appeal. Steven Galloway is appealing the dismissal of defendants Annabel Lyon and Alicia Elliott from the case.

At this point only Notices of Appeal have been filed by counsel. Factums (i.e. the full written argument and legal authorities) are still weeks away. I will report on those in depth once they are filed with the court.

The appeals will be heard by a panel of British Columbia Court of Appeal Justices.  Depending on the decision there, the parties may be able to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.  Once all appeals are decided, Galloway v. A.B. will go trial and the entire truth will be aired in granular detail – hopefully sooner rather than later.

I would like to thank all paid subscribers. As you may have noticed all the content I’ve posted to date has been free to all readers. My number one priority is to get the facts of the case out. Paid subscriptions are an extremely generous way to show your support and I greatly appreciate everyone who has donated in this manner. In the way of thanks I can now tell you that any current or past paid subscribers who have paid $50+ will be receiving a signed first edition book about justice in the age of social media by yours truly. 

I look forward to sharing the exciting details with you shortly.

If you are not currently a paid subscriber and want to sign up then I highly recommend the annual option. As much as I wish it otherwise, the nature of the case, coupled with the nature of the type of in-depth writing I want to do on this story (and forthcoming book), does not always lend itself to a traditional Substack timeline but I’m happy to have you along for the long game.

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With that in mind I’ll have the follow up to “A Literary Inquisition” in your inboxes as soon as possible, and a full analysis of the filed factums will be here before you know it.

In the meantime if you haven’t yet read the updates on the SLAPP hearing then you can do so by clicking here. And for a backgrounder on some of the more troubling aspects of the case to date you can click here.

Dear Readers, thank you as always for your patience as I’ve worked my way through Madam Justice Adair’s decision on the SLAPP applications in Galloway v. A.B.. I’m preparing a deep dive to contextualize this decision in relation to what it means for the defendants, the plaintiff, sexual assault victims, CanLit and Canadians in general, but while I plug away on that, here are 14 things you need to know about this landmark decision.

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1. First Reactions Didn’t Match The Result

The ever-attentive Jonathan Goldsbie at Canadaland was quick out of the gate on Twitter when, less than two hours after the decision was emailed to Galloway and all the defendants (Canadaland has used the defendant Chelsea Rooney as a source for their reporting), he declared the decision “complex,” ran the numbers in a spreadsheet like a sportsbook and tweeted out what must be the first ever SLAPP hearing scorecard.

Mr. Goldsbie is correct that the case is “complex” but there were no “split decisions.” A numerical breakdown of the result (which defamations were “trimmed” from the case and which will proceed to trial) obscures the substance of Madam Justice Adair’s reasons for judgment.

Madam Justice Adair found, unequivocally, that Galloway’s suit has substantial merit and does not have the classic features of a SLAPP suit. She found grounds to believe that ALL of the defendants had claims against them with substantial merit, while releasing two defendants from the case, Annabel Lyon on a limitations defence, and Alicia Elliott on the grounds that “Mr. Galloway has not met his burden to show grounds to believe that fair comment is not a valid defence.”

Madam Justice Adair also found that there is a strong public interest for the case proceeding to trial. As she wrote:

Mr. Galloway deserves to have his day in court to potentially vindicate his reputation.

2. Professor’s Actions Lead To “A Disaster for Everyone”

UBC isn’t actually being sued, but the university itself remains on trial in the court of public opinion. In July 2018 UBC published a statement claiming that the faculty and staff who handled the case were “professional and principled in all of their dealings and were guided throughout by the relevant policies and prescribed processes.” They were later fined $75,000 for this statement. Madam Justice Adair’s findings render this claim a total falsehood.

Here are some highlights from Madam Justice Adair’s decision pertaining to the conduct of Galloway’s mentor, Professor Keith Maillard, former friend, Professor Annabel Lyon and Chelsea Rooney, his former student and a complainant enlisted by UBC to solicit additional allegations against Galloway.

Maillard and Lyon were motivated by malice toward Mr. Galloway:

In my view, and in the context of the PPPA Applications, all of this provides grounds to believe that Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon were reckless so as to meet the legal test for malice

Maillard and Lyon did not engage in due diligence:

In November 2015, Professor Maillard uncritically accepted A.B.’s version of events, and he condemned Mr. Galloway as guilty of crimes without ever speaking to or contacting him again.

On the record, Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon asked A.B. no questions. They simply accepted her version of events as accurate, and relied on what she told and provided to them as supporting and proving what she claimed to have happened. This would not have been a problem had Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon gone directly to the Dean with A.B.’s claims. But they did not.

Maillard and Lyon acted as A.B.’s advocate during a faculty meeting they represented to the Court as an impartial meeting: 

Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon embraced their roles as A.B.’s allies and advocates in presenting what A.B. described as “our case” against Mr. Galloway.

Maillard and Lyon deceived Galloway while supporting A.B.:

Neither Professor Maillard nor Professor Lyon contacted Mr. Galloway to warn him about what was going on, or to get his side of events.  Indeed, based on Professor Lee’s notes of the November Meeting, Professor Maillard went out of his way in a phone call with Mr. Galloway to deceive him. Both Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon refused to answer Mr. Galloway’s phone calls.

Maillard and Lyon’s conduct led to “a disaster for everyone” involved including A.B.:

Eventually A.B.’s complaint was reported to the Dean, who then instituted the Boyd Investigation. Mr. Galloway does not complain about A.B.’s letter to Dr. Piper or the actual report to the Dean. However, it can hardly be said that the path Professor Maillard, Professor Lyon and A.B. took to arrive at the Boyd Investigation was preferable. Instead, it could be described as a disaster for everyone. Among other things, it placed A.B. in the position where she felt compelled to manufacture evidence to be presented at the November Meeting. This cannot be described as supporting a victim.

Maillard and Lyon’s conduct hurt A.B.:

However, in the context of what occurred at the November Meeting, Professor Maillard’s and Professor Lyon’s unquestioned belief in A.B. did not help her.

Rooney’s conduct was reckless and motivated by malice, spite and ill will to Galloway:

She was clearly pre-disposed to believe the worst of Mr. Galloway, and motivated (with encouragement from A.B., Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon) to recruit others to her point of view.

Rooney was motivated by malice to curtail Madam Justice Boyd’s findings in order to advance her own problematic position:

Her malice respecting Mr. Galloway extended to her rejection of the conclusions reached in the Boyd Report. Her expressions were not about truth-seeking, or promoting truth-seeking. Rather, Ms. Rooney’s motivations were about confirming and vindicating her own very bad opinions about Mr. Galloway, and her deep dissatisfaction with the Boyd Investigation and with the conclusions in the Boyd Report.

3. A.B. Lied About The CBC To Turn Galloway’s Colleagues Against Him

In April I reported that insiders at CBC disavowed A.B.’s lie that their legal team or any producer at CBC vetted her allegations against Galloway. This evidence wasn’t presented to Madam Justice Adair, but she arrived at the same conclusion:

The CBC Document was a tissue of lies, which A.B. knew was going to be presented at the November Meeting.

And Madam Justice Adair was clear on the purpose of this lie:

Indeed, its purpose was to provide “evidence” to “build the case” against Mr. Galloway. The CBC Document was a deliberate fabrication, designed to persuade those attending the November Meeting that Mr. Galloway was guilty of rape, that lawyers at the CBC who had heard A.B.’s story had accepted it as reliable and true, and that the story would be taken to a national audience unless the faculty acted.

4. A.B. Received A UBC Masters Degree With An Incomplete Thesis

In April I also reported that during cross examination Lyon admitted to signing off on A.B.’s incomplete thesis, thereby conferring a degree on her that she had not earned. Maillard denied this in cross examination but Madam Justice Adair confirmed the thesis was incomplete:

A.B. had not yet finished her thesis. Professor Maillard was prepared to accept what she had completed as sufficient to meet UBC’s requirements to graduate. Professor Lyon, A.B.’s second reader, was not. Eventually, Professor Maillard persuaded Professor Lyon to accept what A.B. had produced, so as to allow A.B. to graduate. However, Professor Lyon did not feel comfortable doing this, and later, after Mr. Galloway had been suspended, she went to the Dean of Arts to tell him what she had done.

The fact that UBC has seemingly taken no action on this issue calls into question every degree the university has awarded and lowers the value of the credentials of the entire Alma Mater of UBC. It even more directly calls into question the academic integrity of the UBC School of Creative Writing itself.

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5. A.B. Threatened Faculty To Make Them Prejudge & Act Against Galloway

In April I also reported that A.B. threatened faculty in order to convince them to take action against Galloway outside of regular reporting channels. A.B.’s threats are now confirmed in Madam Justice Adair’s findings with there being grounds to believe that faculty at UBC acted on them:

There are also grounds to believe that Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon were motivated (at least in part) to do what A.B. wanted because of the pressure that would have been created by A.B.’s threats…to go to the national media and to bring proceedings against members of the Creative Writing Department based on a failure to act.

Madam Justice Adair directly quotes Galloway’s testimony:

She wanted, as she said in the e-mail to Keith Maillard I have read, she wanted me ostracized, and I was.

6. A.B. Lied About Her Affair With Galloway To Distort Evidence

In September I reported that prior to accusing Galloway of rape A.B. had made complaints of sexual harassment against him (specifically that he had served her alcohol and propositioned her for sex) while not disclosing to UBC that she had just ended a consensual sexual relationship with him. A.B. also denied any relationship with Galloway so that she could convince Maillard and Lyon that a voicemail Galloway left her was a confession of rape when Galloway was clearly offering to “turn himself in,” by which he meant disclosing their affair.

Madam Justice Adair found Maillard and Lyon’s acceptance of this lie to be part of their recklessness:

In relation to Mr. Galloway’s longer voice-mail message (Voicemail No. 2), it appears never to have occurred to either Professor Maillard or Professor Lyon to pause and think whether it made any sense at all for Mr. Galloway to leave a voice- mail message, one in which he indicated a desire to come clean to his mentor (Professor Maillard) before A.B. spoke to Professor Maillard, to confess (to A.B., his accuser) to a very serious crime (rape). Rather, both Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon accepted without question A.B.’s version of events, and (as they were being strongly encouraged by A.B. to do) they treated Voicemail No. 2 as further proof of Mr. Galloway’s guilt. That was the version of the facts presented to the attendees at the November Meeting.

Madam Justice Adair’s decision shows that A.B.’s counsel, Joanna Birenbaum, publicly spread a falsehood when she wrote in an open letter:

“MC [AB] never denied a relationship existed, but rather described it as abusive.”

As Madam Justice Adair wrote:

In A.B.’s e-mail communications with Professor Maillard and Professor Lyon before the November Meeting, A.B. never mentioned that she and Mr. Galloway had been in a relationship beginning in 2011 and ending in 2013. Rather, her communications imply the opposite (that she and Mr. Galloway had “no ‘relationship’ whatsoever”), and that Mr. Galloway was continuing to prey on and was a serious threat to her.

7. Twitter is Misery

Some of the most prescient commentary in Madam Justice Adair’s decision relates to Twitter and how the platform has contributed to this entire mess. The defendants argued that the case should be dismissed so that they can continue using Twitter in the same manner for which they are now being sued.

A number argue that they feel they have been silenced, and this litigation has had, and will have, a chilling effect on their expressions, particularly their use of Twitter.

But Madam Justice Adair rejected this:

There is no public interest in promoting the careless or reckless use of Twitter. Rather, in my view, the public interest lies in promoting the opposite.

But perhaps she captured it best in her response to the defendant Theresa Smalec’s argument that her right to Tweet is at risk of being stifled:

If Ms. Smalec feels the need to be more measured and thoughtful in her expression, particularly on a medium such as Twitter, I consider that to be in the public interest.

8. Artistic Expression Is Not Being Curtailed

In the summer of 2018 A.B. enlarged pages of her accusations against Galloway from her formal statement to Justice Boyd, hung them in a small gallery in New York and published portions of them to the internet as an art exhibit. She told the court she did this to address the trauma of her experience as a sexual assault survivor and that her artistic expressions should therefore be protected in the name of the public interest. Madam Justice Adair agreed that artistic expression is worthy of protection:

I accept that, broadly speaking, there is a significant public interest in protecting expression themotivation of which is to allow the author of the expression to address traumatic personal experience, of which sexual assault is clearly an example.

But the court disagreed that A.B.’s exhibit was as described by A.B.:

Although presented in an artistic form, the statements in A.B. No. 2 would be understood by a reasonable person, in the context in which they were presented, as statements of fact. The “sting” of the Art Exhibit is that the Professor – that is, Mr. Galloway – committed rape and sexual assault of A.B.

She also did not see the therapeutic value in defamation:

Implicit in A.B.’s position is that she would be unable to create, and unable to gain any therapeutic benefit from creating, without defaming Mr. Galloway through A.B. No. 2. I do not find this persuasive. All art involves making choices. A.B. chose the subject matter of the Art Exhibit, and she chose what to communicate in it and the artist’s statement that accompanied it. In addition, the Art Exhibit was designed for public display: that was the point of it. Not only was the Art Exhibit (with A.B. No. 2) available for public viewing at the Gallery, but it was also available for viewing on both the Gallery’s and A.B.’s website (where is remains so, with a website address that identified A.B. by name). The broad publication of the Art Exhibit’s graphic content (only some of which Mr. Galloway is suing over) had great power to damage Mr. Galloway’s reputation. It was a public demonstration of A.B.’s malice toward Mr. Galloway.

Mandi Gray and A.B.’s counsel Joanna Birenbaum do not agree with Madam Justice Adair.

9. Galloway Has Suffered Serious Harm

In June I reported on defence arguments that Galloway had not sustained any damages from the defamations for which he is suing, or if he did suffer damages then they were in fact his own fault because he kept talking about them. Madam Justice Adair did not agree:

In my opinion, the reputational harm to Mr. Galloway from being called a rapist and someone who has perpetrated criminal acts is likely serious and sustained. Litigation appears to be the only available avenue for possible rehabilitation of Mr. Galloway’s reputation.

