Freedom of expression

RCMP investigate cartoonist for 30-year-old comedy comic-book!

The exciting (?) saga of the scandal that shocked a household!

By TLB
Posted July 23, 2026

[This article is today’s Production Journal entry for the Minor Mogul Movies project High Stakes.]

Anyone who visited the Minor Mogul website or the High Stakes movie website in April of this year would have seen this ad on both websites’ home page:

You can still sign up for the newsletter, and we hope you will. Minor Mogul gets to boast about the circulation numbers, and you can read (or ignore) updates about Minor Mogul projects, plus exclusive “Inside People” peeks, articles about independent and micro-budget movies and movie-making, reviews of mainstream and independent movies, quizzes and contests for movie lovers, and resources for movie-makers and movie-watchers.

If you’d rather not subscribe, you can download the comic as a PDF file to read on your screen or to print and staple your own comic book. You can also download the sequel, which alas isn’t as funny but hopefully is still amusing. And you can buy a copy of the collected Canada Day in the shop.

I wrote and drew these stories in 1994 and 1995, and gave away photocopies of them. In the intervening 30 years I have occasionally printed out and given away copies, sometimes with minor revisions, usually around Canada Day (which is when the stories take place). In those three decades, I have been flattered to receive a handful of positive comments from readers who found the stories funny; I received no negative reactions at all until two uniformed RCMP officers showed up at my front door less than a month ago.

*   *   *

On April 20, 2026 I celebrated Four-Twenty Day by printing out some copies of Friday Night and heading downtown to hand them out to people.

I had hoped that there would be some sort of gathering akin to Vancouver’s or other cities’ 4 / 20 Day events, but apparently my town doesn’t do that sort of thing. I guess the urgency has sort of worn off since Canada legalized Weed; even in Vancouver, what was a protest ten years ago is now more of a celebration.

So I just walked around downtown, offering the comic book to passers-by — “Free comic-book for Four-Twenty Day?” As I expected, most people declined. But some people kindly accepted a copy, and I hope it made them laugh. I am grateful that one local shop took half a dozen copies to give away to their customers.

All told, I gave away 41 copies of Issue 1; six of those copies were accompanied by a copy of Issue 2. Why not more copies? I’m afraid the reason is quite prosaic: my printer ran out of toner, and I didn’t have a spare toner cartridge in stock.

One motivation I had for handing out these items this year was to encourage people to visit the official website of High Stakes, the comedy movie I am working on, and sign up for the email newsletter. Hence the back cover features an advertisement giving a short description of the project and the URL of the website. If you are an independent creator, your mailing list is your most-valuable marketing resource! These are people who have self-selected as being interested in your project; they are the people most likely to become your audience, and most likely to buy your work.

Part of the Minor Mogul mission is to share the facts and figures that are often closely-guarded, so I can reveal that, alas, this campaign was not successful; precisely zero people signed up for the e-newsletter. This was disappointing, but not unexpected. Some possible reasons for the lack of response:

• People who are interested in comics are not necessarily people who are interested in movies, and vice versa. Even if you enjoyed Friday Night the comic book, you might have no interest in High Stakes the movie.
• Friday Night has no relation to High Stakes other than the fact that some characters in each story enjoy Weed. Even the styles of humour are different.
• A hand-made mini-comic handed out on the street by a stranger is not a high-value item. Perhaps people who accepted a copy tossed it aside without ever reading it or encountering the advertisement.
• The ad for High Stakes was not compelling enough to convince people to visit the website.
• A good response rate for a promotion of this kind is one percent. By handing out fewer than 50 comics in total, I could expect a response rate of about 0.5 people.
• And of course, it’s possible that people didn’t like the comic, and felt no desire to check out further work from the same creator.

Oh well. As the famous quotation by Thomas Edison goes, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This release of these mini-comics was unsuccessful in gaining subscriptions to the e-newsletter. Good to know! I’ll try something else next time.

And then I pretty much forgot all about the comics again. Repackaging stuff I did three decades ago is only so entertaining, y’know? I hope some people had a laugh.

*   *   *

On the morning of Saturday, June 27 I was enjoying a late lie-in with my spouse. At 10:30 a.m. there was a knock at our door. I threw on a dressing-gown and answered the door to find RCMP Constable Taylor Callens and a colleague who remained unnamed throughout. (Consistent with this website’s practice of crediting people by initials, these individuals are hereinafter referred to respectively as CTC and UO2 (Uniformed Officer 2).)

I assume that they got my residential address from the local Canada Post outlet, where lives the post-office box that serves as the mailing address for Minor Mogul Media projects. Canada Post will turn over renters’ information to the police upon written request — no warrant or anything required.

