Toronto Star, September 9, 1982 

IMMORALITY OF INTEREST LED MAN TO POLICE STATION 
by Desmond Bill

Picture caption: "No Entry: Metro police made sure John Turmel, above, 
didn't his protest against bankers and interest rates into the meeting 
rooms of the Sheraton Centre, where World Bank president Tom Clausen 
was speaking about the plight of poor nations.

     Metro police hauled away a man who stood outside the Sheraton 
Centre protesting against bankers. John Turmel, 31, founder of the 75 
member Christian Credit party of Canada, was taken to No. 52 division 
police station and allowed to go free a couple of hours later. He was 
warned that he would be arrested for breach of the peace if he went 
back to the site of the International Monetary Fund / World Bank 
meetings and displayed his signs again. "If you go back there, you'll 
be back here," one policeman told him in the station. 

SUPREME COURT CASE
     Turmel, who is trying to start a Canada-wide Ottawa-based protest 
against evictions, claims that charging interest is not only immoral 
but illegal under Canadian laws.   
     Turmel, who says he "wants to use the system to screw the 
system," has already taken his case to the Supreme Court of Canada 
where the judges brushed off his claim. But that doesn't deter him. 
"It cost me $15 to go all the way to the Supreme Court," he explained. 
If every single person being evicted took their case all the way to 
the highest court in the land, we could clog up the whole system. 
"You'd probably die of old age before the banks could foreclose on 
you." 
     Turmel says his method is not being used by William Devecseri, a 
52 year-old Ottawa man, after a bank foreclosed on his home mortgage, 
and obtained a court order to evict him. Devecseri has filed notice to 
appeal the action and meanwhile continues to live in the house. 
     Turmel is a follower of what he calls "pure Social Credit" 
theories of Major C.H. Douglas, the economic theoretician behind the 
Social Credit movement that swept Alberta in the mid 1930s and led to 
the first Social Credit government in the world. It held power in 
Alberta for 30 years. 

UNSUCCESSFUL CHARGE
     Turmel once tried to charge Gerald Bouey, Governor of the Bank of 
Canada with keeping a common gaming house, arguing the bank is 
gambling customers will be able to repay their loans. 
     To buttress his case, he cited the meaning of the French words 
from which we derive the word mortgage: mort is the French word for 
death and gage is a form of the French verb to wager. He said mortgage 
is aptly named as a deathgamble "for its requirement that the 
participants... repay both the principal and the usury when the banks 
only created the loan out of the principal." 
     When a Justice of the Peace refused to lay the charge against 
Bouey, Turmel appealed to the courts for an order that Justice of the 
Peace lay the charge but was repeatedly turned down. He now offers 
free kits telling others "how to stiff the banks." Copies may be 
obtained by calling him in Ottawa.

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