Madam Justice Adair acknowledged the spectrum of “serious” harm that has been caused to him:

On the record, the harm – monetary, professional and non-monetary – suffered by Mr. Galloway is serious and extensive. Every statement, and every post on Twitter, capable of bearing the meaning that Mr. Galloway is a rapist and sexually assaulted A.B., is defamatory and contributes (often in the thousands of viewers) to maintaining and repeating the allegations of sexual assault and criminal misconduct against him.

In my opinion, Mr. Galloway has a legitimate justification for bringing these claims, namely, to seek to remedy legitimate and serious harm, and that harm is not limited to monetary harm.

Madam Justice Adair put to rest the notion put forth by defence that Galloway had ruined his own reputation by discussing the allegations publicly:

When Mr. Galloway mentioned the sexual assault allegations, it was in the context of denying the claims.

Madam Justice Adair also put to rest the defense’s assertion that Galloway’s reputation was sufficiently destroyed between 2015-2017 that later defamations had no effect:

It cannot be said that, by 2018, statements that Mr. Galloway was a rapist carried no sting and resulted in no harm. The opposite is true.

10. The Court Condemned Online Mobbing

The defence argued that Galloway couldn’t prove damages led back to any one person since so many people had attacked him online. On this point Madam Justice Adair agreed with Galloway’s counsel:

In Mr. Burnett’s submission, it [the defence’s argument] treats Mr. Galloway as acceptable roadkill, and his reputation as expendable. Further, in Mr. Burnett’s submission, it ignores the dynamic of a mob and the collective effect of many punches. In his submission, the law of defamation rejects such an attitude.

The Court also agreed with Mr. Burnett that the defendants cannot minimize the sting of being called a rapist:

Mr. Burnett, in response to arguments advanced by some of the Applicants that they did not publish as many times or to as large an audience as others or had a    tiny following on Twitter, submits that a single publication painting someone as a rapist, posted for the entire world, is a grave matter. I agree.

11. The Most Ironic Defence Brought By Chelsea Rooney

Hands down the most out-of-left-field defence put forth was by Chelsea Rooney, who argued that Galloway had “implicitly consented” to being called a rapist because Galloway had sent her a cease and desist letter early on an early defamation but failed to do so after that, and therefore he had consented to being called a rapist.

Madam Justice Adair’s response, dismissing this argument:

The “consent” cannot be passive.

12. Mandi Gray Perpetuates Rape Myths

Of all the defendants, Mandi Gray is most closely associated with “sexual assault activism”—which appears to be her full-time occupation. In respect to Ms. Gray’s focus on Mr. Galloway, Madam Justice Adair was scathing:

In my opinion, Ms. Gray made a deliberate attack on Mr. Galloway, labelling him as someone guilty of criminal acts. Her conduct was reckless and malicious. Her object in posting her statements on Twitter was for a broad audience to see them.

The Court was clear on the damage that could result: 

There is, in my view, little public interest in protecting reckless and malicious accusations of criminal conduct, especially where published on a social media platform such as Twitter. Rather than promoting responsible reporting of sexual assault and supporting victims, such reckless expressions risk perpetuating myths and stereotypes, a result that is strongly contrary to the public interest. These expressions weigh at the lower end of the protection-deserving scale.

In response to the judgement, Gray took to twitter to denounce Madam Justice Adair in a now deleted tweet:

On the record, however, this is at best a gross mischaracterization of the facts. In dealing with this particular defamation, Madam Justice Adair wrote:

Gray No. 7 shows Ms. Gray pictured at the opening of the Art Exhibit, which is identified by name and Ms. Gray identifies A.B. by her real name. In context, a reasonable person, acquainted with Mr. Galloway, would infer that Gray No. 7 was of and concerning Mr. Galloway, and infer that Mr. Galloway had committed sexual violence upon A.B.

13. We Can Expect A Fair Trial For All

Madam Justice Adair points out that a trial will mean a chance for any party involved to be vindicated, including A.B.:

Allowing Mr. Galloway’s claims to proceed provides A.B. with at least the opportunity for complete – and public – vindication.

Everyone involved can expect fairness:

The claims – including A.B.’s claims that she was raped and sexually assaulted by Mr. Galloway, and Mr. Galloway’s denials – will be adjudicated by an impartial court. Mr. Galloway’s “power in the Canadian literary community,” assuming it even exists, will be irrelevant.

14. This Case Will Help Survivors Of Sexual Assault & Advance The Interests Of Society As A Whole

The final test for the SLAPP motions was for Madam Justice Adair to weigh the public interest in both sides of the argument. She put a citizen’s right to defend themselves against criminal accusations on the high end of the spectrum of importance. 

Accordingly, I conclude that there is a strong public interest in permitting Mr. Galloway’s claims in respect of the Remaining Expressions to continue. In my view, the harm likely to have been suffered by Mr. Galloway from the Remaining Expressions lies close to the high end of the spectrum, and so too does the public interest in allowing his claims in respect of those Expressions to proceed.

Madam Justice Adair was unequivocal on the need to support victims of sexual assault and that “appropriate, compassionate and necessary support and encouragement” for victims to report sexual violence:

The importance of the general subject matter – that victims of sexual assault should be and must be encouraged to report, and be supported when they do – is beyond argument. However, it does not follow from the importance of the general subject matter that the public interest in protecting any particular expression of any of the Applicants outweighs the public interest in permitting Mr. Galloway to continue his claim or claims against that Applicant.

But the Court did not agree that recklessly repeating unfounded accusations of sexual assault, as the defendants have done, was even a matter of reporting:

The Remaining Expressions are not reports of sexual assault at all. Rather, they are statements that would be understood to mean that Mr. Galloway is a rapist and guilty of criminal acts.

Regarding the criminal accusations made by the defendants, the Court placed no importance on a person’s right to recklessly accuse another person of a criminal act.

There is very little public interest in protecting reckless accusations of criminal conduct, and it is difficult to see how doing so could either encourage reporting or support victims of such conduct.

The Court strikes at the heart of the matter by laying out the case against malicious and reckless behaviour. The last paragraph I leave you with succinctly sums up the reasoned arguments many Canadian writers have been making since this scandal broke – a position for which they have been accused of “implicit misogyny” and being “rape apologists” or, as Keith Maillard accused Carmen Aguirre, of being “Men’s Rights Activists.”  It is therefore some comfort to have this position plainly restated in our Supreme Court by a respected and impartial (and female) jurist. As Madam Justice Adair writes:  

The implication of the Applicants’ submissions is essentially that any public statement, the natural and ordinary meaning of which would be understood to be that a sexual assault was perpetrated by one person against another (in this case, that Mr. Galloway raped A.B.), and regardless of the circumstances in which the statement was published, must be protected. There would be no legal consequences of any kind attached to publicly calling someone a rapist, completely outside of any formal reporting, and no obligation ever to prove the statement was true. This, in effect, would place all statements concerning that type of claim into the category of absolute privilege. No distinction would be made between making a confidential report to an institution (almost certainly a privileged occasion), and publishing on Twitter to the world. There would be no recourse – certainly not in civil proceedings – for the person publicly so accused. It is difficult to see how something so extreme and potentially reckless would be in the public interest.

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You can read Madam Justice Adair’s full decision by Clicking Here.

And for more recent coverage you can check out Adam Zivo in The National Post, Keith Fraser in The Vancouver Sun, and Sean Fine in The Globe and Mail.

Dear Readers,

Madam Justice Adair’s Reasons for judgement have now been posted publicly. There’s a lot to unpack in over 242 pages and while I prepare some commentary you can read the full judgment by clicking here.

There is an extensive and excellent background of events from paragraphs 75-316 in which you will find most if not all of the materials I have been quoting from in past posts. If you are looking for information on a specific defendant then you can jump to the following paragraphs:

1. A.B. paragraphs [414] - [423]

2. Keith Maillard paragraphs [424] - [431]

3. Annabel Lyon paragraphs [432] - [436]

4. Chelsea Rooney paragraphs [437] - [451]

5. Mandi Gray paragraphs [452] - [458]

6. Alicia Elliott paragraphs [459] - [467]

7. Glynnis Kirchmeier paragraphs [468] - [472]

8. Brit Bachmann paragraphs [473] - [479]

9. Theresa Smalec paragraphs [480] - [484]

10. Kiera Anderson paragraphs [485] - [489]

11. Arielle Rombough paragraphs [490] - [494]

12. Marcelle Kosman paragraphs [495] - [501]

If you find any paragraphs of particular interest, then feel free to share the paragraph numbers and your thoughts in the comments below. Or tag me on Twitter at @bradcran.

If you haven’t already done so, sign up for updates as the case proceeds to trial.

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Steven Galloway will get his day in court as the BC Supreme Court allows the case to proceed to trial against ten of the applicants who filed SLAPP motions (and the remainder of defendants), while granting SLAPP applications to Annabel Lyon and Alicia Elliot.

Six of the defendants (Brit Bachmann, Theresa Smalec, Kiera Anderson, Arielle Rombough and Marcelle Kosman) had their applications dismissed outright while four of the defendants (AB, Keith Maillard, Chelsea Rooney and Mandi Gray) must defend themselves at trial on portions of their applications which were not granted.

The portions of the applications which were granted include defences such as the limitations defence, where the Court found that in certain cases, Mr. Galloway did not meet the two year time limit set out by the Act in circumstances where he could have.

This is a massive judgement. Stay tuned for a complete and detailed update.

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The Fight For Disclosure

During her first cross-examination as part of a motion to dismiss the defamation case Galloway v. AB under anti-SLAPP legislation, the defendant known as AB testified that in July of 2013 she reported to UBC’s Equity and Inclusion Office (Equity Office) that UBC’s newly appointed chair of Creative Writing, Steven Galloway, had choked her and that a director in the office named Monica Kay wasn’t interested in taking her complaint.

This testimony under cross-examination directly contradicted multiple assertions AB made to numerous people at UBC in 2015 when she told them that she had previously reported that Galloway raped her. Her story has shifted numerous times and continues to adapt itself to whatever version AB believes is most beneficial at any given moment.

AB wrote to UBC President Martha Piper in her November 13, 2015 email which officially began this scandal:

“I am submitting a formal complaint about a sexual assault perpetrated on me by a current UBC professor. This assault took place during the spring of 2012…I already reported this assault to a staff person at UBC in the summer of 2013 with extremely negative outcomes. I am repeating to you what I told them: I think this professor is a danger to other students and I do not want them to be exposed to further risk from him.”

This was an earth-shattering allegation that hit President Piper’s inbox exactly one week after a producer at CBC’s The Fifth Estate, Ronna Syed, contacted UBC about their upcoming documentary School of Secrets, which would lambaste UBC for not acting on a sexual assault allegation made against a PhD candidate in their History Department. The Fifth Estate was days away from hammering UBC when AB came forward with her allegations.  

But AB’s allegations were far more damaging. Galloway was not only a tenured professor but a Department Chair. Her allegations were that she had been violently raped by him in his office on campus and that the CBC’s legal team had vetted these allegations and offered her a place in the documentary - which for the good of the Creative Writing Department she was temporarily declining. She has now admitted to fabricating the claim that anyone at CBC vetted her allegations.

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The same day that AB emailed President Piper, Keith Maillard who was head of the department in 2013, also wrote to Piper demanding to know why he had not been informed that AB had reported a sexual assault in 2013. In the email Maillard says AB told him that she had reported, “-to Monica Kay, Director, Conflict Management, Equity and Inclusion Office, to be exact—and to the RCMP.”

To strengthen her claim that she reported sexual assault to Monica Kay, AB wrote to Maillard:

“Monica Kay—does have a file on my complaint to the university about my sexual assault.”

To strengthen her claim that she reported sexual assault to Community Relations Officer, Steve Bohnen, AB wrote to Maillard:

“The Head of Campus Security—his name is Steve—was the one who helped me put my safety plans in place and told me that Steve was a serial predator. He would remember Steve Galloway’s name for sure. He might have a file.”

To strengthen her claim that she reported to the RCMP, AB wrote Maillard:

“I filed a police report about Steve. I can’t get that tomorrow, but it is on file with the RCMP at the edge of campus.”

To strengthen all three claims, she wrote to Maillard:

“I will add that every single person I mentioned above, including the police, believed me. The police so much so--- because of the choking and the credibility and detail of my account—that he wanted to head to Steve’s office immediately to question him.”

None of these claims were true.

During AB’s first cross-examination in 2019, her testimony directly contradicts what she wrote to Maillard and President Piper in 2015. As AB testified:

“The only thing I was willing to disclose to her [Kay] was that he had choked me. It was easier to talk about that because it was physical violence and not sexualized.”

“I brought in everything I had at that time, which were, you know, Facebook messages and everything that I had that I thought was remotely relevant. And she [Kay] was not interested.”

This first cross-examination by Galloway’s counsel, Dan Burnett, Q.C., ought to cause any reasonable person to question AB’s credibility. As I previously reported, Monica Kay didn’t work in the Equity Office in July of 2013 so it’s simply not possible, as AB claimed under oath, that AB reported an assault to her at that time.

After AB provided insufficient or vague answers to a number of questions, Mr. Burnett requested document disclosures to verify AB’s testimony and the contents of her affidavit. AB’s counsel David Wotherspoon, Q.C. seemed blindsided by Mr. Burnett’s basic requests and claimed he had no right to make them.

MR. WOTHERSPOON: We're going to object to any request for documents. I propose to just leave a generic objection on the record so that you can move through things quickly. But the objection is on the basis that this is a cross-examination on an affidavit and not a discovery. Are you okay with proceeding that way?

BURNETT: I'm not okay with the objection. But we'll proceed that way, and we'll get a court to sort that out.

Among the requests made were for copies of the documents related to AB’s July 2013 complaint to UBC and a second complaint that she did indeed make to Monica Kay in December of 2013. The two complaints were just a few months apart which is why AB may have assumed Kay worked there in July. I will collectively refer to these documents as “The Equity Report.” In cross-examination AB refused to confirm she had them. 

