THUNDER BAY — A Thunder Bay judge has ruled that the person who ran the Real Thunder Bay Courthouse – Inside Edition Facebook page is liable for a combined $380,000 in damages after he was successfully sued for anti-drag posts.
The summary judgements by Justice Helen Pearce are the result of two separate but related civil cases filed against Brian Webster — one by Rainbow Alliance Dryden and Dryden-based drag performer Caitlin Hartlen and the other by two long-time Thunder Bay drag queens, Felicia Crichton and John Forget.
They successfully argued that Webster defamed them by referring to them in Facebook posts as “groomers” and engaging in “grooming” of children, effectively calling them pedophiles. The posts were made in 2022 in response to news coverage and promotion of drag queen story time events in Dryden and Thunder Bay. In one of the posts from December 2022 in relation to the Thunder Bay event, according to Pearce’s decision, Webster stated that local drag queens, who were not associated with the story time event, had been charged with child pornography.
The whole case was a mix of emotions, Forget said, adding that when he learned of the decision, “I just cried.”
“I just cried a lot,” he said. “I was actually just on my way into the grocery store and I just happened to look at my phone and — we have a group chat — and all I saw was we won, and I was just, I don't know, I was overcome with emotion.”
“It took a little bit for it to sink in,” Forget continued. “But overall, I was just really thrilled.”
Crichton said she was also emotional.
“It can feel like you're really alone for a really long time, even though we know that our community is out there and they love us and they support us,” she said. “But to see the good guys take a win, just even one time, it was a nice light in the dark.”
In Pearce’s 56-page decision handed down in late January, the judge awarded each plaintiff $75,000 in general damages plus $20,000 each in aggravated damages, the amounts they were seeking. “The defendant intended to smear the reputations of the individual plaintiffs and (Rainbow Alliance Dryden) with the message that they used their drag queen/king persona and activities to groom children for sexual abuse,” Pearce wrote.
“There could hardly be a more damning message than that, spread across the Internet. The message was clearly understood by Mr. Webster’s readership: he called the plaintiffs pedophiles.”
The judge rejected Webster’s defence that his posts weren’t specifically directed at the individual plaintiffs on the grounds that the posts did identify them and were “defamatory of them.” She also rejected his defence of fair comment. A previous attempt by Webster to have the case thrown out under anti-SLAPP (strategic litigation against public participation) law was also unsuccessful.
Forget said the experience did unearth old feelings of being bullied, “but having such a good group of people being a part of this, it really made it really easy and we just felt really supported.”
In awarding the aggravated damages, Pearce called Webster’s conduct “hate speech.”
Both Crichton and Forget said that they feel the judge’s overall decision makes them feel safer.
“Honestly, it absolutely does,” Crichton said. “It can be hard as a minority community, even in Canada where we are so proud and so overwhelmingly (sure) of how progressive we are as a country, the minorities can sometimes still get lost to the wayside.”
“But to see … the legal community come together and make a decision like this and take a stand like this against this kind of hate speech is everything we could have possibly asked for and does absolutely renew my faith in the justice system.”