CTC asked if I knew anything about a comic book he misidentified as Pro-Terrorist Comics (the title is Friday Night, as seen on the front cover and in the indicia on the inside back cover). I identified myself as the author of this comic book, because I am the author of this comic book, and am credited as the author of this comic book in this comic book; indeed (while I admit the occasional crudeness of the work’s execution) I am proud to be the author of this comic book. It was fun to do thirty years ago.

I now realize that my conduct here was a mistake. I should have said, “I have no statements to make, and I will answer no questions, until I have consulted a lawyer,” and then shut up.

CTC informed me that I was not under arrest, but I was under investigation, and that he was recording me on his body-cam. And here is where I made my second mistake. I should have said, “I have no statements to make, and I will answer no questions, until I have consulted a lawyer,” and then shut up.

Instead, CTC and I had a reasonably civil and polite conversation — marred only by the fact that he repeatedly implied I was some sort of terrorist or terrorist-supporter and guilty of unspecified crimes, rather than an artist exercising my Section 2(b) Charter rights to make people laugh. He did not seem to understand the meaning of the words “satire”, “parody”, “lampoon”, or “black comedy”. He seemed especially frightened by the comic’s tagline “Pro-terrorist comix”. I was shocked that any reasonable person could take this as anything other than a joke, and blurted, “Surely the hyperbole is obvious?” I fear this may be an example of Poe’s Law.

CTC ended our conversation by asking me to accompany them to the police station for an interview. Here is where I made my third mistake. I should have said, “I have no statements to make, and I will answer no questions, until I have consulted a lawyer,” and then shut up. Instead, I was actually considering it. I didn’t want to spend too much time on this matter, so I asked him how long this would take; he said, “About half an hour to 45 minutes.”

At this point my spouse, who had been listening to the dialogue as she dressed, injected herself into the conversation to say (as I should have done) that we must consult a lawyer before any such interview. This proves that she is wiser than I am!

I asked CTC if he had a card or something with his contact information so that I could contact him to arrange an interview after I spoke with a lawyer, and he handed over his business card. Then he and UO2 departed. And that ended the encounter.

*   *   *

On Monday, June 29 I spoke (separately) with two criminal-defence attorneys who practice in my province, both of whom offered free 20-minute consultations (very good of them). They both said basically the same things. Some highlights that I recall:

• They were unequivocal (both said, “If you take nothing else from this conversation, take this,”): Never talk to the police without a lawyer. Never say anything at all except, “I want to speak with a lawyer.” It is very human to want to be helpful, to explain yourself, and the police count on this; resist this urge. Talking to the police can never help you; it can only hurt you.
• One lawyer urged us, “Don’t talk about this on the phone.” He didn’t explain on the phone, but I’m sure we’ve all read that cellphone-spying devices have been used by RCMP in our province for some time.
• If the police had wanted to arrest me, they would have arrested me. By the time they arrive at your front door, they have already decided whether or not to arrest you. The only reason the police want you to talk if they don’t arrest you is so you’ll give them a reason to arrest you. You can’t talk yourself out of being arrested, but you can easily and inadvertently talk yourself into being arrested. If they arrest you, you should say nothing at all except, “I want to speak with a lawyer.” If they don’t arrest you, you should still say nothing at all except, “I want to speak with a lawyer.”
• The police are legally allowed to lie to you and deceive you; they can and will. They will lead you to believe that you must co-operate with them, but this is not true. They will say that they “just want to hear your side of things,” but this is not true. No matter how they present themselves, they are not on your side. If you are under investigation, they will try to get you to say something incriminating — or, one lawyer said, “anything that they can spin as incriminating.” Say nothing at all except, “I want to speak with a lawyer.”
• I said to the lawyers that I had told CTC that I would be in touch about arranging an interview; I asked them whether I should contact him to let him know I was declining to be interviewed. Both lawyers said that I could if I wanted to, but that it was probably wiser to simply avoid all contact. They said that refusing to be interviewed could not be held against me in a legal proceeding. In any interaction with the police, say nothing at all except, “I want to speak with a lawyer.”
• One lawyer said that you don’t have to fear legal consequences from offending the police, because in a legal proceeding “nobody cares what the police think.” The police’s job is to gather evidence, not render opinions. On the other hand, some “know your rights” advocates suggest that it may not be wise to anger people who are trained in the use of violence. Your best course of action is to say nothing at all except, “I want to speak with a lawyer.”
• One lawyer said that, if I believe the police are harassing me, I do have recourse, and he can take the appropriate actions to address that.
• One lawyer said that his retainer is $3,000, and that’s what he thought this case would cost. Fortunately I have that money to spend on this matter if I must. But what if I didn’t? I’d be thrown into the legal system to fend for myself. Most Canadians can’t handle an unexpected bill of even $1,000. To his credit, this lawyer advised me not to hire him at this time, saying that he doubted this investigation would ever result in charges or a trial.
• Both lawyers said that they thought it unlikely that the police would return to question me further. (In this they were incorrect.)

