BRACEBRIDGE, Ontario, January 13, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Ontario Provincial Court Justice Jon-Jo Douglas issued a ruling Thursday on a case involving public nudity that was heard last summer in the cottage-country town of Bracebridge, 180 kilometres north of Toronto.
Justice Douglas found Brian Coldin guilty on four counts of appearing in public naked in contravention of Canada’s nudity laws. Section 174 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits public nudity, protects citizens from those “whose state of undress is such that it interferes with other people’s use and enjoyment of public places.”
“A free and democratic society remains so only to the extent that the liberties exercised by each one of us are reasonably circumscribed by the responsibilities of each to one another. Requiring people to wear some modicum of clothing when in public is a reasonable limit,” Justice Douglas declared in his decision, adding that even “partial nudity” is against the law if it disturbs public order.
“Indecent partial dress is criminal. Decent partial dress is not,” Justice Douglas said.
Coldin was charged by police on May 12, 2009 after he drove up to the drive-through window of the Bracebridge A&W, with two other men, all of whom were wearing only sandals and otherwise naked. Clerk Jessica Cramer-Swift that the men in the car were joking and pretending to look for money in their non-existent pockets.
Several days prior to the A&W incident, Coldin went through a Tim Horton’s drive-thru in the nude. Amanda Fernick, clerk at the local Tim Horton’s, told the court that on May 8, 2009, her first day of work at the donut chain, Coldin drop up to the window, and when she leaned out to give Coldin his change she saw that he was naked and that his genitals were visible. She testified that she was so shaken by the encounter that she quit her job.
Two other charges against Coldin stemmed from a complaint that he was walking naked along Highway 11, the main highway in the area, in April 2009, and that he was naked when he approached a woman in a public park that same month.
Coldin’s lawyers, Nader Hasan and Clayton Ruby, argued in court last summer that their client’s Charter right to free expression had been violated because he was wearing sandals when he appeared naked in public, so he wasn’t actually nude, and that as a “naturist” he believed in wearing as little clothing as possible.
“Coldin is a naturist. As a naturist, he believes that being nude in nature fosters greater respect for self, for others and for the environment. He expresses his naturist beliefs by wearing as little clothing as is practical,” the lawyers told the court.
However, Justice Douglas, after hearing from eight witnesses who said that seeing Coldin nude in public places caused them fear, embarrassment and a reluctance to return to where they saw him, said, “Walking along Highway 11 expresses Mr. Coldin’s flamboyancy and has little to do with the tenets of naturism,” adding that Coldin showed, “if not a sense of exhibitionism … then certainly some missionary zeal.”
“Mr. Coldin, then, largely stands as one person expressing not much more than his own desire to be publicly nude,” and appears “more interested in either asserting his right to do so or to somehow converting the clothed among us” and “is disconnected from the tenets of naturism, however fluid these may be.”
“Is that the sort of conduct so imbued with meaning as to be protected expression?… And especially given the affront it causes others? In my view, it does not,” Justice Douglas said.
Coldin was fined $3000 and sentenced to 24 months probation, during which he is to keep the peace and is not permitted to enter the property of the local A&W or the Tim Horton’s, according to the Bracebridge Examiner.