BURNETT: You have -- you have copies of the documents that reflect your report in July of 2013 and – and e-mails back and forth with the -- with the people with the Equity and Inclusion office; right?

AB: I don't have them directly in front of me.

BURNETT: No. But you -- you have possession or control of those documents somewhere; right?

WOTHERSPOON: Do you have the documents somewhere?

AB: I don't know.

WOTHERSPOON: She doesn't know.

In fact, AB’s long-term counsel, Joanna Birenbaum, obtained The Equity Report on AB’s behalf as part of a Freedom of Information request in 2015 during The Boyd Investigation (UBC’s official investigation into AB’s complaints conducted by retired Supreme Court Justice Mary Ellen-Boyd). As stated in the Boyd Report, Madam Justice Boyd reviewed the documents and determined they were “relevant” to her investigation, in which she did not substantiate any of AB’s allegations of sexual assault and assault, based on a balance of probabilities.

If Kay did indeed have a file containing 2013 allegations of sexual assault, as AB told Maillard, then the Equity Report would have been a key piece of evidence to corroborate her claims and it would have almost certainly been submitted to the court as key piece of her defence. Instead, she fought against disclosing it.

A hearing was held in BC Supreme Court on July 12, 2019 to decide if AB must comply with Mr. Burnett’s requests to disclose the Equity Report and other documents. AB’s counsel argued that Mr. Burnett’s requests were a deep dive into the evidence outside the limited scope of evidence as mandated by anti-SLAPP legislation.

Mr. Burnett argued that his requests were not a deep dive but an essential process for testing the truth of AB’s evidence, particularly when she provided vague testimony regarding facts she had sworn to in her affidavit. If a person could swear to facts in an affidavit and then, when cross-examined, assert to have no memory of these facts and refuse to produce documents that would clarify things, then cross-examination would be rendered meaningless.

In her Reasons for Judgment, the Honourable Madam Justice Murray exercised her discretion and made 20 orders for disclosure including an order to disclose the Equity Report. AB appealed Madam Justice Murray’s order to the BC Court of Appeal, claiming that her decision discriminated against survivors of sexual assault. In his factum to the appellate court, Mr. Wotherspoon wrote, “to achieve its legislative purpose for survivors of sexual violence, the PPPA must not be a sword in the hands of the plaintiff.”

The three-judge panel at the BC Court of Appeal unanimously upheld Madam Justice Murray’s orders. AB then sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada but was denied. The entire fight over the documents delayed the SLAPP hearing by nearly two years.  While Galloway won time and time again, through it all there was one thing Mr. Wotherspoon was correct about: The disclosures would be a sword in the hand of the plaintiff, just not in the way he suggested to the court.

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What is noteworthy about the documents in question is how uniformly damaging they have proven to be to AB’s case. Not one of them has supported the facts as sworn to in her affidavit, and worse, many of them have exposed her sworn testimony as false.

A New Version

Considering the effort AB put into fighting the order to disclose the Equity Report, one its most striking elements is AB’s repeated, recorded attempts to keep her allegations off the record. It’s probable that AB obtained the Equity Report during the Boyd investigation through a freedom of information request because she didn’t know what was in it due to her habit of making allegations while asking that records not be kept.

AB told Boyd that, “I requested that Monica not in any way disclose that I had spoken with her.” In December of 2013 when Kay was indeed working in the Equity Office, AB did make a complaint against Galloway to her, regarding his public Facebook posts. But the next day AB phoned Kay’s office in what is described as an “emotional and lengthy” phone call, telling the person who made notes after the call (likely Kay but the Equity Report doesn’t stipulate) that, “she does not want me to tell anyone that she has contacted me.”

AB also told Boyd that confidentiality was the reason that she did not give the RCMP “a sworn statement.” As she testified to Boyd:

“At the RCMP detachment, I wanted to open a confidential file as suggested by the Equity Office. I learned, however, that if I gave a statement, the officer would have to speak to Galloway (including identifying me) and investigate. I was extremely upset. I did not want any action taken. I did not give a sworn statement to the police.”

In both of her complaints, AB’s primary concern (over and above making allegations against Galloway) was that no one know she had made them. But her July 2013 complaint nearly got out of her control when AB was referred to UBC’s Community Relations Officer, Steve Bohnen, who in turn had two of his officers take AB to the UBC RCMP detachment to make a statement (as was regularly the case for nearly any campus issue). AB was irate that UBC had involved the RCMP.

Keep in mind that making a false statement to the police is a criminal offence known as public mischief, punishable by up to five years in prison. The RCMP are of course trained investigators whereas the Equity Office is run by people without any investigative experience and a mandate to help students, not adjudicate criminal allegations.

The following day AB contacted Paras Deacon at the Equity Office to express her anger that she was taken to the RCMP when she “clearly asked to open a confidential file where everything is kept private.”

AB blamed the Equity Office and Bohnen and alleged that members at the UBC RCMP detachment traumatized her. “Not only they didn’t listen to me by ensuring everything is kept confidential,” AB wrote to Deacon, “they referred me to RCMP who then decided to take immediate action and contact the respondent.” She then told Deacon that she had to go through a “traumatizing experience with RCMP” to retract the statement that she had given them.

AB’s allegations against the RCMP were most scathing of all:

“I now feel awful. Victims should not go to the police at all unless they are prepared for the police to take over and do things the victims may not want them to do…The police created more trauma.”

Deacon took AB’s complaint against the RCMP so seriously that she emailed Dr. Gurdeep Parhar, the Acting Associate Vice President of Equity and Inclusion, to warn him:

“Please let someone know that RCMP is not a safe place to send people to.”

Since the day she was taken to the UBC RCMP detachment she has provided at least three different accounts of what happened. They include, in varying degrees:

1. She gave an officer a statement alleging sexual assault, and they believed her and had a file on it.

2. She gave an officer a statement alleging sexual assault but retracted it because she feared retribution from Galloway.

3. She did not give any statement at all alleging sexual assault.

The first version (in which she did file a complaint about sexual assault) was dispelled by RCMP spokesman, Drew Grainger, who told the media in November of 2015 that the UBC RCMP detachment had never received any complaints about Galloway.

The second version (that she did file a complaint but was able to “retract” her statement) is also highly unlikely, particularly if we are to believe AB’s claim that UBC’s head of security, who called the RCMP, believed Galloway was a rapist. In British Columbia the decision to investigate is made by the police and the decision to approve charges is made by Crown counsel. Either of those processes can proceed without the cooperation of the alleged victim.

As pointed out on a blog post on the website for the criminal law firm Sicotte & Sandhu, “In some cases, there is concern that alleged victims are coerced, or recant their statement out of fear. If the allegations are serious, the Crown counsel may be more concerned with the public interest and safety of the public than the preference of an alleged victim.”

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RCMP Media Relations Officer Sgt. Chris Manseau told Truth and Consequences, “Only based on the reason for the retraction by the victim, would the investigator be able to understand the situation.”

“Sexual assault complaints are always taken seriously,” Sgt. Manseau said, “When applicable, members will contact divisional interview teams for assistance, for guidance, and materials on best practices, or interview planning. Members may even consult with specialized sections, such as the General Investigation Section and polygraph.” The RCMP also has operational avenues to mitigate any fears of safety a sexual assault complainant would have, including safety planning, placing specific no-contact, or no-go conditions on arrested suspects and other measures.

If Galloway were a known “serial predator” then it is unlikely (if not completely unrealistic) that AB reported a violent rape to the RCMP and was able to recant the allegation based on fear of reprisal without an investigation being opened to ensure that Galloway posed no risk to public safety. Additionally, it has been proven that Galloway is not a serial predator: The only allegations of sexual assault ever made against him originated from AB.

This makes AB’s third version most plausible: She didn’t give a statement to the RCMP about sexual assault and she lied about that to UBC in November of 2015.

AB’s July 2013 Complaint Against Steven Galloway

The Equity Report that AB has had in her possession since 2015 and fought for 20 months to not disclose, does not contain a single mention of any kind of assault, whether assault by way of choking, or sexual assault by way of her allegation that Galloway violently raped her in his office.

In July of 2013, exactly three weeks after Galloway received tenure and was appointed Chair of Creative Writing, and roughly four months after he ended their two-year long sexual affair which often involved drinking at AB’s instigation, AB filed a complaint with UBC alleging that Galloway invited her into his office, served her alcohol and propositioned her for sex. Steve Bohnen recorded the complaint exactly as follows:

“[AB’s] complaint is that Steven GALLOWAY, a professor in UBC Creative writing, invited her to his office, supplied her with several drinks of hard liquor (Scotch Whiskey) and propositioned her for sex in his office in the UBC Buchanan Buildings. AB stated there had been a clearly sexualized atmosphere and more than one intimation of invitations to sex.”

AB admitted under oath in her first cross-examination that she made this complaint without disclosing that she had just ended a two-year sexual relationship with Galloway.

BURNETT: You didn't disclose when you reported to On Campus in July of 2013 that you'd been having sex with Mr. Galloway for about the previous two years?

AB: That I had complied with having sex with Mr. Galloway that he had harassed me and assaulted me into? No. I was not comfortable disclosing for people -- to people.

Again AB simply adapted to the new facts before her and pointed the blame back at Galloway.

As Mr. Burnett wrote in his Plaintiff’s Outline of Argument:

“[AB] has a history of saying what she thinks will assist her case, only to have it exposed as false.”

By extension, AB’s lawyer, Joanna Birenbaum appears to suffer from a similar problem.

A Vengeful Serial Liar

In a 2018 Open Letter to UBC President Santa Ono that she published online, Ms. Birenbaum demanded that UBC release a copy of the Boyd Report to AB, arguing that AB could not fully respond to attacks on her character without seeing the full report. Ms. Birenbaum not only blamed UBC but she also blamed Galloway, saying that he had refused to consent to the release of Boyd’s findings.

In fact Galloway didn’t refuse anything. The report as released to AB was one with redactions made by UBC according to provincial privacy law, following a review from the OIPC. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would expect Galloway to go out of his way to release information to someone who had fabricated lies in order to destroy his life and had a track record of using new information to generate more damage. Even still, this assertion of Ms. Birenbaum that Galloway was denying AB something she was morally or legally entitled to started another round of social media attacks on Galloway by the general public and pushed by UBC faculty.

A number of Ms. Birenbaum’s assertions in her Open Letter are now proven false or, at a minimum, disingenuous and misleading. For example, Ms. Birenbaum wrote in her letter:

The false information circulated about MC [AB] that she deserves and demands the right to fully respond to, relates to the characterization of her as a classic vengeful serial liar who preys on powerful men.  A characterization that heavily draws on stereotypes about women who report sexual assault.

This is a good place to start when unpacking AB’s December 2013 complaint against Galloway.

Little evidence has been introduced about AB’s ex-husband but what there is provides some interesting insights when placed on the timeline. AB was having an affair with Galloway when she accepted his marriage proposal and when she married him. It’s one thing to have an affair during a dysfunctional marriage and quite another to have an affair while exchanging wedding vows. We also know that he was severely ill and hospitalized. AB asserts that she was “trauma bonded” with Galloway at this time, an assertion she made to explain the thousands of friendly, supportive, intimate messages exchanged between them before and after her alleged rape.

This explanation is, when placed in the context of AB’s overall credibility, difficult to believe. But if one does believe it, then the situation is this: AB, from 2011 to 2013, genuinely believed she was in love with Galloway, or had some sort of romantic emotional relationship with him. During this time, her longtime partner proposed to her, she accepted this proposal, and then married him, all the while having this affair with Galloway.

Two of AB’s former friends, David Mount and Cara Woodruff, have sworn in their affidavits two overlapping points. The first is that following their breakup, AB destroyed her husband’s belongings in a fit of rage. As Woodruff states in her affidavit:

“In April, 2014, A.B. informed me (out of the blue) that she and her husband had split up and he was arriving in Berlin.  Her husband later told me that while he was in Germany A.B. changed the locks to their house (which was owned by his parents), destroyed some of his artwork and guitars, and packed up her things and moved to Toronto.”

In a text message to Galloway around this time, AB told him that she had separated from her husband. However, during the Boyd investigation AB told Boyd that she was still with her husband. Not only did AB tell Boyd that they were still together, she describes him as being a great support to her. But she didn’t want to talk specifics and told Boyd:

“The support I’ve received from my husband, family and friends who are unrelated to UBC, is not something I think I should have to talk about in this process.”

The second point is that in Ms. Birenbaum’s open letter to UBC, she states that “contrary to what has been reported in the media, MC has never made a complaint of sexual harassment at any other institution.” This is contradicted by David Mount’s affidavit in which he swears:

“A.B. told me about her time as a faculty member at an American university. She told me that at one institution there was a lot of tension and strife between faculty members, that it was a toxic environment, and that she had been sexually harassed by one of her colleagues. She told me that she got someone fired and that as a result she had to quit. Most of the fiction she submitted to class was based upon those events.”

I’ve corroborated Mount’s sworn account with two people who were at UBC at the time and confirm that AB told them that she had gotten someone fired at her previous job. I’ve also confirmed from an individual at the university where AB held a tenure track position that a complaint by AB and one other faculty member in 2006 resulted in the chair of a department stepping down amid accusations of “bullying.” This was an accusation later thrust on Galloway when he was removed as Chair, despite Boyd unilaterally rejecting these claims.

Cara Woodruff also swears in her affidavit that she stayed with AB and AB’s husband in the summer of 2013 and that at no time did AB ever suggest that her relationship with Galloway was sexual or that he had raped her, assaulted her, or harassed her. She spoke about Galloway with derision, calling him things like a “loser” or “pathetic.”

This contrasts with multiple testimonials from students at the time, including the statements from those who filed complaints against Galloway, that there was a clear friendship between Galloway and AB. This is also supported by the 200 pages of text messages Galloway retrieved from an icloud backup. After considering this evidence Madam Justice Boyd found that AB and Galloway, “presented as a couple involved in some kind of intimate consensual relationship which many suspected was an affair.”

