Peter Watts

We got back into Toronto last night at around 9:30, from the sentencing hearing that saw our friend Peter Watts avoid jail time. The crossing back from Port Huron was happily uneventful – particularly as we passed the spot on the bridge where, in December, U.S. Customs and Border official Andrew Beaudry beat and pepper-sprayed […]

I type this from the basement of the Quay Street Brewing Company, where manager Mike Ziegler has kindly let me post this. Sentencing is finished. Judge Adair dismissed any thoughts of jail time, made Peter pay a fine, and shared wisdom about the respect we must afford police. But never mind that. No jail time.

Tomorrow (Monday April 26) Peter Watts will be in a Port Huron courtroom to learn what the spring and summer have in store for him.  It is his sentencing date. As discussed on this blog and elsewhere, Peter was convicted of resisting and obstructing border guards, stemming from an incident late last year at the

I know I promised not to write about feelings (see the Yard’s mission statement to the right of this post). But as the case of my friend Peter Watts and the guards at the Blue Water Bridge sinks in, feeling seems to be all I’m doing. So while this might be a good time to

The news of this hit me hard this morning. Peter, you may recall, was beaten and pepper-sprayed while crossing the Canada-U.S. border at Port Huron, Michigan. For his troubles, they charged him with resisting arrest and assaulting a federal officer – a young man named Andrew Beaudry, who accused Peter of attempting to choke him

Okay. Peter Watts is free right now (although that freedom could well be fleeting). And he is not a squid (although that is what his friends call him). Nonetheless, I’d like to direct you to Free The Squid, a comprehensive website set up by U.S. fan Chris Knall over the past few days: freethesquid.org. It’s

It’s been two days since we began fundraising for Canadian sf writer Peter Watts’ legal defense – and the response from around the world has been staggering. The money that’s come in to date will see Peter financially solvent through the first hump of this ordeal – so thank you, world – but we have

I got a detail wrong in the account I gave of Peter Watts’ incarceration, in the post below. I had understood that he had been released from custody in Port Huron, wearing nothing but jeans and a denim shirt, during a snowstorm – then walked across the bridge to Canada. In fact, officials in Port

This posting might seem redundant coming as it does at 6 p.m. on Friday afternoon. But I honestly thought that waiting just four or five hours after putting the word out to Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi about my friend Peter Watts’ nightmarish legal situation, I would still be timely in posting a plea for