Bruce Dowbiggin
Ben Johnson: Can You Railroad A Guilty Man?

The Incredible Life Of Ben Johnson: World’s Fastest Man by Mary Ormsby, Sutherland House, 286 pages
It’s a short list of sports events that Canadians can remember where they were when the story broke. Paul Henderson’s 1972 goal in the USSR Summit Series. The Gretzky Trade. Ben Johnson tests positive after winning the 1988 Olympics 100 metre gold.
It’s long been established that Johnson was guilty on the positive steroid charge. But many questions have lingered for Canadians. Why was Johnson the only one singled out when five other runners in that race have drugging histories? Why did Canadian officials abandon Johnson to his fate in Seoul?
Our friend Mary Ormsby, longtime former reporter at the Toronto Star, has wondered the same things for years. So when Johnson asked her to cooperate on a book, she decided to conduct a cold-case investigation into a story that has flummoxed Canadians for decades. We spoke about The Incredible Life of Ben Johnson: World’s Fastest Man
Why is Ben Johnson still relevant to Canadians 35 years later:? I think, he still strikes a nerve with the Canadian consciousness. He took everybody on that 100-yard run with him in 1988. And then, of course, this historic, disqualification during the Seoul Olympics for his doping offence. That was seared in the Canadian mindset at the time, and I found over the decades that Canadians have never really forgotten about that moment.
People are still curious about him, and I think over time, people have become very much more aware and educated about the prevalence of doping in sport. We were quite naïve as Canadians, at least back in 1988. And we’ve learned a lot more since including that five of the other guys in that 100 metre final, became linked to doping infractions in some way. So it’s a wiser population that thinks that Ben is interesting, and they want to know what happened to him in the interim.
How did you get Ben to agree to the book: Actually, Ben said, “do you think there’s a book in this?” He’s the one who asked me to write it? And I said no, for a long time. Then I said, well, why not look into it after I left the Toronto Star?
What did you discover: The crux of the book is how is it possible to railroad a guilty man? Was he denied or deprived of due process at his hearing in Seoul? A lot of the people I talked to for the book, they all seem to say that Ben got screwed in Seoul. Meaning he wasn’t the only one using something at the time or of that generation or later. Only he was singled out. Now, that’s not to say, Ben is blameless. We all know he broke a rule, he willingly took steroids and he lied about it. He made it bad for himself. But again, I think people have learned to understand sport in a way that is much more cynical and much more educated, through, all the anti-doping news that continues to this very day almost.
That’s one of the questions I really want to explore in the book. So all this is to say it, it came to be at one point.
Why should people read the book?: The way to engage people was to really focus on what I would call the cold case aspect of the Ben Johnson story. And that is how was he represented at that very critical hearing that Monday night in Seoul when it was all or nothing trying to hold on to his gold medal. As I said, Ben is not blameless. We all know what he did. He lied about it. It took a $4 million inquiry and testimony under oath to get the truth out of him. “Yes, I did know what I was doing and yes, I did take steroids.” Then I try to weave the idea that there is an injustice, surrounding the mystique of Ben Johnson that Canadian officials didn’t go to the wall for him, as they should have. It was pretty much an open-and-shut case very quickly. But following the paper trail, you can see where evidence wasn’t looked at, the Canadian officials didn’t even look at his drug test. They just assumed that everything was correct and all the paperwork was absolutely topnotch. Then the IOC Medical Commission members dropped a second test on him that showed he was a longtime anabolic steroid user.
It was an unofficial test, and also no one took exception to the many conflicts of interest of the IOC doping panel that was actually hearing his appeal. They had many conflicts in my opinion. They developed the testing, they ran the testing, they supervised the testing. They were the prosecutor and the judge and the jury. And they were the ones who could recommend whether he be disqualified or not. So, the trick— and I hope I did it properly— was to get people involved in this idea that there was an injustice that happened. You can support someone’s right to a fair hearing and he was entitled to a fair hearing. That doesn’t mean you support or endorse the behaviour. Those are two separate matters.
How did Canadian officials drop the ball?: Ben made it trickier, because he, said yes, please have IOC VP Richard Pound represent me when that option was presented to him that night. Everybody was in total shock. Richard Pound, he stood to lose something too. He was one of the golden boys of the IOC movement. He was hoping to be in the running for next IOC president. From talking to IOC Medical Commission member Arne Ljundqvist after the fact, the panel weren’t very pleased to see him there running the show when, in their opinion, it should have been Canada’s chef de mission Caroline Anne Letheren. I asked Pound, why did you not look at his drug test? Why, did you not look at the supporting paperwork? And he said, you know, I didn’t want to be someone who got somebody off on a technicality. Perhaps, but if you’re fighting for your life, I would like my representatives to go to the wall for me whenever possible.
How was his late coach Charlie Francis responsible for this?: He really did influence Ben and convince him— based on Charlie’s own research and knowledge and beliefs— that everybody at the highest level is using performance enhancing drugs. You know, that famous line, you don’t have to use, but you’re always going to be a metre behind. Ben thought about it for a week or two and said, yeah, let’s do it. Charlie was a huge influence on Ben moving forward. So much so that Ben would claim, when he got caught lying, that he lied to protect Charlie Francis. He didn’t want Charlie to be caught up in the big disaster. To this day he, he talks about Charlie with, with great love and affection. So that was a very strong bond. And Charlie Francis did take advantage of that. Ben was the one who was able to help fill Charlie’s ambition as a coach.
Why wasn’t Ben caught when he set the world record at the Rome 1987 World Track & Field Championships?: Amazingly, he said he wasn’t tested in Rome. In fact, he was in the doping control room, and Primo Nebbiolo’s bodyguard went in to get him (Nebbiolo was president of the World Track & Field Federation). He says, “The boss wants to see you at this horse track”. So he spirited Ben out of the doping control room. Ben went in a limousine to this horse-racing track where he met Primo’s friends and horse racing friends and some championship horse, and then he was eventually taken back to Rome to his hotel. Nobody ever bothered him about providing a urine sample after he set the world record. (Nebbiolo later erased Ben’s 1987 world record for embarrassing him with the incident.)
How Is Ben today?: I think Ben has been broken many times in his life about this, and he tried really hard to fight through it. It’s been a lonely fight. At different times, he surrounded himself with people who didn’t always have his best interests at heart (Muammar Ghaddafi) and he retains a bitterness about Seoul and what happened to him and why he was the only one. But there’s also a resilience there that I’m pretty impressed with, because in all that time he’s had to scramble to make a living. He is still hoping with this book and maybe with more time, he will be able to clear his name. He sees that at the end of the day. I don’t know. But what we do see, even just walking down the street in Toronto or down in Jamaica, people will still call out to him. “Hey, world’s fastest man” and give him the thumbs up. You know, what a great guy.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
How Did PEI Become A Forward Branch Plant For Xi’s China?