A former student who doesn’t want to be named stated that this was apparent to everyone. This individual asserts that AB had posted many pictures of herself with Galloway documenting their friendship but AB scrubbed all of these from her social media prior to coming forward with her allegations.

Woodruff also swore the following in her affidavit:

“A.B. regularly directed conversation towards Professor Galloway. Whenever I was present at an event with him, and she was not, she would later question me thoroughly on Professor Galloway's conduct at the event in question. I also observed her question other classmates about their observations of Professor Galloway at events where she was not present.”

On October 23, 2013, AB attended the Penguin Random House Reception at the Vancouver Writers Festival. The writer Katherine Wagner also attended. Wagner was an online MFA student at UBC who didn’t live in Vancouver, didn’t take classes from Galloway or even take classes at the UBC campus.  At this reception, AB told Wagner to stay away from Galloway, someone she barely knew.

Eight months later, AB would tell Galloway that Wagner was unstable and that he should stay away from her.  Galloway and Wagner did not start their relationship until after she graduated. Like Galloway, Wagner, who is five years younger, had two children from a previous marriage. They have been married since 2016 and have a blended family.

AB had little time for any students who weren’t in the “in-crowd.” Whether it was faculty or students, she ingratiated herself to those who appeared important and derided those that she judged unimportant. AB would later gain support from trans activists who would hold protests to stop a speaker whom they considered transphobic from speaking at the Toronto Public Library.

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While AB became a faceless martyr defended by prominent trans activists, she in fact has little in common with them and would almost certainly hold them in contempt and be mutually hated were her actual views known. In text messages to Galloway, AB mocked a student in transition:

Oh my god! Have you heard the latest? Esther insists on being referred to as "they" not she. Also, she told everyone in Rhea's class that men menstruate too! It's off the hook on the 4th floor!

Rhea laughed and said, " You'll have to give us a biology lesson Esther." Then Leah attacked Rhea and said, "Not they's job Rhea. Not They's job."

So, are you on your period? :)

But to many, AB has become a symbol, not a person. By not knowing anything about her, she could be whomever activists wanted her to be, which was not a mere mortal but an idea: That anyone claiming to be a survivor of sexual assault was pure of heart and honest in intention, regardless of the subject. An infallible archetype of goodness usually reserved for a religious icon. How this idea has been leveraged is one of the most troubling aspects of this story. 

AB had jealousy issues and didn’t even like the students she enlisted to destroy Galloway, such as Chelsea Rooney and Sierra Skye Gemma. The two of them, both self-described survivors of sexual violence, would become AB’s most fierce proponents, helping to conscript complainants against Galloway, collect further evidence against him and allege that even the positive things Galloway had done for them were in fact signs of his abuse of power.

In a now deleted Twitter thread attacking Margaret Atwood, Sierra Skye Gemma claims that she was the student matriarch of the program but that she never liked AB, called her a “bitch” and encouraged other students to exclude her. The feeling was mutual. AB hated Gemma and many of the other students including Jordan Abel and Ray Hsu, who would later bring forward complaints and testimony to support her.

As AB stated to Galloway on February 2 and 5, 2013:

“Jordan's a weasel. I hate them all. Or most of them. Fuck socializing with grad

students, fuck prom, fuck Jordan, Ray Hsu, Sierra and the rest of them.”

“I would have said hello to you, but Sierra was talking to you and she's dead to me. :)”

As Gemma also testified to Boyd:

“The first time I tried to be nice to her [AB] was at a Meet and Greet wine and cheese, in the first month of studies. We had just started classes and she was in the Non-Fiction class with me. I said I had read her piece and she said ‘Whatever’.”

After Galloway ended their affair the following month, things changed. These students that AB hated now had a purpose. As well as telling Wagner to stay away from Galloway, AB approached Gemma at the Penguin Random House Party in October of 2013. As Gemma stated to Boyd in a letter:

“That evening, I came out of the bathroom and ran into [AB]. We started talking in the hallway…[AB] asked if I was lovers with Anita Bedell, my close friend. I laughed and told her even my husband and Anita’s husband had asked that same question. I asked her if she was lovers with Steven Galloway. She got very upset. Her body language and facial expressions suggested disgust and frustration.

‘No!’ she said, ‘I would never be in a relationship with him. Never!’ She was adamant there was nothing going on. She said that ‘he wishes there was’

She continued to get upset and she looked around to make sure no one was close by and could hear us. Then she asked if I could keep a secret.”

According to Gemma, AB said that Galloway had told her sexually inappropriate things about his wife, flirted with her and was (in the fall of 2013, seven months after he ended their two-year relationship) pressuring her to sleep with him. Again, after having denied they were having sex for the last two years. According to Gemma, AB said:

“He is putting pressure on me and being inappropriate and I don’t know what to do about it”.

We don’t know how many of the people manipulated by AB feel about having been lied to.  As of 2016, Gemma’s seemed to feel she had let AB down by not encouraging her to act on this fictitious story. Gemma says that AB told her that Galloway had told AB that the only reason she was in the program was because he made it happen. She worried that he could ruin her career, which Gemma said was the case.

“At this point, [AB] seemed even more distressed. Her eyes moistened. AB said her self-esteem was suffering and she felt like she had to always go along with whatever he wanted or else he would get her kicked out of the Program.”

In the entire history of the program no student has ever been “kicked out.” Not only that, there is no mechanism by which any one professor could do such a thing, and Galloway’s colleagues have amply demonstrated that they did not hold him in such high regard that he could have done this to anyone.

AB asked Gemma if she thought anyone else would believe her and Gemma told her, “No, no one will believe you. No one will ever side with you over Steven Galloway. And yes, he would ruin your career. I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know what you can do.”

Gemma said that AB’s eyes started tearing up.

“Then she lowered her voice even more and said, ‘He once put his hands on my throat.’”

Gemma then told Boyd that she was unexpectedly contacted by AB’s “advocate” on Sunday, November 15, 2015.

“I was asked if I could remember this conversation and I said, yes, I remembered it clearly. I was asked if I would provide a sworn statement recounting the conversation and I said that I would.”

Ms. Birenbaum asserts suggesting that AB is “a classic vengeful serial liar” requires relying on stereotypes about women who make sexual assault accusations. While this undoubtedly does happen, the existence of a stereotype does not create an obligation to ignore the fact that in 2013 AB lied in order to build a case against Galloway that she would then kick into action two years later, using these people as unwitting pawns.

AB’s December 2013 Complaint Against Galloway

AB’s December 2013 complaint to Monica Kay at UBC was that Galloway was posting “sexually inappropriate” comments to Facebook, disparaging the department and “targeting a new graduate student named Katie Wagner.”

From AB’s complaint to UBC:

Dear Monica,

Here are the screen shots. The UBC 50th anniversary Creative Writing Event is sandwiched between the “kangaroo balls” and “drunkeness.’

AB also provided a Facebook screenshot to Kay featuring Wagner face to face with her horse. Galloway commented, “This is a super romantic picture. You are totally about to make out with that horse.” This was the evidence AB presented to suggest Galloway was “targeting Wagner.”

The 4th shot is a reference to one of our Graduate students “making out” with a horse.

I would like him not to walk away with his own copies of these. There is a lot of strange references on this site. These are only the most recent.

Rhea Tregebov, who is Associate Professor Emerita at UBC Creative Writing, originally remained publicly neutral and stayed out of the public debates involving Galloway. She was actively courting Galloway’s US literary agent to represent her novel. “I realize this is a strange time to be contacting you in terms of Steve's painful predicament,” Tregebov wrote, “but since I believe the novel should be seen, and we don't know when Steve's situation will be resolved, I thought I would go ahead with my inquiry.”

After Galloway’s agent rejected Tregebov’s novel, she sided with her colleagues and began posting negative information about Galloway which perpetuated AB’s allegation that Galloway targeted Wagner.

Given that Wagner married Galloway at a time when he had no power whatsoever, and given that she has stayed married to him and co-parents four children with him, the notion that he was exerting power over her is absurd. Holding a M.A. in Sociology with a feminist focus, it is more likely that Wagner is an adult woman who is capable of deciding for herself who to partner with. What is truly amazing is that Tregebov feels completely comfortable publicly impugning the life choices of a female graduate of the program in order to perpetuate the narrative of Galloway’s predatory evil which, when it suited her career, she referred to as his “painful predicament”

The day after making her December, 2013 complaint,  AB phoned the Equity Office in a panic telling them that she was too anxious to come forward and demanding that no one know that she made a complaint or even that “a student” had made a complaint. The same day as that phone call she texted Galloway out of the blue:

“Ha! I might have a nice surprise for you next week. Don't worry! It doesn't cost anything and you will like it. Nothing artsy. And you aren't expected to give anything to me!!”

AB’s Second Cross-examination

After AB finally disclosed the Equity Report and other documents, Mr. Burnett held his second cross-examination of her on January 21st of this year. Once again AB changed her story about her July 2013 complaint. Under oath she was now contradicting her previous testimony that she had only reported choking. Her latest version was that she did report rape as she had told UBC in 2015 but that no one at UBC bothered to jot that part down.

Mr. Burnett read aloud from AB’s July 2013 complaint as recorded by UBC’s head of security and asked her to confirm that there is not a single word about sexual assault in it. She responded:

AB:

Yeah. I am totally aware of that, and this makes me furious, and this is a clear case of institutional betrayal by UBC. This is one of the reasons why I was willing to speak to Ronna Syed about this terrible experience I had in this office.

Then AB made what is perhaps her most stunning claim to date:

AB: I, in fact, have not seen this particular report until you have just showed it to me. It makes me so angry because UBC has mishandled this particular case in so many ways, and you know, one of the things that this reminds me of is that this is not the only way that UBC has let down me as a victim of Steven Galloway and others.

Burnett: Okay. What you're claiming, I gather, is the most important thing you told them on July 22, 2013, was that he had committed some sexualized violence towards you, and they entirely omitted that in their recording of that meeting?

AB: Absolutely I am saying that.

So after obtaining the freedom of information request during the Boyd investigation in 2016, fighting for nearly two years to stop an order to produce it, and then disclosing it to Galloway, AB claimed she had never seen it before.

Imagine for a moment that this claim, as made to Keith Maillard in an email, is true:

“The Head of Campus Security—his name is Steve—was the one who helped me put my safety plans in place and told me that Steve was a serial predator. He would remember Steve Galloway’s name for sure. He might have a file.”

Had Bohnen’s file recorded AB’s claims, this would have been an enormously helpful piece of evidence for her. But AB says she simply chose not to look at it, at any point, over the past six years.

There are times when this story reads like a thriller and there are times when it reads like a sitcom. Not only does AB resist telling the truth about major facts and events, she also does so about minor ones.

In her first cross-examination Mr. Burnett asked AB about a Twitter account which is widely known to have been hers.

BURNETT: And that was -- that was you; right?

AB: Oh, no. It's not. And I told her she couldn't do this, because people would think it was me.

BURNETT: Okay.   So just looking at the post that is --

AB: This is -- this is -- this is my mom. This is my mom. My mom's very upset, as you can imagine. And I -- so, you know, she was watching things as they unfold. And she wrote these things without my permission and without my agreement. And then when I saw that she had done this I told her that she couldn't do this. And I was really unhappy that she had done that. But, you know, I couldn't be -- she was upset herself.  And so when you're ineffectual -- this is an ineffectual way that you try to respond to, you know, terrible things that are happening that are beyond your control, so -- yeah.                       

BURNETT: So your evidence -- your testimony is that you didn't write that posting? That was your mother?

AB: Yeah, it's my mom.

After swearing this evidence, the defendant Alicia Elliott testified under cross-examination that she communicated with AB by sending DM’s to the account in question. Mr. Burnett returned to the subject in his second cross-examination of her.

BURNETT: Well, did you ever communicate with Alicia Elliot using that Twitter handle?

AB: I don't know.

BURNETT: Well, she's testified that you did on a number of occasions.

AB: Like publicly -- but definitely publicly no. Possibly privately.

BURNETT: So -- okay, so sometimes you use this Twitter account and sometimes you didn't; is that --

AB: This was – [REDACTED] is my mom's name. It's her account, and yes, I did not remember that I had spoken privately to Alicia Elliot, and I do – now that you're saying that, I do remember reaching out to her privately.

BURNETT: So the significance is it's an account that has posted thousands of times and is followed by Mr. Maillard and various others. But your evidence is firmly that you have not posted publicly using that Twitter handle?

AB: Well, I haven't -- I haven't posted any original -- I was re-posting things so that my mom could see what was happening because my mom was overwhelmed by what was happening, and there was a lot that was going on with UBC accountable, and so what I was doing was re-posting things that were relevant so that my mom could see what was happening, and then unfortunately, when she read some of the things that were being said and she became upset and having no effectual way to speak, she wrote original posts to people, which we spoke about at the last -- during our last conversation.

BURNETT: Okay. So am I understanding you correctly you're saying that there were some occasions when you re-Tweeted some articles using that [Redacted] Twitter handle but you didn't post original --

AB: I posted one original. I have a clear memory of posting one original thing, and I was posting about a very particular book, and it was by a British author, and I can't remember the name of the book, but it had -- it was not related at all to the case.

BURNETT: Okay.

AB: I have the book in -- if you want me to find the book, I can find the book, and I can get the title of the book.

BURNETT: Okay. One of the articles that you re-Tweeted using the [REDACTED] Twitter account was a media article about Steve Galloway's suspension, right?

AB: If it's there, then yes.

BURNETT: Okay. Just going to a different --

AB: And that would have been very relevant to my mom.

AB’s sworn testimony then is that she communicates with her mother by using a twitter account that is followed by multiple defendants and complainants. She posts articles and retweets for her mother’s benefit using her mother’s account - which her mother then used in her “original” posts.

