In memory of our shortlived offices in downtown Saskatoon

Richard Klassen, March, 2002

One year ago, Richard took an office in downtown Saskatoon so he could be closer to the action and get some consulting work.

Dueck and his lawyer hired a private eye to come round and play some dirty tricks. The aim of this espionage operation was to establish that he had broken the Rules of Court by making public files he obtained through the discovery process in the $10M lawsuit.

Complete with doctored audiotape and affidavits, Dueck through his lawyer, summoned him to court on June 27. They lost. As Richard was to discover later, the dirty tricks were also coming from within his own camp.

Throughout this time the website maintained an arms-length distance from the lawsuit. The office closed at the end of the summer -- Clearly Richard Klassen was not going to be able to make a living giving reasonably priced advice when there were so many greedy lawyers out there wanting to charge big bucks. One of these was Geoff Dufour, who got a nice slice of a a lawsuit he settled for John Popowich.

At the time the office opened, I wrote the following expression of our dreams of an injusticebusters' café. Dreams may be sabotaged but they do not die. It is now part of my blog.

Saskatoon City beat -- observations, opinions and an appeal

Of course from time to time we fly by with our intention to open the injusticebusters.com internet cafe. We still have absolutely no idea of how we are going to do this because we have no money. We have extremely detailed and positive ideas about how we would do this if we had some backers. Two and a half years ago we looked seriously at a perfect property. It has now been bought and turned into an internet café. Unfortunately most of the people who would most benefit from the service don't have the money to cover the cost of a latté plus a half hour online. The other internet café is crowded and also pricey.

The land between Toys'R'Us and the Provincial Courthouse has been sitting empty for almost two years. Deals have fallen through. It has been very convenient to blame this on "the economy". That may indeed be the case. Restoring the administration of justice would perhaps make Saskatoon a more hospitable place for money to move to. Stats Canada has now released census stats putting Saskatchewan at a population loss and Saskatoon ust holding its own.

As the City puts out PR that council is dealing with the city's problems -- we see what the PR says and what is actually happening. Regarding the Police, we have now had several useless judicial reviews where the right questions did not get asked, the right people did not get asked them and the outcome was that nobody did anything wrong. Last year we had a City employee fired because he had been doing tests for a business he co-owns with ex-Mayor Henry Dayday on city lab equipment.

The media is really chickenshit on all of this. We get TV, newspaper and radio reports about the new police chief's patronizing a server at the Saskatoon Club by touching her hair and calling it pretty, then assurances all round from complaints investigator Gary Treble and the police PR people that "the chief did nothing wrong" and "the media is to blame."

The media may be to blame but certainly not for criticizing the police! The entire administrtion of the city has received an extremely soft ride from them as we have sunken to the point of being called to the attention of Amnesty International.

Downtown Saskatoon is a disgrace. It is a parking trap. Some vacant properties are in terrible condition. The drug problems with its attendant crime make walking down the street scary -- there are a lot of young people with time on their hands and not much in their minds but anger.

Has anyone put together the contrast between the wealth of the Saskatoon Board of Education and the terrible job it has done to delivering education to what now amounts to a whole generation of Saskatoon young people? Has anyone caught on to the fact that kicking kids out of school because they have been late or absent doesn't work? That discouraging experimentation and independent thought with "just say no" programs and letting crimestoppers programs -- and coca cola -- makes many young people dull and mean?

Jeremy Gardiner, who bludgeoned Scott Asher to death because he thought he was gay has received more lenient treatment from the Parole Board than many kids from impoverished homes who try to go to school and mess up somehow receive from the principal when they mess up.

We want out injusticebusters' cafe to be a place where young people can drop in and get a soda or a cup of coffee that doesn't cost $2.50 and where they are allowed to hang out, surf the net, build a website if they like, show off their talent. We want to talk to some of the young people who have run up against the harsh justice system and don't know what to do.

We want to break the cycle of Legal Aid and tired crowns getting together to push yet another generation through the criminal-making justice system.

Those who are forced to be on welfare should be provided with enough money to get themselves on their feet instead of running from the welfare office to the pawnshops to bail out their stuff at the beginning of each month so they can take it in again two weeks later.

We want to create a warm and safe place for young and old to get together and make plans for a future, believing they have one.

Anyone want to help? We care about this city too much to let it deteriorate any further. It needs a heavy dose of truth, the most effective medicine for the underlying malaise.

--Sheila Steele, March 12, 2002