scoopercooper DEA Busts Canadian Narco Whose Chinese Supplier Promised to Ship 100 Kilos of Fentanyl Precursors per Month From Vancouver to Los Angeles
https://x.com/scoopercooper/status/1945489327892365716
The Chinese Communist Party is flooding America with dirty pesticide marijuana disguised as THCa hemp flower and hemp-derived products sold in smoke shops.
Official Silence on Medical Waste From PRC-Linked Monasteries Must Be Broken .
We were talking very recently to a Toronto friend about the threat of drug trafficking—in particular fentanyl— to the U.S. as a threat to Canada’s sovereignty. This businessman, who does considerable international trade, shrugged and said it’s no big deal. He’d heard the Yanks had only caught 59 pounds at the border between 2022-2024. To his eye, things were under control.
This statistic was, of course, the Liberals’ standard talking point in the 2025 election— part of Mark Carney’s What, Me Worry? appeal about China to anxious Boomers. My friend still repeating this twaddle is a tribute to the staying power of the Liberal’s media stranglehold in the face of evidence that has been out there courtesy of reporters such Sam Cooper and Garry Clement since 2015.
As the above stories illustrate drug trafficking and money laundering are believed to be rampant in Carney’s Canada— with the Chinese in the forefront and immigrant students-turned-truckers hauling the narcotics across the border. The fentanyl version of El Chapo and other confederates live openly in the Toronto area. As the recent bust promising 100 kilos a month to L.A. makes clear, the 59-pound fentanyl deflection insults the work of those who have been labouring under dangerous conditions to highlight the Liberals’ lassitude on crime.
As we wrote when Justin Trudeau was still swanning around as PM: “The sitting Canadian prime minister, who praised the Chinese form of governing before he reached the PM post, has been seen in photos with underground Asian gang figures. As were previous Liberal leaders like Jean Chretien who made no secret of his lust for the Chinese market. Chinese money was used to build extensively in Chretien’s Shawinigan riding.
Donations to Trudeau from all across Canada constituted up to 80 percent of the riding’s contributions that year. In May 2016, one such fundraiser saw Trudeau hosted by Benson Wong, chair of the Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce, along with 32 other wealthy guests in a pay-for-access event. The patterns exposed by Cooper finally prompted a commission by Quebec justice Marie-Josée Hogue looking into Chinese interference in Trudeau’s successful 2019 and 2021 elections.
Hogue later reported that Chinese interference in those elections did undermine the rights of Canadian voters because it “tainted the process” and eroded public trust. So petrified was Trudeau of the full Hogue Report that he prorogued parliament for three months and handed in his resignation rather than test his 22 percent approval rating in a Canadian election.”
What the rest of the world knows— but Canadian officials refused to tell their citizens during the federal election campaign— is that Canada has been corrupted by openly approving of China’s method of controlling their citizens worldwide and placing operatives within Canada’s government.