Trauma Theory

Despite the total implausibility, if not certain impossibility of AB’s shifting explanations under cross-examination, in her oral submissions to the Court Ms. Birenbaum affirmed AB’s claims that she reported sexual assault to UBC in July 2016 despite the fact Birenbaum herself had the report in her possession for nearly six years. As Ms. Birenbaum told the Court:

“A.B. of course did not review the notes -- those notes by that security officer at the time, and she strongly disputes their accuracy and completeness in terms of her disclosure to Janet Mee of the equity office. And frankly it wouldn't be the first time that notes of a security person at a university were found wanting.”

There is of course a simpler explanation to all of this which is already a proven fact admitted by AB herself under oath: She lies.  

In her open letter, Ms. Birenbaum also wrote that it was false that AB denied having a relationship with Galloway once Galloway demonstrated otherwise by providing evidence proving the affair. As Ms. Birenbaum wrote:

“It is also untrue, contrary to comments attributed to Mr. Galloway and made by others, that “in her report to UBC [AB] denied a relationship with Mr. Galloway, and that she changed her story after confronted with their text messages. MC [AB] never denied a relationship existed, but rather described it as abusive.”

This statement by Ms. Birenbaum is patently false.

“Near the conclusion of this investigation,” Madam Justice Boyd wrote in her report, “following disclosure of the Respondents’ evidence, MC filed a Responsive Statement of Evidence in which she substantially amended the allegations advanced.”

In November of 2015 AB emailed Annabel Lyon an audio recording of a voicemail message Galloway had left for AB, in which he addresses AB with intimacy by saying “It’s me again,” and then asks her for a chance “to turn myself in.” By this Galloway meant a chance to disclose their affair to Maillard and take responsibility for it. AB presented the voicemail to Lyon as Galloway confessing to violently raping her, but for this interpretation of the voicemails to work, AB had to deny the affair.

To do this AB wrote to Lyon:

“Context to all of these messages. I haven't had any sort of contact/communication with Steve since May 2014. We have no "relationship" whatsoever. The implied intimacy of the "hi it's me" bit is really creepy and inappropriate coming from the Chair of my department.”

AB also denied the affair in another email to Lyon in which she wrote:

“Steve was/is not sexually attractive to me at all.”

This is further supported by Timothy Taylor’s sworn affidavit in which he states that at the emergency meeting led by Lyon and Maillard that would decide Galloway’s fate, Lyon played the voicemails for faculty with AB’s commentary explaining them as a rape confession. As Taylor swore in his affidavit:

“Lyon provided commentary and interpretation of these messages that she told us had been given to her by A.B. For example, we were instructed to ignore Galloway's use of the phrase "Hi, it's me" in the opening of his voicemail message.”

AB began her allegations by denying the affair and claiming that Galloway raped her in 2012. By the time she got in front of Madam Justice Boyd she changed the allegation from a single accusation in 2012 to multiple assaults in 2011 with the two-year sexual relationship now being dubbed by AB as a continuation of the abuse. As AB told Boyd:

“We had sex when Galloway wanted it. The sex itself was degrading and rough. There was no kissing or caressing. No gentle touching. He would make fun of those things. His sexual persona was aggressive, without affection. He forced me to do things I did not want to do and which I experienced as degrading.”

AB then attempts to make Galloway the author of even the idea of her trauma-bonding:

“At some point, I told Galloway, ‘I love you’. He laughed and said meanly, ‘You’ve got Stockholm Syndrome.” I realized that he was right. That I had bonded with him: a traumatic bonding – an emotional bonding with my tormentor as a form of survival and coping. The worst thing was that I did not figure it out for myself. I only realized that was the dynamic when he said it. He knew what he was doing all the way along. It was all premeditated. It was a game to him.”

For eight days in court, counsel for the defendants smeared Galloway as an abuser of women based largely on the fact that Madam Justice Boyd had found that Galloway sexually harassed AB as defined by UBC’s Policy 3. Boyd’s finding was based on the limited amount of evidence she had at the time and relied heavily on AB’s credibility which is now impugned.

AB’s “first incident of sexual harassment” as described to Madam Justice Boyd was that while having drinks at the campus pub Galloway told her that his sex life at home was unsatisfactory and wanted to know how her sex life with her husband was. When she refused to say, AB alleges that Galloway called her a prude. As AB testified to Boyd:

“I recall just staring at the table and then staring off into the distance away from him…I felt muzzled and could not respond. This was the first incident of sexual harassment.”

AB presented herself as a defenseless and vulnerable student who had been violently raped in such a horrific and deliberating manner that her rapist would go on to mind control her into a two-year sexual relationship. Ms. Birenbaum even attempted to bring in a “trauma expert” named Lori Haskell to provide an expert report to Madam Justice Boyd that would “explain the discriminatory misconceptions about women who remain in relationships with men (particularly men in positions of power) despite alleging that they have committed violence against them.”

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But this was not a case of an abused woman who could not leave an abusive relationship. This was someone who has manipulated people, threatened people and changed her story to meet any evidence that contradicts her own. Madam Justice Boyd refused to accept the report by Ms. Haskell but AB’s testimony to Boyd depended heavily on trauma theories like those espoused by Ms. Haskell.

On December 18, 2012, AB sent Galloway naked photographs of herself. I haven’t seen them, but she discussed them with Boyd and explained them like this:

“In mid-December 2012, Galloway was writing on a boat on the Island. He texted me at least one photo of his face. What I remember is that he asked me to send a photo too. I sent a photo of me, a photo of my face. I remember that he was not interested in a photo of my face. That hurt me. He wanted a naked photo, or a dirty photo.

I didn’t want to take pornographic or naked photos of myself. When he made demands like this I always felt fear, I felt sick inside, because I was out of control of the situation and out of control of my own body. He was the one in control of the situation and my body.”

AB presented herself as a virtuous and chaste victim at the mercy of a prurient Svengali rapist who literally had the power to make her produce pornography when he was on a boat 100 km away. And best of all, she had a “trauma expert” in Lori Haskell to support her allegations. The evidence of course tells a different story.

AB lies with ease. She can cry on command. Despite the flaws of logic in her stories that are generated at the same frequency of her false statements, she is by all accounts extremely believable and convincing in person.

A Sexualized Department

One of the most easily disprovable allegations against Galloway is that he sexualized not only AB but the entire Creative Writing Department. This is of course a tricky subject to negotiate and Galloway was cross-examined on this by Ms. Birenbaum. At the same time that Ms. Birenbaum suggests that Galloway sexually harassed students, she also accused him of what amounts to “slut shaming” when he provided evidence that some of the students in the department, particularly AB, were hypersexual. As Galloway testified in his cross-examination with Ms. Birenbaum:

“I will say as an operative principle, A.B.'s general attitudes and demeanour towards sex, her manner of dress and any of that is completely irrelevant…to whether or not I physically assaulted her or she deserved to be physically assaulted or any of that. What I am saying and what I have consistently said is that in her representations in this lawsuit and to Justice Boyd, she presented an image of herself and our relationship which is entirely false.”

We agree with Galloway and do not suggest that a woman’s sexualized demeanour and the manner of her dress are relevant to whether she was assaulted, or her credibility per se.

While AB’s “dirty photos” are not in evidence and never will be, there are no shortage of photos depicting her overt sexuality, directly contradicting her claims that she was oppressed or sexually dominated by Galloway.

A Mentor

In this story you have two explanations to what happened. The first explanation is the one preferred and proffered by UBC, AB, the student complainants who filed their own complaints to support hers, Galloway’s closest friends and colleagues who took action to destroy him, and the thousands of academics, writers and journalists who publicly supported the campaign to bury it all by claiming that asking questions and demanding a fair investigative process was a form of abuse towards survivors of sexual assault. It’s a simple explanation: Steven Galloway is evil and to blame for all of it.

The second explanation is based on the actual facts of the case. It’s a more complex story and not only a more difficult one to tell, but for those that went all in on Explanation 1, it is a difficult explanation to accept: A woman with apparent mental health issues, a proven track record of rage, and who has an established track record of dishonesty,  falsely accused her former lover of rape. She convinced not only the President of UBC to take action against him, but also his closest friends who had been most proud of his rise from a student in their program to becoming one of the most commercially successful Canadian writers of his generation. She then mobilized an entire community to ferociously quell any opposition to the narrative that Galloway was evil, culminating in the absurd proposition that 90+ of Canada’s most respected writers were rape apologists for taking a principled stand.

On April 16th of this year the Canadaland “news site” published a brief article by Taylor Lambert called “Why is No One Talking About Steven Galloway?” In a flare of naivety and bias that is not uncommon at Canadaland, Lambert interviewed three media experts, including Lisa Taylor, a professor of journalism at Ryerson who, Lambert discloses, contributed to a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to pay the legal fees for the defendants in the case, of which 50% was given to A.B..

Taylor suggests part of the problem is that the media can’t admit when they are wrong and that they were wrong about Galloway because Madam Justice Boyd did find that he sexually harassed AB. She then calls on The National Post to run a correction on the matter.

“There’s deeply problematic interpretations of the Boyd report in Galloway’s first-person account,” Taylor told Lambert, “and the Post does have an obligation, I would say, to correct the record.”

What Taylor’s demand for a correction tells us is that she actually doesn’t know anything about the case. The Boyd Report is not binding on the case, the harassment finding will likely be deemed out of scope of the stings of defamation being sued over, and Madam Justice Boyd didn’t have all the facts before her. It also overlooked the fact that Galloway’s account focussed on AB’s assault allegations.

What Taylor, like many, tries to assert is that because Boyd found that Galloway violated UBC Policy 3, that finding negates the findings that he did not sexually assault AB, as though sexual harassment based on a relationship where a power imbalance exists is evidence that a person committed a crime on par with choking and violently raping someone. Canadaland’s complete unwillingness to confront the ramifications of the evidence at bar speaks volumes about their integrity and claims that they are qualified to consider themselves a media watchdog.

But there’s something else going on in relation to Taylor’s demand for a correction at The National Post. Her reputation as a “media expert” is now, like thousands of people who made the same mistake, married to AB’s credibility. The answer to Canadaland’s question, Why is No One Talking About Steven Galloway?, is simple: To do so in any meaningful way is to impeach the integrity and actions of thousands of individuals and dozens of institutions, including Canadaland.

To even know what the allegations are, and how they were brought forward, is to know that they are not true. That is why no one is talking about Steven Galloway.

Putting aside how AB fabricated a rape allegation, she has lied about other pieces of her story to Boyd, the Court, and others that include but are not limited to: Keith Maillard, Annabel Lyon, Chelsea Rooney, Sierra Gemma, the UBC Creative Writing Faculty, the UBC Equity Office, Campus Security, Martha Piper, and through her lawyer’s two open letters, the media and general public.

For nearly six years now, UBC and those involved in destroying Galloway, all of whom have direct evidence that AB has lied to them, have fought to hide the true facts of the case while portraying Galloway as the central cause of it all. The facts do not support this. But the exculpatory facts were never needed before passing judgment and condemning Galloway as a rapist. All that was needed before passing judgment was the presumption of innocence, a fair investigation, and a commitment to respect the results of that investigation.

AB was not weak or meek. She was treated like an equal and had a strong hold on a number of faculty members over and above Galloway to the point that she conducted herself as if she was one of them, going so far as to crash a faculty meeting held in Seattle at the 2014 AWP.

Much has been made about boundaries Galloway crossed with students, but he was by no means the only faculty member to do so. AB had strong friendships that transcended the student/teacher relationship with at least seven faculty members. None more so than with Keith Maillard. In his affidavit David Mount swore that:

I believe that A.B.'s age and experience as a professor or instructor allowed her to be accepted by the faculty as a peer. This was apparent to me in the way she socialized with the professors. For example, A.B. told me that she provided interior decorating services to Professor Maillard when he was redecorating or redesigning his living room.

Another MFA student in the program at the time, who wants to remain anonymous, told me:

“I believe it was sometime during the second semester that AB mentioned to me (on more than one occasion) that she was driving Keith Maillard home. Keith was her supervisor. The frequency of her chauffeuring Keith to West Vancouver did seem odd to me.”

The text messages Galloway recovered from the cloud also show the extent that AB had ingrained herself into the lives of UBC faculty members. In June 2013, after their breakup, AB texted Galloway to say that she was with his mentor, Maillard, who was suicidal. As was her method, AB requested that what she said not be shared:  

“He was openly weeping. He's extremely depressed. It might be better if you don't tell him I called? I'm not sure whatever you think is best. Am I over worrying?”

Galloway told AB that Keith needed to call his wife and she said that she had tried but that he wouldn’t. At 11:11 p.m. she texted:

“Keith and I just parted ways. He'll be home in 25 minutes. He gets extremely depressed at home. Don't believe him if he tells you he's ok.”

Galloway responded that Maillard was fine:

“I just spoke to him. He sounded, and claimed to be, a-ok. I invited him out to dinner with us tonight for Father's Day.”

Was any of this true? Likely not, particularly since AB didn’t want Galloway to disclose to Maillard what she was saying. So it’s likely that it’s not true. What I do know for certain is that anyone who believes anything AB says, does so at their own peril. The MFA student who mentioned AB’s chauffeuring of Maillard continued:

“I believe it during the end of the first semester or early in the second semester of the second academic year, in one of our brief conversations, she [AB] dropped that she had slept over at Keith’s place when his wife was away. I think I was shocked and probably showed it, as I presumed she meant me to understand she might have slept with him. I really did not want to know whether she had or had not and did not ask for clarification.”

In July of 2018 I followed up with Keith Maillard to confirm or deny AB’s allegation that she had sleepovers at his house. Regardless of whether or not AB meant to imply a sexual relationship, if Maillard hosted a student for sleepovers at his house, this was far worse than many of the boundaries Galloway had been accused of crossing.

Maillard’s response in full is as follows:

Dear Brad Cran:

I have no comment on your questions. Based on your questions, I believe that you may use my statement toward a particular issue, that is, the nature of my relationship to AB.

As far as that issue is concerned, if you publish the claim that AB slept at my house, it will be untrue.

You are now on notice that the claim that AB slept at my house will be untrue. If you publish the claim that AB slept at my house knowing it to be untrue, it will cause me damages, personally and professionally.

I do not need proof of damage to bring a civil suit for defamation.

