Saanich Police Arrest Frances Widdowson Under the Trespassing Act at UVic
conservative supporters and independent conservative media complain of two tier policing and decry what they see as an injustice done to Widdowson
On December 2nd, at the University of Victoria (UVic) the Saanich Police arrested Frances Widdowson under the Trespassing Act. You can see documents relating to the arrest here, on Widdowson’s website. OneBC supporters present at the time of the arrest noted that the University allowed the People’s Park UVic to occupy university property for 81 days before issuing a trespass notice. Well, to say allowed stretches the truth a little. Let’s review that history before proceeding.
People’s Park UVic did not seek permission from the University of Victoria (UVic) to set up its encampment. Pallywood activists set up the pro-Palestinian protest camp on May 1, 2024, on the university’s Quad1 without prior approval. This created an ongoing dispute over the legality of the encampment, and raised questions of trespassing. UVic’s issued 8 official statements during the encampment of the People’s Park UVic—they highlighted the fact that activist group responsible for People’s Park UVic ignored university policies regarding campus use, as well as the efforts of UVic administration to negotiate with the group. Negotiations broke down and UVic issued a trespass notice on July 21, 2024. People’s Park UVic activist-occupiers vacated voluntarily the next day amid escalated security measures.
This encampment existed as part of a broader trend of similarly unauthorized encampments at universities across Canada, where anti-Israel organizers typically occupied university property in an effort to pressure administrations into agree to divest from Israel-linked investments. None of the anti-Israel encampment organisers applied for event permits from the campuses they sought to pressure through encampment occupation.
So, rather than concluding a conspiracy of “two tier policing” in the case of Frances Widdowson’s arrest, we could more accurately conclude that UVic learned from its experience with People’s Park UVic and that this experience influenced UVic’s decision to issue the trespass warning to Widdowson immediately. Do you see what UVic President and Chancellor Kevin Hall wrote in his statement?
“Universities are places where multiple perspectives and experiences are encouraged, and where robust intellectual exploration and respectful dialogue can, and should, take place.”
Ok, well, judging from the video footage from the December 2nd event shown on Xwitter, that’s not what I saw happening at UVic. Take a look.
We can identify the aggressive chap sporting the Land Back jacket as Logan Staats winner of Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards for 2025.
According to the Downie Wenjack website, “Staats has earned accolades including a Juno nomination, multiple Native American Music Awards, and SOCAN Indigenous Songwriter of the Year. Today, he divides his time between Six Nations and Nashville, preparing for a third album infused with southern country influences.” In 2023 Staats, together with his girlfriend Hannah Hall, pled guilty to criminal contempt. according to the Powell River Peak, the RCMP arrested the couple “…between November 18 and 19, 2021, at the Gidimt’en Checkpoint and Coyote Camp, [and the Crown] … charged [them] with criminal contempt for violating a court injunction received by Coastal GasLink to prevent protesters from trying to interfere with the pipeline’s construction.”
It’s unclear what Staats was doing at UVic on December 2, when he aggressive confronted independent journalist DrewCouver (see the video clip above), who accompanied Widdowson, Brodie, and McMurtry to UVic, where they planned to hold an unauthorised public talk to challenge the story of the mass/unmarked graves that’s based on a GPR scan of the abandoned apple orchard outside Kamloops Residential School.
Here’s another video of robust intellectual exploration and respectful dialogue not taking place at UVic.
Here’s what I notice from the unnamed throat singing decolonisation princess in the above video clip. She’s wearing the scarf of imperial conquest, the keffiyeh. She’s wearing Arab revolt colour-themed earrings. She’s using a megaphone to amplify her voice, that’s a violation of a noise by-law, which exists in both Victoria and Saanich. She seems angry and hostile. Her throat singing sounds pretty good, though.
Courtesy of Frances Widdowson, here’s a screenshot of a letter from the acting President and Vice-Chancellor of UVic, Robina Thomas. It’s a parody of itself.
So let’s get back to the star of the show.
Widdowson maintained her calm in the face of the arrest — anyone following her adventures would have noticed that, throughout her confrontations with unfriendly and unhinged and threatening university activists, she has managed to maintain her calm. It’s admirable, because that’s no small feat. In this light, Frances Widdowson wins and continues to win. She’s trying to teach a lesson that students seem unable and unwilling to receive, despite their desperate need to receive this lesson.
Now let’s talk about this free speech claim being bandied about in the discourse. Is free speech a defense against trespassing? No, it’s not. In an email, UVic did tell Widdowson she and her other teammates, Dallas Brodie and Jim McMurtry, weren’t welcome to hold their unauthorised public talk at UVic. So, Widdowson knew what she would walk into by choosing to proceed with her plan. As I’ve written before, the law considers university campuses private property.
“In his July 2024 decision on University of Toronto (Governing Council) v. Doe, 2024 ONSC 3755, Justice Markus Koehnen wrote “case law is clear that exercising freedom of expression is not a defence to trespass” (para 220).
I wonder if anyone else other than me noticed that Dallas Brodie, a passionate defender property rights vis a vis aboriginal title and the Cowichan Tribes ruling, has decided to dispense with property rights when attending university campuses (TRU last month and UVic yesterday) in order to hold unauthorised events. It strikes me as ideological rather than ethical and demonstrates a lack of consistency and integrity in approaching the important issues.
freedom of expression is not a defense for trespassing
Widdowson is an activist with the goal of raising awareness of the epistemological reality, that those making grand claims must bear the burden of proof to provide evidence for said grand claims. Widdowson engineered the situation at UVic—her attendance at an unauthorised UVic event—to enable the result, that being her public arrest. Widdowson calculated and, one could say she won—she looks reasonable and genuine, she maintained her integrity. Comparatively speaking, the mob which showed up to oppose Widdowson looks dysfunctional, unhinged, and psychotic.
I notice a conservative tendency to invoke delusions of persecution in reaction to these events. Cultivating a victimhood identity of marginalisation in response to the dominant victimhood identity of the mass/unmarked grave cult only serves to diminish and distract from the formidable accomplishments of Frances Widdowson. It’s a kind of projection of observer despair onto Widdowson. It exhibits an underlying emotional immaturity. Responses (ie on Xwitter) dripping in despair and outrage reveal the self-focussed, self indulgent nature of the ones making such responses. These days it’s the preferred way of reacting to controversial situations and of conducting activism in general. It overshadows the historical reality of change-making activism in human society. Frances Widdowson’s situation embodies the human condition in fighting for social change. It’s never not been this way.
Paul wrote much of the earliest parts of the New Testament from his Roman jail cell.2 Martin Neimoller suffered through a treason trial and then spent the duration of the reign of the Third Reich in Nazi Concentration Camps. Bonhoeffer wrote Letters From Prison in a Nazi jail cell. Martin Luther King wrote Letters From Birmingham Jail in his jail cell in Birmingham Jail, during his incarcerated for participating in nonviolent demonstrations against segregation in Alabama. Change takes moral courage to bring about. It takes endurance. It takes hope and faith. To stand up against wrongdoing takes a strong and humble person. To decide to fight for social change takes a hopeful person, one who believes in the society in which s/he lives and seeks change. Despair and hyperbolic outrage are lazy and self serving, they’re forms of idolatry.
I’ll leave readers with a clip from today’s BC Legislature Question Period, in which political leaders engage in some hyperbolic grandstanding to puff themselves up, without accomplishing much of anything.
Quad stands for Quadrangle Lawn, the central green space on the University of Victoria campus, surrounded by academic buildings.
Yes, despite the order of the NT books in the Bible, the Pauline Epistles were written first.