I had my first direct "contact" with Mr. Pat MacAdam on September 22, 2004, when I published my (partial) report online. He was among the three dozen journalists or news organizations that received my email announcement.
However, of all those MSM people who got the tip, nobody asked me any questions. In my subsequent interactions with Mr. MacAdam, neither of us mentioned the email.
Notwithstanding my email notice, Mr. MacAdam gave me conflicting impressions as to his knowledge of my story. On one hand, he asked me several times, as if he kept forgetting, what my story is about. On the other hand, he appeared to not only know my story, but also to have his own source of information.
I only met him once on March 17. He was the only journalist who actually met me, despite all my effort to have my story published.
Back-and-forth before the meeting
The first time I called him was on December 22, 2004. We talked for a couple of minutes. He did not ask me many questions about my story. Indeed, he asked only one question in that regard. (I replied that I was harassed by certain individuals who had connections to the Liberals, as I always did in a short answer, to him or to anyone else.) He did ask me where I came from and whether I was a Canadian citizen. – Of course, my citizenship application is part of my problems with the government. – At the end of the conversation, he said he would call me back the following day for us to "get together". Overall, the conversation was positive and he was apparently glad that I called.
However, he left me a message the next day, saying that he had already written his (weekly) columns for the next few weeks and he would ask his colleague at Ottawa Sun, Mr. Earl McRae to contact me. (I got a voice mail on the day I initiated contact with him after I realized that it was not very reliable for the homeless shelter to take telephone messages for me. So I could only receive phone messages, not phone calls, at my number.)
However, nobody contacted me during the holiday period, and into the middle of January. I was a little disappointed and not sure if Mr. MacAdam or Mr. McRae was really serious about doing my story.
On January 5, I published the Summary of connections to Cecilia Zhang case on my blog. There was no new information in that summary. I simply made the connections between my experience and the Cecilia Zhang case plain for all to see. As a result, I was attacked by MSM. For example, all three national newspapers chose exactly the same front page pictures on January 6 in an attempt to bully me and to signal to me that they were united. Despite the attack, I tried to let people know about my story through the Internet, but with little effect.
Still hoping that he could help me, I called Mr. MacAdam again on January 17, 2005. He sounded surprised, and indeed, annoyed that Mr. McRae had not contacted me. He said he would talk to Mr. McRae. The following day, Mr. McRae called me and left me with both his work and cell phone numbers for me to call him back. (It turned out that he did not give me the correct work number.)
When I called him back on his cell phone, Mr. McRae told me that he was quite busy with other assignments but would like to keep in touch with me, possibly the following week. He did not ask me what my story is all about. Actually, in my dealings with him, he never asked.
In the early morning of Monday, January 24, I posted another major blog about my experience with MSM. In the afternoon, I called Mr. McRae. This time he sounded extremely friendly and enthusiastic about doing my story and told me to wait for his call "in a couple of days". He also asked me a couple of times where I stayed. It was a strange question as it did not appear to have a lot of relevance to my story. (Since I have told Mr. MacAdam the phone number of the shelter before, they must have known I stayed in the homeless shelter. Or, they may have their own source of information.) My impression was that he was hinting to me that I should disclose that information on my blog so that the Chretinites could not claim that I was one of the Mulroneyites. -- Who would stay in a homeless shelter to conspire against Chretien?
However, Mr. McRae did not call me for the rest of the week. On Saturday, January 29, I called him again. He told me directly that he was not interested in my story any more. I was surprised and disappointed. But he said that he might be able to meet me the following week. Although he did not explain why he was not interested in doing my story, he complained, using some expletives, about the "business", without getting into details. At the time, I thought he was complaining about his work as a journalist. Later, I realized that he was angry at the Chretienites' political move to try to use my story in their campaign against Judge Gomery.
In discussing a time to meet the following week, I told him that I was thinking of going back to the Parliament Hill to resume fasting and protest because the House would come back after the winter break. He sounded surprised and did not speak for a brief second. In the end, we did not fix a time to meet.
On Tuesday, February 1, I called him three times but was not able to speak to him, either at work or over his cell phone. In one call, I could hear him swear at the phone as if his phone was broken. However, from my end, I could not detect any technical difficulties. In another call, I could hear him repeating a word and the best I could make out was "blog". I got the feeling that he wanted me keep blogging. (That's why for that week, I blogged ever day until I fell sick.) I also felt he did not want to talk to me so I stopped calling him.
Later, as I reflected on his dramatic change of attitude toward doing my story, I had to conclude that the Mulroneyites got scared away. Or, they did not think it was worth their fight with the Chretienites or Liberals over Gomery inquiry or my story.
The meeting
I believe Mr. MacAdam's willingness to meet me was prompted by my March 11 blog, in which I announced that I had stopped fasting, which is my way of protesting.
I first published my blog through an email at 9:08PM Eastern Time (ET). As is usually the case, it did not immediately show up on my blog. (I had so many problems with Blogger that I got used to them.)
At 9:15PM ET, I manually repeated the uploading of my blog.
About 15 minutes later, Mr. MacAdam called and left me a message in which he expressed his willingness to meet me.
(It is now apparent to me that Mr. MacAdam or Mr. McRae did not like my fasting and protesting. However, I am quite puzzled as to how he knew the contents of my blog without visiting it, just like so many other journalists did.)
I got his message the next day and called him back in the afternoon. He asked me again what the nature of my problem was. I told him again that I had some problems with certain individuals who had connections to the government and the ruling Liberal Party. He told me that either he or Mr. McRae would work with me and he needed to talk to Mr. McRae first.