I have consulted with a lawyer. That lawyer has explained to me that if I, as the plaintiff, bring a civil suit against you and the publication for publishing an untruth, that it will be your burden to prove it to be true, and that will be time consuming, costly, and expensive.

Sincerely yours,

Keith Maillard 

I don’t blame Maillard for denying AB’s allegations, claims or inferences about sleepovers at his house, and on this point at least, I would tend to believe him over AB. I don’t present them as being truthful; I present them to show the hypocrisy in Maillard denying them while aggressively affirming AB’s rape allegations against Galloway.

Whatever their relationship, it is difficult to accept the description of it he offered under oath:

BURNETT: Well, you were a good friend of hers?

MAILLARD: No, I wasn't. I was her thesis advisor.

BURNETT: You say you weren't a friend?

MAILLARD: We are not friends with our students. We may become friends with them after they graduate. Being in the role of thesis advisor is a very prescribed role. It can be very friendly. The student can perceive you as their friend and they often do, but you are not really their friend, you're their thesis advisor.

AB’s relationship with Maillard is of course even more problematic considering that Annabel Lyon has now admitted under oath that Maillard pressured her to sign off on AB’s thesis and that they both knew that it was incomplete. Not knowing that Lyon had done this in the morning, Maillard started his cross-examination in the afternoon and denied having done so.

What’s most interesting about the story of AB graduating without completing a thesis is that it in no way shape or form had anything to do with Galloway. It was approved several months before AB made her allegations. He had no part in it, just as he’s had little part in most of this story. He’s neither protagonist nor antagonist. His role in this story has been closer to that of a prop.

The fraudulently awarded thesis tells a story that none of them can escape: AB had the majority of UBC Creative Writing faculty wrapped around her finger. She was not a victim nor was she meek. She was in control even when her story began to fall apart. In fact, this is perhaps when she had the most control over those who had helped destroy a person they once loved.

Most of them should have known better. Some of them may have been compromised. Others did her bidding blindly, almost as if they were in a trance and under the control of exterior forces, similar to how AB described to Madam Justice Boyd the way in which she claimed the Svengali Steven Galloway, the root of all evil, controlled her mind and body, as if she was a trained animal, she said, “like a dog at the end of an invisible leash.”

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Dearest Truth and Consequences Readers. Once again, I thank you for your patience while I work through the behemoth legal file of the Galloway v. A.B anti-SLAPP motion in order to present pertinent (if not scandalous) evidence, facts and insights for your reading pleasure and interest in justice.

It was my plan to post another extensive long-form piece weeks ago but after completing it, an issue arose outside my control that made it clear that this particular exposé would be best shared at a later date. Rest assured you will get this piece in full as soon as the timing is right. 

I’d also like to thank everyone who wrote in with questions about the SLAPP hearing. This was next on my chopping block but shortly into answering your astute questions, my daughter fell gravely ill with a (thankfully non-COVID) virus and was hospitalized in order to manage her pain and sustenance. While I was tempted to post a personal update so as not to leave you all hanging, I instead opted to wait until I could confidently avoid the melodramatic description of the situation that I surely would have written in the heat of our distress. 

So now I can cut to the wonderful spoiler: she has been discharged and is doing so well that her biggest conundrum is figuring out how she can continue to rapidly bounce back to normal while still parlaying our worry into tangible items of affection, like new clothes, electronic devices and the signing of parental consent forms for piercings at our local tattoo parlour. 

I assure you that I am holding up as well as a weak-willed doting father can. I also assure you that everything I have been working on over the last six weeks will be in your inbox as soon as possible. 

But hey, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Brad, it’s August. The courts are closed but the beaches are open; you should really go on holiday!” 

Well that’s a fine idea and I’ve checked with my boss, who is me, and it is indeed the case that I booked off the final week of summer to spend with my family. But I want to leave you with something before I go because I am so appreciative of your ongoing support. I’m polishing up a new post now and you’ll have it soon. Then we’ll hit the ground running in September (can you believe it’s now less than a week away?) and hopefully have a decision from Madam Justice Adair not too long into the fall. 

It’s a big case and no doubt she’s putting a lot into it. Covering it is hard; ruling on it is of course even harder.

There’s lots more to come. Thanks for being a part of this journey. Wishing you and your families good health and a great finish to this topsy turvy summer. Stay tuned.

Brad

In defamation law, one of the key elements of determining whether a case has merit is the question of what harm the defamation has caused. In cases where the defamation involves allegations of a criminal nature, such as sexual assault, the court rightfully assumes that harm has taken place. Nevertheless, in the recent PPPA “Anti-SLAPP” application brought by eleven of the defendants to dismiss Galloway V. A.B et al, it was strongly argued by the applicants that Steven Galloway has, as a result of being called a rapist by each and every one of the defendants, not suffered any harm or, in the alternative, that any harm he has suffered is either his own fault or the fault of the University of British Columbia. It is worth observing, at the outset, that while UBC’s conduct was reprehensible, at no point did the University use the words “rape” or “sexual assault” when refering to Galloway. They were, it would appear, content to let the defendants do this for them.

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When it comes to the harms Galloway has suffered since UBC breached his privacy in November of 2015 by publicly announcing that he had been suspended as Chair of UBC Creative Writing, pending “serious allegations,” perhaps the swiftest and most severe punishment he received was being instantly deemed persona non-grata among his peers. In 2014 Zoe Whittall called Galloway “a brilliant Vancouver novelist” in the pages of The National Post, but by 2018 she was comparing him to Harvey Weinstein in the pages of The Walrus and criticizing the “literary elite” for not wanting to blindly, in the absence any facts, “believe that someone can be a great friend, excellent teacher and mentor, and good husband or father and still be capable of sexual harassment or sexual assault.” While of course it is possible for Whittall’s proposition to be true, what Whittall was actually saying was that it must be true, because it was possible. And any resistance to this line of thinking was met with immediate and forceful rage.

On June 8th, 2018, Globe and Mail journalist Gary Mason published an exclusive interview with Galloway, in which the embattled novelist recounted the emotional damage from being accused of rape, having the allegations fall apart, being cleared of the charge of sexual assault and then being publicly tarred as guilty anyway. As he told Mr. Mason:

“It’s darn near killed me,” Mr. Galloway told The Globe and Mail in the first interview he has granted since his ordeal began in the fall of 2015. “And truthfully, I still think about killing myself on a daily basis. I just don’t see much of a future for myself. I’m trying. I’m fighting it. But it’s hard.”  

For those who had gone full in on Galloway’s guilt, any acknowledgment that Galloway had suffered harm was a form of blasphemy. In response to Mason’s interview, the novelist Kevin Hardcastle, who has never had any personal interaction with Galloway, tweeted, “what a load of shit from this scheming, manipulative little man.” Even the theoretical possibility of Galloway’s innocence or any pain such allegations might cause— even his existence at all, remains an affront to those that married their own reputations to the presumption of his guilt. 

So how badly had Galloway’s reputation been harmed? Severely enough that Mr. Hardcastle, who is a mixed martial arts enthusiast trained in karate, Muay Thai and boxing, was threatening Galloway with violence simply for having talked to a journalist about the destruction of his life. Mr. Galloway is not a trained fighter and at the time was struggling with such acute PTSD that he was visibly infirm. He lost nearly thirty pounds and developed an uncontrollable tremor in his hands. At one point, his close friend David Chariandy, who gave witness testimony to Justice Boyd that was instrumental in Boyd dismissing the assault allegations, was so concerned for his physical well-being he brought him a carton of protein shakes. 

But in the eyes of his detractors Galloway was expendable, if not sub-human, and a mere mention of his name would elicit mockery, threats of violence and outrage, like that which was bottled up in Mr. Hardcastle. 

In the media and on social media Galloway would never be given the opportunity to rationally define the harm done to him, let alone address it. The Supreme Court of British Columbia is of course an entirely different forum, with the issue of “harm” being a central question argued in the Anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss his defamation suit. Over twelve days of oral submissions, as many as 18 lawyers participated and argued over the issue of Galloway’s harm and whether it is real, imaginary, nominal, severe, justified and/or actually his own fault.

Pleaded Harm In Galloway v. A.B.

Galloway’s Notice of Civil Claim pleads harm to his reputation, upset and emotional damage, as well as special damages including the destruction of his writing career. In his second Affidavit Galloway states the damages in more detail:

“The impact of the false statements upon me was immediate. Although I was not provided with the specifics, and before there was any process to respond and investigate the complaints, I was suspended from my position and the matter made national news headlines.”

“Up to that point I had been the author of four published novels, which included award­ winning and best-selling novels. I had also written a fifth novel, which was the first of three I was contracted to write for publication by Random House Canada. Since the time A.B. made her allegations, and the matter became national news and the subject of an avalanche of social media postings that contract was cancelled.”

Galloway’s Affidavit goes on to state that his average annual income for writing and speaking (not including his earnings at UBC) over the previous five years was $189,000 and following the false allegations it dropped to $15,000 in the first year and $12,000 in the second. His more recent fifth Affidavit states that despite the passage of time the impact continues to this day: he is still medicated for depression, cannot write and in 2019 earned roughly $30,000 from manual labour including a job cleaning swimming pools and public water features. 

Response To Claims of Harm

A.B.’s counsel, Joanna Birenbaum, told the Court there was “scant evidence of any actual harm to Mr. Galloway flowing from the two expressions attributed to A.B.” and that Galloway had “failed to adduce any evidence of his harms despite repeated requests for documentary substantiation by the defendants.” Contrary to this statement, in a hearing made before Chief Justice Hinckson on Feb 5, 2021, counsel for A.B. made a number of requests to the court for documentation. Chief Justice Hinckson ruled that this request was a “deeper dive” that contemplated in PPPA law, and dismissed this request. In essence, he ruled that Galloway’s testimony of harm was entirely sufficient for the purposes of the hearing at bar.

Regardless, Ms. Birenbaum was firmly opposed to the assertion that Galloway’s pleaded harms could be attributed to A.B.’s allegations of rape. From Ms. Birenbaum’s cross-examination of Galloway: 

Question: Okay. I'm going to come back to the harms that you claim against A.B. which is that –

Answer: Madam -- counsellor, please, with due respect, this is my life. Please don't laugh when describing the harms. That's just really not fair.

Question: Caused by A.B. I'm going to put to you, Mr. Galloway -- and I was not laughing. 

Answer: You were.

Question: I said that I'm coming back to the question relating to the harms caused or you state caused by A.B. And I'm going to put it to you, Mr. Galloway, that A.B.'s report in November of 2015 did not result in you losing a book contract. There may have been all kinds of intervening events, with UBC issuing press releases and now what you've described as an ideological public discussion, but A.B. is not responsible for those harms. I'm asking you to acknowledge that.

Answer: A.B. is absolutely responsible for those harms. None of what you've just described would have happened if A.B. hadn't made a false report of sexual assault and encouraged dissemination of that report beyond a confidential reporting process. None of that would have happened.

Question: Right.

Answer: I did not accuse myself of rape falsely.

Tim Dickson, counsel for the defendants Glynnis Kirchmeier and Mandi Gray, told the Court that his clients were only “tangential parties in respect of the plaintiff,” that no harm to Galloway specifically arose from their tweets. Mr. Dickson also told the Court that the claim against his clients does not have a high chance of success, and any remedy would be of extremely limited value even if the claims were to succeed. 

Like nearly all the defendants, Mr. Dickson claimed there was no causal relation between his clients’ tweets and any damage to Galloway. From the cross-examination of Galloway by another of Mandi Gray’s counsel, Aria Laskin:

Question: You speak about receiving death threats and hate mail. None of those death threats or hate mail specifically mentioned Ms. Gray's tweets?

Answer: I have received a lot of death threats and hate mail over my life, and none of them have come with footnotes, so no.

Based on this answer, Mr. Dickson told the Court that “on cross-examination the plaintiff admitted that none of the death threats he received mentioned the tweets” so therefore the harm was not attributable to his clients. 

The defendant applicants were equally dismissive of any pleaded harm to Galloway’s literary career and the suggestion that they may have played any role in the cancellation of his three-book deal with Penguin Random House. In cross-examination Ms. Laskin pitched the theory that Galloway’s literary career was not destroyed by a false accusation of rape but rather by his own ineptness and apathy in governing his literary career. After asking Galloway if his agent had pitched any novels to publishers, and being told that his agent had advised that was not feasible, Laskin continued to press the issue::

Question: Have you contacted any other agents to see if they would be interested in working with you?

Answer: No. I -- my agent is my agent. He's been my agent for 20 years. He'll be my agent until the day I stop. If his -- he's one of the best agents in the world. If he says something about the state of the industry, it's true.

Question: You have not filed any evidence to show any steps that your agent took to convince publishers otherwise?

Answer: Are we operating in a different universe, where publishers are clamoring to publish people who have been accused of rape?

In the same cross-examination Galloway was again questioned on a definitive link to Gray and Kirchmeier’s expressions and Galloway’s cancelled book contracts.

Question: Your agent didn't tell you that the stain was caused by Ms. Gray's tweets?

Answer: My agent does not know who Mandi Gray is.

In another cross-examination, responding to a similar question, Galloway also stated:

Answer: My agent has no idea who Ms. Kirchmeier is

Mr. Dickson told the Court that Galloway agrees that he has no direct evidence that suggests that Gray and Kirchmeier contributed to his harms, including loss of his publishing contract, citing most significantly the fact that Galloway admitted that his agent has no idea who Gray and Kirchmeier were and that neither the “sexual assault” allegations nor his client’s tweets were specifically named in the official letter cancelling his contract with Random House. 

However, in preparation for this article I came across a tweet by Mandi Gray in which she wrote:

This, in turn, led me to a Facebook post calling for a boycott of all Random House Canada books and authors in retaliation for a Penguin Random House Canada tweeting support of Galloway. The post was published on the Facebook page of the UBC Chapter of an organization called Silence is Violence which was co-founded by Ms. Gray. At the time the UBC SIV Facebook page was largely used to promote media coverage of Ms. Gray and Ms. Kirchmeier, as well as to publish an open letter penned by Ms. Kirchmeier and a crowdfunding initiative whose funds were paid out to Ms. Kirchmeier, Ms. Gray and A.B..