The story of how Liberal candidate Paul Chiang told a Chinese-language media news conference that people could cash in if they turned in Conservative Joe Tay in to the Chinese consulate in Toronto is illustrative. At first Carney called it a “lapse in judgment”, but then he let Chiang continue as a candidate. After pushback, Peter Yuen, was appointed the Liberal party’s nominee in the Toronto-area riding. Yuen has ties to Chinese agencies that seek to control Chinese citizens in Canada. (He lost in the April vote.)
Equally concerning is how the CCP has turned peaceful PEI into a forward operating base. On a recent trip to PEI we were told by local sources about the Buddhist monasteries being allowed under the not-so-watchful eye of various layers of government and the paid-for Media Party. Using bags full of dirty cash, the Bliss & Wisdom Buddhists have bought up large tracts of PEI farmland and replaced it with a front for the CCP to launder dirty money and infiltrate its people into the community. (The Buddhists deny this.)
Meetings have drawn hundreds of concerned Islanders (but not, until recently, many politicians or media). The latest outrage was the discovery of medical waste left behind on a rural property. It is alleged that it stems from a tuberculosis outbreak among the monks, where still-infectious monks were quietly sent home to China on public airlines wearing masks. Fires that destroyed two buildings nearby are alleged to have been to protect against health officials finding evidence of TB on site.
Media attention from outside PEI is now pushing officials to investigate the attempt to plant “police” stations to monitor expatriate Chinese and affect elections. Former RCMP officer Garry Clement has done extensive research on this file with Michel Juneau-Katsuya and Dean Baxendale. For more detailed description on the infiltration and political manipulation read Canada Under Siege: How PEI Became A Forward Operating Base of the Chinese Communist Party.

These are dramatic times as its appears that Chairman Xi might be on his way out as the leader of China. Any changes in the regime are just rumours at the moment. But Xi has overseen this massive campaign to extend Chinese outreach globally. That it would include even tiny PEI is shocking. The hope there is that with the Chinese economy under strain a new ruling elite in Beijing might pull back on the worldwide network as an expensive gamble.

That the China cheering club in the Liberal party in involved is less surprising since the outreach by Trudeau’s father Pierre in the 1970s. But with tariff issues dominating the news it would do well for Canadians to sober up to how compromised they are by the Chinese. That— not Donald Trump— is their biggest challenge.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Bruce Dowbiggin
The Covid 19 Disaster: When Do We Get The Apologies?