Obtaining actual legal advice made me feel a bit better. So did doing a bit of research. I was, and am, prepared to stand on my “freedom of expression” rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and fight all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada if I have to. But I hope that I won’t have to. “Exercising your rights is more fun than fighting for them.”

*   *   *

On Friday, July 3, 2026 at 08:30 a.m., CTC and UO2 again knocked on my door. CTC said he was following up about the interview they wanted to conduct with me.

CTC said that they had tried to contact me at the phone number they had for me, but were unable to do so. I asked, “What phone number is this?” CTC said that he could not remember. He did not ask me to provide or confirm my phone number at this time, or at any time in either of our interactions. I can’t remember if I provided a phone number when I rented the post-office box.

I apologized for not calling, but said that I had advice from a lawyer and that on the basis of that advice I have no statements to make to the police.

CTC asked if I meant a real lawyer, or “the Reddit post”. I replied, “Reddit post . . ?” I am of course familiar with Reddit, and sometimes consult it on subjects that interest me; I have never in my life made any post, comment, upvote, downvote, or indeed any contribution of any kind to Reddit. I have seen people on Reddit self-identify as police officers; maybe CTC hangs out on Reddit himself, as is his right. So I am not surprised that he would be up to date on mentions of the police. But I suspect that CTC wanted me to feel that They had me under surveillance.

My spouse joined us to interject, “Two lawyers, actually.” I know that she always advocates consulting qualified professionals rather than strangers on the Internet whenever you’re dealing with matters of import. That is a good practice to follow!

We both confirmed to CTC that we would make no statements to the police. CTC accepted this, and said, “We’ll continue our investigation.” Good, I guess; that’s why we have police, is to investigate matters of concern. However, I don’t believe that in this case there is any matter of concern.

I have heard nothing further about this, so I assume that the matter is concluded. We shall see.

*   *   *

As always, we try to draw what lessons we can from the unfortunate events. These are, of course, geared to the Dominion of Canada generally and the Province of British Columbia specifically. Check the laws in your country.

1) Never talk to the cops

There is one very clear lesson from this matter: Never speak to the police, about any matter, under any circumstances, ever, unless you speak with a lawyer first.

Answer no questions. Make no statements. Volunteer no information. Resist the quite-human urge to help or to explain yourself. Say nothing at all except, “I want to speak with a lawyer.” Save anything you might have to say for the trial proceedings, and then speak only on the advice of your lawyer.

Whether you are innocent, guilty, a witness, or completely uninvolved, nothing you say to the police can ever help you; it can only hurt you. Request and demand a lawyer, and then shut up and say nothing at all, regardless of provocation.

(I mean, don’t be a bonehead absolutist. If a guy runs past you clutching a bloody knife, and a cop asks you, “Which way did he go?” by all means point the way. We can’t have people running around stabbing other people. But make no statement about events, not even as a witness, until you speak with a lawyer.)

When the cops come calling, what do you do? “Shut the fuck up!”

2) Know your rights

You can’t stand up for your rights if you don’t know what they are. Your first stop to learn about your legal rights in Canada is the Constitution — the highest law in the land.

Part I of the Constitution is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Government of Canada maintains a Guide to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You can learn more at the federal government’s website dedicated to explaining the Charter.

Particularly useful on this latter site is Charterpedia, which “provides legal information about the Charter and contains information about the purpose of each section of the Charter, the analysis or test developed through case law in respect of the section, and any particular considerations related to it.” As creators, we should pay special attention to our Section 2(b) rights to freedom of expression.

And know your rights if the authorities confront you. Buy or download and read The Arrest Handbook (2023) from the BC Civil Liberties Association to know what to expect and how to handle it. Check out a few of the helpful resources on the Web (see Sidebar for examples); Ms. Google’s search engine is your friend here.

3) Use your rights

Your rights are like your muscles: you strengthen them by exercising them. Conversely, if you don’t use them, they have a tendency to wither away.

So draw that comic book! Make that movie! Write that novel! Produce that unique work of art that only you can create; say the things that only you can say. You don’t have to be profound all the time; make people laugh, or scare them.

But don’t let fear have a chilling effect on your creativity, and cause you to second-guess or self-censor what you say. Know that the law is overwhelmingly on your side in almost all cases. If you think it’s important enough to say, say it loud! “Exercising your rights is more fun than fighting for them.”

(If CTC, UO2, or any spokesmodel for the RCMP would like to reply to this post, I will add it unedited below on this page.)