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This post and Gray’s tweet above were not entered into evidence so they are not currently before Madam Justice Adair but both can be presented at trial if their motion to dismiss is denied. 

The UBC SIV Facebook post dated November 20th, 2015 reads:  

UBC SIV is calling for a temporary boycott of Penguin Random House Canada over their uninformed defense of author and suspended professor Steven Galloway.

The post then infers Galloway’s guilt: 

The hasty and unequivocal defense of Prof. Galloway is traumatizing to people who have reported men with power and a relative amount of fame. These people are often not believed because the men they report are likeable. Is it really so hard to believe that charismatic men with authority and power, e.g. Jian Ghomeshi and Bill Cosby, would abuse that power?

And finally, the post gives instructions for a coordinated boycott of Random House Canada using the hashtag #stevengalloway:

Tweet @RandomHouseCA and let them know what their hasty support of Galloway before any of the facts of the "serious allegations" are known is traumatic and potentially silencing. Also, of course let them know why you won't be buying anything from them for the foreseeable future. Use #stevengalloway #boycottrandomhouseca #thatsnothelping #ubcsiv #sivcanada to move the conversation forward.

Two days later Ms. Gray again tagged Random House Canada on Twitter with the following:

Then three days after that, on November 25th, 2015, Ms. Gray made it openly clear on Twitter that she had a political agenda:

Ms. Gray’s declared “master plan” is another potential indicator of malice, made all the more troubling when coupled with her and Ms. Kirchmeier’s admission under cross-examination that they did not in any way vet the allegations against Galloway. From Mr. Burnett’s cross-examination of Ms. Kirchmeier:

Question: …and in none of the conversations that you had with anybody else did you have any knowledge about any sort of particulars, when or where or what happened in any alleged rape; right?

Answer: I knew it was when she was a student. And I knew that she had graduated November 2015. So sometime before that. …

Question: And you certainly didn't communicate with Mr. Galloway about his side of the story?

Answer: How would I do that?

Question: Well, did you even try? 

Answer: No.

Question: And you're telling me and you're telling the court that you can't think of a single way you could have tried?

Answer: I just saw no reason to do so.

Ms. Gray likewise told Mr. Burnett that she did not make any attempt to ascertain or verify the details of the allegations other than considering “more subtle evidence” such as A.B.’s “state of being.” Ms. Gray also said that she didn’t think it was necessary to contact Mr. Galloway.

Ms. Gray’s third counsel, Mx. Laura Edwards also showed a lack of knowledge of the actual allegations against Galloway. I have filed three Affidavits in this case, primarily consisting of screenshots of the defamations at hand. In my cross-examination by Mx. Edwards they wanted to know which accusation dismissed in The Boyd Report lead me to form the conclusion that A.B. is a liar. The cross examination is as follows:

Question: Which accusation?

Answer: Which one?

Question: M-hm.

Answer: In particular, the Belafonte.

Question: Pardon me?

Answer: The Belafonte.

Mx Edwards paused.

Question: Was that one of the instances of sexual assault or sexual harassment?

The Belafonte is the name of Galloway’s former boat and it is the location in which A.B. claims she was choked and assaulted. I explained to Mx. Edwards that the Belafonte was the location of the alleged assault and that Madam Justice Boyd was unable to find, on a balance of probabilities, “that the violent event described by MC occurred in March of 2011 or at all.”

So the first time Mx. Edwards heard even the most basic detail of A.B.’s allegation was during their cross-examination of me in an effort to prove that I was a biased witness who instinctively dismissed A.B.’s allegations. What became clear is that neither Ms. Gray nor her counsel even cared what the allegations were. Their next question was as follows:  

Question: Would you agree with me that you don't believe anyone that claims they have been sexually assaulted -- or you don't believe anyone who claims they have been sexually assault until their assaulter is convicted?

Answer: No.  That's not what I'm saying.  Everyone is free to believe what they want….There's one thing about believing something if -- in something, and there's another about actually stating it on Twitter in a reckless manner.

In his oral submissions Mr. Dickson told the court that there was no proof that Ms. Kirchmeier’s tweets were guided by malice because, “Mr. Burnett did not even cross-examine her on her evidence of an absence of malice.” Ms. Birenbaum made the same argument stating that “A.B. wasn't even asked about a motive to lie in cross -- two cross-examinations.”

In Mr. Burnett’s Supplemental Outline of Argument he writes, “Some defendants have argued that they have deposed they had no malice and weren’t cross-examined on that. In fact they were, although the art of cross-examination is often one of not announcing to a witness what point is being established.” 

In her oral submissions Ms. Birenbaum also denied that there was any causality between A.B.’s rape allegations and the cancellation of Galloway’s book contract because the cancellation occurred in February 2017 which was “long after A.B.'s report and more importantly after the plaintiff's public termination from UBC and the UBC Accountable letter,” which she claimed was the real cause of harm to Mr. Galloway. As she told the Court: 

A.B. is not responsible for the fact that it was the plaintiff himself and his supporters who first disclosed to the public that the investigation involved reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

This assertion by Ms. Birenbaum is demonstrably false. Although Ms. Birenbaum is not acting for Ms. Gray in Galloway v. A.B., she did act for Ms. Gray in 2015 and in Ms. Gray’s assertion mentored her at the time:

Ms. Gray linked Galloway to sexual assault allegations on social media from before UBC even announced Galloway’s suspension. On November 20th 2015, the same day as UBC-SIV called for the Random House boycott, Ms. Gray suggested on Twitter that Galloway might be featured in the CBC’s documentary about Campus Sexual Assaults, which featured both Ms. Kirchmeier and Ms. Gray. 

This tweet by Ms. Gray of course predates the UBC Accountable Letter by over a year. From my screenshot archive and examining remaining tweets, it appears that Ms. Gray was indeed the first person to publicly associate Mr. Galloway with allegations of sexual assault. 

An interesting side note on this tweet is that this is the documentary produced by Ronna Syed, the CBC journalist that A.B. copied on her formal letter of complaint to UBC President Martha Piper (which only came out after she swore under oath that she had never discussed her allegations with Syed and unsuccessfully fought disclosure of this email all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada) and the same documentary that was at the centre of A.B.’s false claim of having had “CBC lawyers” vet her story, a false claim Lyon and Maillard presented to UBC Creative Writing Program faculty as evidence of Galloway’s guilt. A.B. now contends that while she did tell Syed of her allegations, she wasn’t doing so in Syed’s context as a journalist, but as a friend who she turned to for support. This tweet from Gray makes this already dubious claim seem all the more questionable.

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In regard to the destruction of his academic career as a tenured Professor of Creative Writing, the defendants argued that they were not responsible for any harm to Galloway since Galloway could not distinguish the harm to his career that came from being accused of rape from the reputational harm of him being accused of sexual harassment. Ms. Birenbaum stated it as follows: 

The plaintiff has made no effort to unscramble the multiple harms from UBC's investigation and public statements for which he was compensated from the harms that he says were caused by A.B. Instead the plaintiff lashes out and blames his victim.

Remember, A.B. is not advancing a defense of truth/justification in this hearing, but is still asking the court to operate as though Galloway is, in fact, a rapist. 

The defendants leaned heavily on the finding of Mary Ellen Boyd that Galloway had sexually harassed A.B. within the meaning of UBC’s Policy 3 and UBC's Statement on Respectful Conduct, as well as subsequent findings by UBC that they bundled together in what they called “breach of trust.” The defendants also alleged that Galloway distorted the public view by not disclosing Boyd’s findings, but Mr. Burnett argues that Galloway had no duty to put the findings into public view, particularly since he is prepared to prove them untrue and knew they would just be more fodder for the defendants to seize on in order to publicly vilify him. 

Given that Boyd’s finding of harassment relied entirely on her acceptance of A.B.’s credibility, and given that Boyd did not have access to the information which is now on record regarding A.B.’s willingness to “pull any lever” necessary to make people believe her story, it is at best an open question of whether a reasonable person can rely on that finding. Burnett has stated repeatedly that Galloway is prepared to prove these allegations are also false if necessary, but that the sole matter being sued over is allegations of sexual assault, assault, and rape.

This is indeed the approach the defendants took in Court. Counsel for Calgarian actress Arielle Rombough, Sarah Ivany, argued that her client’s statement that Galloway was fired from UBC for sexual assault (verifiably untrue) didn’t cause Mr. Galloway any discernable harm since Galloway’s alleged workplace conduct (in dispute) would have ruined his career as a writer in the same way as being publicly vilified as a rapist. Ms. Ivany told the court that universities or writers festivals wouldn’t invite him to speak or teach either way and likewise as a writer, even with just the harassment finding, he wouldn’t have maintained the respect and loyalty of his reading audience.

All of the defendant applicants leaned on some form of vilification of Galloway to justify why they called him a rapist or sexual assaulter, or argued that his reputation and conduct was so vile that calling him a rapist or sexual assaulter would cause no further discernable harm. Again Mr. Dickson told the court that it was not based in reality to think that the damage to Galloway’s reputation was limited to him being accused of sexual assault. 

Counsel for the defendant Brit Bachman told the Court that any harm Galloway suffered to his reputation as the result of her client’s expressions were “at most incremental and insignificant” while counsel for Dr. Kosman called the potential harm to Galloway “minimal to the point of non-existence, and Sara Whitmore, counsel for Chelsea Rooney, told the Court that “the plaintiff has suffered minimal or nominal damages.”

Ms. Whitmore also made a quite remarkable submission to the Court in which she suggested that a 2016 public statement in which Galloway’s lawyer confirmed that the Boyd Investigation did not find that Galloway had committed sexual assault was indeed proof that “any person could hold the opinion that may or may not be an inference from Ms. Rooney's tweet that UBC terminated him for sexual assault.” 

In case the spectacular nature of Ms. Whitmore’s submission is at all obscured by imperious language let me rephrase it in blunt prose: She suggested to the Court that the fact Galloway felt compelled to publicly deny that he is a rapist is in fact proof positive that a reasonable person would Tweet that he is a rapist, while simultaneously suggesting that may or may not be what Rooney was doing.

Ms. Whitmore went on to tell the Court that there was “absolutely no harm” from Ms. Rooney’s tweets calling Galloway a rapist because they were published after UBC had already destroyed Galloway’s reputation. Counsel for Alicia Elliot also argued that the damage was done and that her tweets were likely drowned out by the vast amount of online discourse and “cannot be said to have harmed the plaintiff in any material way, if at all.” Counsel for Keith Maillard and Annabelle Lyon also told the Court “we respectfully submit that there is no harm directly caused.” 

Multiple defendants also claimed that the case should be dismissed because of the small reach of their twitter followers or because Galloway could not separate the damage out amongst all the defendants. As Ms. Whitmore told the Court:

“The harm that's alleged is the same harm that's alleged in respect of all defendants. Mr. Galloway alleges the harm -- the harm he alleges to have suffered are alleged to have been suffered uniformly. He doesn't distinguish between Ms. Rooney or A.B. or the professors. He makes blanket allegations of harm against all defendants.”

This argument cuts to the heart of social media mobbing. The implication of this argument being accepted in a SLAPP motion to dismiss is that it would in effect make social media mobbing legal while marking targets of collective online aggression as expendable. From Mr. Burnett’s Outline of Argument on PPPA Application: 

As to the argument by some defendants that they did not publish as many times or to as large an audience as others, it must be understood that a single publication painting someone as a rapist, posted for the entire world, is a grave matter. The attitude that a person should be able to fling such an accusation with impunity needs to be set straight.

Such an attitude evidences an attitude that the plaintiff is acceptable roadkill. It treats him and his reputation as expendable. The attitude that “just” one person’s involvement is not significant ignores the dynamic of a mob and the collective effect of many punches. The law of defamation rejects all these attitudes.

For nine straight days the defendants repeatedly denied any acknowledgement of harm to Galloway’s life and career as a writer, aside from the times when they took the position that the harm was self-inflicted and therefore not stemming from any of the multiple times their clients called him a rapist or sexual assaulter. Even the suggestion that Galloway’s future prospects may be hampered by tweets calling him a rapist were dismissed as ludicrous with counsel for Dr. Kiera Anderson stating, “it defies logic to think that a prospective employer, after reading about the allegations in articles from major news outlets, would bother with seeing what individuals were saying about it on Twitter.” 

The harms the defendants did present to the Court were to themselves. Dr. Kosman’s counsel told the Court that her tweets calling Galloway a rapist caused no harm to Galloway but conversely, “the effects on Dr. Kosman arising from the plaintiff's claim is severe.” Ms. Elliot’s counsel also denied any harm to Galloway and instead told the Court that his lawsuit had harmed Ms. Elliott’s artistic freedom and ability to earn income as a freelance writer who regularly writes about sexual assault. Counsel for the Professors told the Court that A.B., the Professors, Rooney and others have already been severely attacked in the media, subjected to horrendous criticism. They have all claimed that Galloway has silenced them.

To this, Burnett replied:

“To the extent that some defendants have awaked to the reality that they should not publish a criminal accusation about a person they cannot prove – it is about time.”

He referenced Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto, a foundational defamation case, in which the Supreme Court of Canada stated:

“Certainly, defamatory statements are very tenuously related to the core values which underlie s. 2(b). [Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Freedom of Speech And Expression] They are inimical to the search for truth.  False and injurious statements cannot enhance self‑development.  Nor can it ever be said that they lead to healthy participation in the affairs of the community.  Indeed, they are detrimental to the advancement of these values and harmful to the interests of a free and democratic society.

The final harms to catalogue in these defamations are the ones that won’t be heard in Court. They include the end of decades long friendships among writers in Canada. The formulation of blacklists in Canadian literature. Calls for censorship. And now that we know that the allegations against Galloway were built on lies, there is also the very real damage done to those that believed those lies, and in some cases used to re-order the literary hierarchy so that the true believers held the only permissible views, and those who advocated for the basic principles of justice (and an accounting of the facts) were deemed heretics.