On Monday evening, March 14, I called him to follow up. He changed his mind again. He said Mr. McRae was going to work with me because he did not do "court stuff" or "investigative stuff". He asked me to call him the following evening and he would tell me where and when I would meet with Mr. McRae. (It's a bit strange that he would not let me arrange the meeting with Mr. McRae myself. But I did not question him.)
Tuesday evening, I called him as scheduled. This time he did not mention Mr. McRae at all. Instead, he asked me upfront if I had any "paper work" with respect to my grievances. I told him that I did (of course). Then he asked me what my ultimate goal was in my lawsuit. I simply said that I wanted my life back. He then suggested that we meet on Thursday. We fixed the time (10 o'clock in the morning) for him to come to my shelter.
The following is a brief description of the meeting, mostly taking place in his car:
(1) After we briefly introduced ourselves, he asked me why I came to Ottawa. I had not expected this question. I told him that I came here to protest. "To protest?!" he sounded unpleasantly surprised.
(2) On our way to his car, he followed up by asking why I came to Ottawa to protest, and "Can't you do it in BC?" I explained that I had problems with the federal government, rather than the provincial one.
(3) After we got into his car, he asked me what my story is all about. As I remembered telling him before, I said so. He became quite serious and said: "No, you haven't [told me about it]." So I repeated that I was harassed by certain individuals who had connections to the Liberals. I also mentioned that I had prepared a disc for him, with documents on it, since he had asked about them in our previous conversation.
(4) He nodded when I mentioned the disc, but did not ask for it right away. Instead, he spent quite some time talking about a Chinese friend of his, who practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine in Ottawa. (I believe he wrote about this friend of his in his February 20 column.) As we were sitting in his car, he did not look at me while telling me the story and I did not get any chance to ask questions. I do remember that towards the end of his story, he said that they became friends and went out dinning together after he "defected". The word was quite unusual. It was one of the reasons that I was not impressed after the meeting as I reflected on it.
(5) After talking about his friend, he said: "Oh, I got side-tracked." Then we chatted about the shelter I stayed. He asked me such questions as "Are there a lot of drunks in the shelter?" To me it was such an obvious question. I guess he was referring to his column before Christmas, titled "Juggling a career and the bottle."
(6) He brought up the topic of Air India as the verdict was in the news that day. He told me that he was working for Mr. Mulroney when Air India bombing occurred and said regrettably: "We screwed up [the aftermath/investigation]". – Later, when I reflected on this, I don't know how to make of it. Was he offering an apology in my current situation with respect to Cecilia Zhang and me, i.e., that it was merely a screw-up? Or, was he suggesting that [big] screw-ups do happen?
(7) He talked about the fact that there are a lot of minorities in BC. In particular, he spoke about a suburban Vancouver riding with 40 percent minority population. He then repeated: "40 percent!" and uttered an expletive.
(8) He suggested that he knows about the existence of picture(s) surreptitiously taken of me while I was inside my apartment. But I don't like the way he said it. – He suggested in exactly the same way as the first person, who came by the order of the defendants named in my lawsuit, did to me in spring 2003. -- In fact, if not for the good-will accumulated over many months' reading his columns, I would have considered his suggestion bad-taste and bullying.
(9) At the end of our meeting, he took my disc and said that he would call me. I thanked him for coming to meet me and left his car.
Back-and-forth after the meeting
The more I reflected on our meeting, the less impressed I became. Since he accepted my disc, I decided to wait and see.
In the first Ottawa Sun column he wrote after our meeting, he reported the good news. I believe this was the reason that other journalists thought that I had raised a white flag.
March 20: Pat MacAdam (Ottawa Sun)
"Fun times with Finlay" (Title of the column)
"Finlay MacDonald was one of few who made life in political backrooms rewarding – and fun." (Opening paragraph)
"Finlay MacDonald's style, class and sense of humour made him charming to work with." (Caption of photo)
In his next column, however, the news became not so good. I guess he sensed my disappointment because I had not called him for more than a week.
March 27: Pat MacAdam (Ottawa Sun)
The title of his column "The anatomy of horror" was in reference to this sentence of mine in my Summary of connections to Cecilia Zhang case.
"This … raised the horrifying possibility of the government's involvement in Cecilia Zhang's abduction and murder."
He appeared to use Ernst Zundel's story as an example and urged the MSM to ignore me, i.e., not to crack nuts any more. (Indeed, he had a valid point. It was probably his cheering-on when I was blog-competing with Warren Kinsella that drew so much attention and interest from other journalists.)
In early April, Jean Brault testimony at the Gomery was leaked on the Internet and there was talk of an imminent election. Now that the worse part of the Adscam had come out, maybe, I thought, he would be keener to do my story to further put pressure on the Liberals. So I called him on Tuesday April 5. However, I was told that he had not had a chance to read my documents on the disc due to a medical condition. He asked me to call him back on Sunday.
On Sunday April 10, he opened his weekly column with this mantra:
My mantra these days is: Stupidity is not contagious, stupidity is not contagious, stupidity is not contagious…
As I explained before, he was essentially urging other pundits, Liberal or Conservative, to not crack nuts about my story thus increase the chance to trigger an election or make my story an election issue. And, when I called him on that day, I got his voice mail after the first ring. It happened many times over the next few days when I tried to talk to him.
I almost lost hope on him. The last two calls I made to him was at the end of April.
They were prompted by my reading his April 24 column "Go for the jugular, and do it now", which appeared to be giving good advice to the Conservatives. In my first call on April 25, I was told that he was to give my disc to another reporter. On Friday April 29, I called him to follow up. Apparently he was not very enthusiastic about receiving my call. When I asked for the number of the reporter to whom he had given my disc, he declined to give it to me and said he would follow up on my behalf. But I never heard from him again.
