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Pat
Houde, reputedly the biggest horse feedlot operator and buyer of horses
for slaughter in Manitoba, was reportedly charged on March 17 with
assault, theft, and uttering threats against Project Equus
founder Robin Duxbury and Walter Powers, a freelance
photojournalist who apparently caught most of the incident on video.
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| Duxbury
and Powers were videotaping for a documentary about the Premarin
industry, they said, and were taking video from the road of the Houde
feedlot at Elm Creek when Houde used a truck to run them into a ditch,
took the keys from their car, tried to take Powers’ camera, and hit
Duxbury in the head. Powers called police from a cell phone while still
videotaping. “Both Powers and Duxbury had to receive minor medical
treatment at the Victoria Hospital in Winnipeg,” said Project Equus
assistant director of cruelty investigations Anita Vongelsang. “Powers
suffered a few minor cuts to his face, leg, and back. Duxbury sustained
a ruptured ear drum and severe bruising to her left hand.”
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| Purported
Animal Liberation Front activists Darren Todd Thurston, 28, and
David Nathan Barbarash, 34, both of Vancouver, British Columbia,
have been jointly charged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with
27 counts of mailing objects with intent to do bodily harm. |
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| Barbarash
and Rebecca Rubin, 23, were also charged with possessing an
explosive. Barbarash, arrested on March 25, was further charged with
possessing a prohibited weapon, while Thurston, arrested March 27, was
also charged with illegal impersonation. All were reportedly released on
bail. The charges allege that beginning in April 1995 Thurston and
Barbarash sent numerous razor blade devices to furriers, hunting guides,
and hunting columnists, as well as allegedly sending pipe bombs to
Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, of Toronto, and white supremacist
Charles Scott, of B.C., who both escaped injury. The day before
Scott received a bomb, however, a mail bomb severely injured animal
researcher Terry Mitenko, of Cochrane, Alberta, in a case
believed to be part of the same sequence. The day after the Scott bomb
arrived, Greg Middleton of The Vancouver Province reported in
June 1997, “an employee of a right-wing think tank in Toronto got a
similar pipe bomb in the mail.” The “right-wing think-tank”
was apparently the MacKenzie Institute, indirectly associated with a
faction that took control of the Toronto Humane Society in the early
1990s and ousted all staff involved in animal rights advocacy. Barbarash
reportedly did research under contract for THS circa 1987. |
| Barbarash
was apparently first convicted of a crime in Toronto in 1987 for
allegedly vandalizing Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, but the
original charges, reduced by plea-bargain, also accused him and
associate Kenneth Quayle of possessing explosives, carrying
weapons, and vandalizing the University of Toronto dentistry school in
January 1986. |
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| Thurston,
wrote Rick Ouston of the Vancouver Sun, was “nicknamed The
Mad Bomber at Harry Ainlay High School in Edmonton after an unidentified
student exploded a pipe bomb under a bridge.” Thurston and
Barbarash were both convicted of committing a June 1992 break-in at a
University of Alberta, reportedly taking 29 cats and doing
$50,000 in damage. Thurston had already served most of a two-year
sentence for his alleged role in the break-in, plus the December 1991
firebombings of three trucks belonging to the Billingsgate Fish
Company, before Barbarash was caught and extradited from the U.S. in
May 1994. |
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Thurston
and Barbarash both briefly worked for the Vancouver Island anti-hunting
group Bear Watch in 1995 and 1996, but left apparently due to tactical
disagreements. While with Bear Watch, Thurston and Barbarash alleged in
May 1996 that they and other activists were twice pursued by gangs of
hunters led by Don Rose of Trophy West Guide Outfitters in Campbell
River, B.C., and that their cars were vandalized with rocks and an ax
handle as they sat inside, including at one point in the local RCMP
parking lot. |