On April 17th, after I published details proving A.B.’s duplicity, the writer Jen Sookfong Lee tweeted a walk back: “I don't know but maybe that dude just got fired for being a dick.” So has the Canadian literary community been tearing itself to shreds because someone was “a dick?” And is it even true that Galloway was a dick or is it more likely that the facts show that he was a flawed but beloved teacher whose life was destroyed by some of his closest students and colleagues because they were lied to? 

In her Walrus article “CanLit Has a Sexual Harassment Problem,” Zoe Whittall presented Steven Galloway as the poster boy for sexual assault in Canada. But those allegations were built on lies. Are we now to downgrade the allegations to affirm that Galloway is a sexual harasser despite there being no evidence on record to prove that is true, and much that suggests it is not? Or is that finding by Boyd, devoid of context and openly in dispute by Galloway, simply a way to look away from the harm that has been caused? 

What now is our obligation to truth and what happens if we continue down a path where we completely disregard it? Ms. Whittall’s essay was retracted by The Walrus because it was so full of errors and mistruths that it needed to be completely re-written. But instead of acknowledging the errors, or admitting that it had caused any harm, Ms. Whittall and her supporters would shepherd in a number of conspiracy theories to hold themselves unaccountable for believing lies. 

The first conspiracy theory would be that her essay was taken down because of threats…

…and because, as MMA enthusiast Kevin Hardcastle put it, her article took “a bullet from some lawyers.”

None of these things are true. No lawyers were involved in the retraction or correction of Ms. Whittall’s article. Mr. Galloway contacted Walrus publisher Shelley Ambrose and politely told her that Whittall’s article was factually inaccurate. His email opens, “Thank you for calling me back so promptly, and for giving me a chance to articulate my concerns about Ms. Whittall’s article.”

Among the errors was Ms. Whittall’s claim that her visit to the 2016 Vancouver International Writers Festival taught her how the UBC Accountable Letter had splintered the Vancouver literary scene. The problem with her observations about the negative impact of UBC Accountable on the 2016 VIWF was that the VIWF happened in October— a month before the UBC Accountable letter was published. 

Galloway also objected to Ms. Whittall comparing him to Harvey Weinstein and repeatedly inferring that he was guilty of sexual assault and abusing women when in fact he had been falsely accused of rape. There is not a single threat and Galloway ends the email politely stating: 

There has to be a better and honest way to talk about sexual harassment, assault and #metoo. Thank you for considering my position regarding these issues and this article. 

Even still, the conspiracy theory morphed, as conspiracy theories are apt to do, into an allegation that the threats had come from Margaret Atwood’s lawyers whom numerous supporters of Whittall claimed were out to silence her from telling the truth.

Ms. Atwood promptly corrected the record: 

But even still we can always count on the purveyors of misinformation, Dorothy Palmer and Julie Rak to be at attention. Ten days later they were pushing the conspiracy theory that “Canada has a Silencing Problem.” 

A few days later Whittall herself debunked the Evil Atwood lawyer conspiracy theory. 

But remarkably she revived it this April as I began publishing the true facts of the Galloway case as made public by the anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss.

But then Ms. Whittall added details, making the conspiracy theory seem more credible.

The following week Ms. Atwood shared the Truth And Consequences post Truth, Lies and Levers of Power, which uses court documents to show how A.B. fabricated claims that CBC vetted her rape story, and threatened faculty at UBC Creative Writing to take action against Galloway with allegations that do not survive the most basic scrutiny. In response to Ms. Atwood’s tweet Ms. Whittall called this newsletter a “MRA (Men’s Rights Activist) conspiracy blog.”

The accusation that facts are conspiracy theories is of course another conspiracy theory in itself. It’s also another form of harm that these defamations have caused. CanLit does not have a “silencing problem,” CanLit has a truth problem. Writers in The New CanLit consider themselves beyond intellectual and moral reproach, but they enthusiastically embrace conspiracy theories about Margaret Atwood’s puppet master control over Canadian literature that are a near carbon copy of the Alt-Right’s QAnon conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s “control” over American society. After The Walrus fact checked and republished Whittall’s article based on the true facts, Dorothy Palmer declared that the facts were wrong and proof that the magazine was now under the QAnon-like influence of UBC Accountable. 

But the most interesting UBC Accountable conspiracy theory involves the primary complaint that Galloway made to Ms. Ambrose, which is that in her original article Ms. Whittall included a fantastically fabricated event involving the 2016 VIWF. Now deleted from the current version of her article, the event was described in the original as follows: 

While I working (sic) on a deadline one night during the festival, I missed Galloway enter the writer hospitality room—people reportedly burst into applause. What made his actions at all applause worthy? Why was he being heralded as a hero? More than a year later, I keep speaking out—even though it might make me look at a bit obsessed.

I’ve confirmed from multiple independent sources including but not limited to Mr. Galloway that this unequivocally never occurred. Ms. Whittall’s assertion that she “reported a much-circulated story by many witnesses that the room burst into applause” is a fabrication. She cannot possibly have talked to a single witness let alone “many witnesses” because the event didn’t happen. It is a conspiracy theory and what makes it a terribly interesting one is that it is nearly identical to the foundational Alt-Right QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy theory which posits that America’s “elites,” from liberal Hollywood actors to Democratic Politicians, belong to a cabal of immoral sex fiend pedophiles who secretly control the country while running a global sex trafficking ring. 

In Whittall’s version, powerful Canadian writers (already we’re into fantasy land) led by Margaret Atwood, secretly control the writing community and do so to promote rape, defend rape-loving rapists and congratulate writers who rape their students by bursting into applause when they walk into a hospitality suite. There’s nothing about this conspiracy theory that survives any realistic scrutiny. It requires a person to believe an absurd set of propositions unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. On one hand you have documents entered in the BC Supreme Court registry, sworn statements, transcripts, and verifiable first-hand accounts, and on the other hand you have a drunk Walrus employee whose name Ms. Whittall can’t recall.

If in fact I have been duped, and it turns out that Margaret Atwood spent the last 60 years establishing herself as a feminist icon, writing foundational works of feminist literature that challenged the patriarchy, totalitarianism, fascism, and groupthink, all as a cover for her true goal of establishing a CanLit power structure devoted to the proliferation of rape, then the only thing I can say is that I will gladly admit I was wrong and apologize to Ms. Whittall and others who somehow saw through her ruse. 

If the rise of the “new CanLit,” has taught us anything, it is that CanLit was not oppressive so much as fragile and that the writers who believed A.B.’s lies were able to use them as a springboard to stratify the literary community into those who “believe survivors” and those who are members of the pro-rape QAnon-like writer’s cabal that secretly controls Canadian Literature. CanLit has crumbled under the illiberal trends of the new CanLit,  which have brought us literary boycotts, blacklists, censorship campaigns and a fanatical doctrine that deems writers with contrary views as heretics who must be banished. 

Canadian writers are not pro-rape, nor would it seem is Steven Galloway. You can explore this possibility by doing what so many have refused to do: talking to him. As well as there being no proof that Galloway raped A.B., there is nothing on record to suggest Galloway’s testimony is anything other than credible and sincere (unlike A.B. who under oath has admitted to lying) so in the very least his testimony deserves to be heard and weighed, no matter how inconvenient that process is to his detractors. His stated views on sexual assault are articulate and so definitive that they are in fact dangerous to those who need to affirm their own positions by believing that he is not only a rapist but also a rape-loving proponent of rape. Ms. Birenbaum exhibited this reluctance to hear his views in her attempt to have him not state them under cross-examination:

Ms. Birenbaum: You make a point of saying that A.B.'s allegations of sexual assault were false and that she was very sexually forward with you. And I'm just trying to understand the inclusion of those words. So is it your position that a woman who is sexually forward is consenting to sex?

Mr. Galloway: I'm sorry, is that a serious question?

Ms. Birenbaum: Well, it is. You wrote this -- did you write this Affidavit, or did someone write it for you and you approved it?

Mr. Galloway: I believe my counsel and I wrote it together.

Ms. Birenbaum: Okay.

Mr. Galloway: Your question is based on a false premise. I am in no way, shape or form, nor would I ever in any way, shape or form, say that whether a woman is sexually forward or sexually conservative or, you know, wearing full body armour or naked or anything a woman does other than give enthusiastic and ongoing consent, to use the university's terminology, deserve to be physically sexually assaulted. And I have never stated that, and I never would. This particular statement is in direct response to A.B.'s false and ongoing assertions that she was an unwilling participant in our relationship, that --

Ms. Birenbaum: So are you answering the question of what --

Mr. Galloway: Yes.

Ms. Birenbaum: -- the relevance is of the fact that she was supposedly sexually forward?

Mr. Burnett: Yes, he is. Let him –

Mr. Galloway: Yes, I am. Because she has asserted consistently that she was rejecting me and did not want it. And she says, I repeatedly said no, and all this kind of stuff, none of which --

Ms. Birenbaum: We've already covered -- Mr. Galloway, we've already covered --

Mr. Burnett: He's got to finish the question.

Ms. Birenbaum: -- that the investigator --

Mr. Burnett: Ms. Birenbaum, he's going to finish his answer.

Ms. Birenbaum: Sorry, Mr. Galloway, can you tell me what question you're answering?

Mr. Galloway: Your question about why I would include the phrase that she was very sexually forward to me from the time we met and was an equal and voluntary participant in our affair.

Ms. Birenbaum: Okay.

Mr. Burnett: Complete your answer, please, Mr. Galloway.

Ms. Birenbaum: And so that's why you raised in this examination the fact that A.B. posted on a private Facebook posting that she was in a bikini? Is that part of -- part of what you think is relevant to your answer?

Mr. Galloway: No.

Ms. Birenbaum: Okay.

Mr. Galloway: Ms. Birenbaum, you're attempting to create an inference that I'm engaged in what I believe is colloquially known as "slut shaming." And I want to make it absolutely clear I am not doing that, and I have never been doing that. I will say as an operative principle, A.B.'s general attitudes and demeanour towards sex, her manner of dress and any of that is completely irrelevant –

Ms. Birenbaum: Okay. Good.

Mr. Galloway: -- to whether or not I physically assaulted her or she deserved to be physically assaulted or any of that. What I am saying and what I have consistently said is that in her representations in this lawsuit and to Justice Boyd, she presented an image of herself and our relationship which is entirely false.

Mr. Galloway’s actual views are as inconvenient to Ms. Birenbaum’s arguments as they are to Ms. Whittall’s conspiracy theories. But make no mistake that this too is one of the great harms that was borne of A.B.’s lies. Ms. Whittall didn’t deserve to be harmed any more than the rest of us. 

While I didn’t know Steven Galloway in any meaningful way until recently, I have come to know him now. What I find interesting is that while he is clearly the person most harmed by A.B.’s lies, he has a clear path to healing that is not only rooted in the truth but in an absolute dedication to ensuring the truth comes to light. He does not hold out any hope that he will return to writing, and believes that whatever happens in this case there is no future for him as a writer, and he seems at peace with that. What he wants is for the truth to be known, and to help undo some of the damage that has been done in his name, to a community he once believed in. 

Conversely, the more superficially harmed people who supported A.B.’s lies seem to be pushing further and further away from reality to the point where I wonder if eventually they will carry the lasting harm. 

Of all the people who attacked Galloway online, I only know of one person so far who has come forward to correct the record and make amends. His name is Veldon Coburn and since getting to know him over the last year, I can say that he is one of the most principled, decent and courageous people I know. He possesses an all too rare form of courage, the courage to admit he was wrong on a matter of grave importance. 

And just like that he too has a path to relieving himself from the harms A.B.’s lies have caused those who believed them.

It really is that simple. In this case it is true and beyond cliché that ‘the truth will set you free’ - while those that attune their minds to the illogic of conspiracy theories are building their own prison. By wilfully looking away from the truth, they will become prisoners of their own conscience, existing in opposition to reality and living a life unmoored, adrift in the purgatory of reason. 

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Dear Readers, thank you again for all your support and to all who wrote to me after the last post, Mentoring Towards Malice. It’s always wonderful receiving your notes and I’m heartened by a common sentiment that people are yearning to build back what we once had, which is to say a literary community that we can be proud to belong to. There’s still a lot of work to do but I’m particularly thankful for those that understand that this newsletter is, in part, an effort to help get us back there.

I’m currently at work on another substantive post that I will publish shortly. In the meantime, I’d like to answer a question that a number of you have asked: when do we expect a decision on the SLAPP motion to dismiss?

Before I answer that, I’d also like to offer to answer any further questions you may have. If you have any specific questions about the Galloway case then please email them to me at truthandconsequences@substack.com by this Monday June 21st at noon and I will put together a post answering your questions as best I can. Unless you specifically ask me to include your name I will publish the questions anonymously.

Priority will be given to paid subscribers.

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Now back to the most common question I’ve received so far: when can we expect a decision?

The answer unfortunately is that we do not know and we need to be prepared to be (very) patient. This is a complicated case, with eleven applicants and involving relatively new legislation (although many precedents have already been set in Ontario where anti-SLAPP legislation was introduced in 2015). The courts are also backlogged due to COVID which could mean that the wait time is longer than normal, which would likely be 60-90 days. As well, sometimes even the hardest-working judges take holidays in July and August. Having said that, Madam Justice Adair also acted as a case management judge on this case and she’s of course well aware of the delays to date, due to various applications and appeals.

This could mean she will prioritize this decision and we may hear back sooner but there really is no way to know how any of the unusual factors of the case (and the current state of the courts) will effect the timing of her decision. My best guess is that Madam Justice Adair will prioritize writing her decision and get it out as soon as she reasonably can, juggling what is no doubt a full judicial calendar in interesting times.

In the meantime I’ll keep posting updates about the hearing and will let you know the moment a decision is forthcoming.

Keep an eye on your inbox for the next post and please do send any questions if you have them.

All the best,

Brad