Breaking: Drs. Bonnie Henry and Theresa Tam have been appointed to the Order of Canada in recognition of their role in the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And so the game of covid liar’s poker has more winners. It’s like awarding the captain of the Titanic the Nobel Prize for his work on floatation. As we now know these two— and the other WHO finger puppets in Canada— made the Covid 19 episode worse, not better, with their prescription for panic, positives and punishment. Even as they knew the truth about the limits of the virus and the efficacy of vaccines they continued to spew fallacious PCR data on the extent of the sickness and who was at risk.
Put simply, to protect vulnerable seniors they said kids were also at great risk. Which was unconscionable.
In this they encouraged Justin Trudeau in his worst instincts, combining his father’s insouciant disregard for civil rights (sending in the police) with his mother’s mental stability. Propped up by Team Tam and its U.S. allies such as Anthony Fauci, this hysteria peaked with a sequestered PM crushing the Truckers Convoy’s vaccine protest with emergency measures and destruction of civil liberties.
Lest you wonder, this overreach was recognized at the time. Justice Maclean wrote at the trial of Convoy organizers, “Defendants & other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful & safe protest”. On Feb. 16, he continued a no-honking order, again writing: “Defendants & other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful & safe protest.”
The leaders of the Convoy, lynched by Canadian media’s phoney claims of right-wing American interference, are still fighting jail time on charges of nuisance. While violent criminals are routinely released on bail or absolved.
Justice Richard Mosley later concluded that while the convoy was a disruption of public order, it didn’t constitute a national emergency and invoking the act “does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility.” But in real time Team Tam made no attempts to correct the wilder misgivings about Covid (lockdowns, mandatory vaccines). Trudeau was given a hall pass. Needless to say the purchased media made things infinitely worse regurgitating these mistakes.
In short, they knew better but hid the truth. But why pick on Henry and Tam? Under Trudeau and his wingman Jagmeet Singh this was the golden age of lies and prevarications in Canada and the U.S. No apologies were ever offered when the truth emerged.
As we’ve noted before, Trudeau cried with a teddy bear carefully positioned over 751 alleged unmarked graves in a known Catholic cemetery that the local Cowessess band abandoned. The Liberal government knew the claim of 215 “children’s graves” was false, and still ran with it to get Trudeau his photo-op. Naturally the CBC Media Party played (and still plays) accomplice in this farce as the Canadian flag was lowered to half-mast for six months and Trudeau ratted out Canada at the UN as a genocidal state.
There were more, plenty more Trudeau scandals that media endorsed and then stood by even as the truth was revealed. SNC Lavalin. We Charity. Arrive Can app. Firing indigenous justice minister. Chinese drug infiltration/ money laundering. Nazi Celebrated in Parliament. Welcome To Canada immigration. Nova Scotia massacre. McKinsey Consultation. Blackface. And so on.
And were there apologies when it came time to make the Trudeau Liberals accountable? No, they staged a media circus over Donald Trump’s assertion of 51st state. All the fake news and deliberate lies went poof, allowing Mark Carney to seamlessly assume the PM job.

Lest We Forget Pt. 2 it was not exclusive to Canada. As we are now learning: Barack Obama and Joe Biden sat in an August 3, 2016 Situation Room briefing and said, yeah, let the highest officials in our administration fabricate evidence to frame the opposing party candidate Donald Trump. Obama. Biden. Comey. McCabe. Strzok. Page. Rice. Etc.
Knowingly using the faked Clinton campaign ‘Steele Dossier’ hoax, they launched a federal investigation into the Trump presidential campaign that lasted three years after Trump was sworn in as the nation’s 45th President. Arresting and jailing his partners and colleagues. Inventing fake stories for their media enablers. Let’s repeat that. Saint Obama knew there was criminal activity in the process but let his henchmen try to fix an election.

And when the ruse was uncovered no one apologized. No one in authority was fired or jailed. The Pulitzer Prizes awarded to the NT Times and Washington Post for disseminating the DEMs scandal were not rescinded. Nor were they given back by the lying newspapers.
The concerted frauds of the same U.S. DOJ, FBI and State Departments were fed by media and accepted by gullible publics in Canada and America. The fantastical 2020 election results were likewise drummed into the public irrespective of the sudden “appearance” of 27 million new votes during a pandemic.
It was all a fitting preamble to the 2020-2024 Biden senility scandal with Democrats running a man they knew was in full dementia. In the 2020 election Biden was hidden from public view, the better to let media attack Trump for spurious charges launched by partisan DNC attorneys in Georgia, New York and DC. Even then it took the suppression of Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop just prior to the election to get his father elected.

The dance of denial continued in Biden’s term as he physically and mentally deteriorated before the American public. But inquiries about who was running the government if not Biden were harshly suppressed. Media lackeys noted he was sharp as a tack mentally and in tip-top physical condition when he wasn’t falling down stairs.
It took the stunning 2024 debate debacle with Trump to strip away the lies about Biden’s health, now said to be advanced prostate cancer and Parkinson’s. The media, caught in their own lies about Biden’s condition, offered no apologies and tried to blame Biden’s stutter for the performance.. Right.
These were the two greatest U.S. hoaxes from people who’d cried hoax incessantly. They were hardly the only abuse of public trust. Some of the perpetrators are said to now be under investigation— even as they hand out awards to each other. The media’s credibility is shattered and yet they still blame others. Jaded voters are taking a “we’ll see” approach. But expectations of any change in DC or Ottawa are limited.
As Stephen Taylor posted on X: “Turns out for Liberals, ‘elbows up’ just means ‘noses up’ like it always has.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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