Gary Norman Arthur Botting (born 19 July 1943)[1] is a Canadian legal scholar and criminal defense lawyer (now retired) as well as a poet, playwright, novelist, and critic of literature and religion, in particular Jehovah's Witnesses.

His father, Pilot Officer Norman Arthur Botting DFC, a Dam Buster with 617 Squadron, was killed in action over Germany on 15 September 1943 when Gary was less than two months old—on his older sister Mavis' second birthday.

[8] After witnessing the bombing of Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Cheshire, who had been raised High Anglican, began to examine various religions.

[10] Joan was baptized as a Jehovah's Witness in September 1948 and expected Cheshire to follow; when he converted to Roman Catholicism later that year instead, she moved with the children back to Radley.

One day when pedaling back from school he found a large sphinx moth, "a rare and portentous Death's-Head Hawk (Acherontia atropos)" at the side of the road.

[1] In his early teens Botting began to experiment at home with the hybridization of moths, developing his own technique entailing surgical transplantation of female pheromonal scent sacs.

and Krishna Dronamraju were present at the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Kolkata when 1960 US National Science Fair winner in botany Susan Brown reminded the Haldanes that she and Botting had a previously scheduled event that would prevent them from accepting an invitation to a banquet proposed by J.B.S.

[21] Six decades later, Botting's January 1961 encounter with Haldane and their conversations regarding the peppered moth were still generating controversy, even in the pages of the revered Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.

"[33] Botting later admitted that his discussions with Haldane in India in 1961 had had a profound effect on his way of looking at the world, although the process of shaking the social imperatives imposed by his religion took decades.

[37] Another of his plays first produced by the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta depicted the forming of a covenstead in which the protagonist priestess rejects her fundamentalist background and protects herself and those she loves with charms, spells and rituals.

[38] In 1984, Gary and Heather Botting co-authored The Orwellian World of Jehovah's Witnesses,[39] an exposé of the inner workings, shifting doctrines, linguistic quirks and "mental regulating" of members of the group.

[44] Rather than regarding himself as an essentialist like Iris Murdoch or an existentialist like Jean-Paul Sartre, Botting has described himself as an extensionist: all things, including human understanding, can be explained as extensions of mind and body in space and time.

[46] In September 1961, Botting left Canada for Hong Kong initially to become a missionary for Jehovah's Witnesses; but he had to support himself, and soon became first a proofreader and then a full-time reporter for the South China Morning Post.

He became fast friends with Farley Mowat and wrote several features about the popular author, describing their shared escapades on The Happy Adventure ("The Boat that Wouldn't Float"), including speculation as to whether sharks had invaded Lake Ontario via the newly opened St. Lawrence Seaway.

A sequel to the dramatic poems of Aeschylus and Shelley, Botting's version of the myth portrays Prometheus' punishment for granting man access to nuclear energy.

"[64] Botting studied drama, including dramaturgy, in 1971–72 as a minor for his Ph.D. in English Literature, and a decade later received the Master of Fine Arts in playwriting from University of Alberta.

Several of his plays were produced by the drama department, including his thesis production, Whatever Happened to Saint Joanne?, exposing the tendency of fundamental Christian ministers to exploit promising members of their sects.

Edmonton Journal theater critic Keith Ashwell called Saint Joanne an "incredibly imaginative play": "In dramatizing his experiences he has written a very disquieting piece, that becomes positively uncomfortable at the end.

"[65] Botting's most popular award-winning plays were Crux (1983), about a nude woman who steadfastly refuses to be talked down out of her tree by her materialistic husband;[66] Winston Agonistes (1984), a sequel to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four;[67] and Fathers, first produced in a federal penitentiary by William Head on Stage in Victoria, British Columbia in 1993.

[68] There, a Canadian journalist in Hong Kong, having entered Mao's China illegally to get a story on the refugee problem, finds himself imprisoned and facing serious charges.

from Trent University with a joint major in philosophy and English literature,[75] then obtained his Master of Arts degree in English from Memorial University of Newfoundland,[76] where his focus was largely on Shakespearean authorship and textual criticism, proposing that "Gulielmus Shaksper" of Stratford was virtually illiterate (as were his children), while "William Shake-speare" was the pen name of Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford and Lord Great Chamberlain of England, a polyglot with formal training in Latin and Greek and experience travelling continental Europe, especially France and Italy.

He was later remembered by college librarian and fellow thespian Paul Boultbee (who had acted in Botting's plays Crux (1983)[81] and Winston Agonistes (1984))[82] as being a "creative, rebellious faculty member.

[86] While first setting up his law practice in Victoria in the early 1990s he taught creative writing and English literature at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.

In 1985, Botting came to national attention when he warned of a threat to academic freedom after James Keegstra was fired from his job and criminally charged with spreading hatred against an identifiable group.

[88] When he was in second year, the Law Society of Alberta "investigated" Botting for representing Howard Pursley, an alleged white supremacist refugee claimant who was eventually flown directly from Calgary to Texas in a form of disguised extradition later known as extraordinary rendition.

[90] In his third year, Botting was enlisted by Calgary lawyers Don McLeod and Noel O'Brien to assist them with research in connection with the extradition of Charles Ng—who faced the death penalty for allegedly murdering as many as 25 men, women and children in California.

That year Botting also represented the first dozen Chinese students in Canada to be granted refugee status after they publicly protested China's 1989 clampdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.

[92][93] Notable clients whom Botting has represented include Dorothy Grey-Vik, who five decades after the fact successfully sued her parents' former hired hand for repeatedly raping her, beginning when she was a prepubescent school girl, making her his "sex slave" for two years and fathering her two children (born when she was twelve and thirteen, respectively)[94]—with her parents' complacency and complicity;[95] Gerald Gervasoni, extradited to Florida to face trial for the murder of his girlfriend, whose body was found stuffed under her mother's bed;[96] Patrick Kelly, an RCMP officer convicted of first degree murder for tossing his wife off a 17th story balcony in Toronto who sued the Correctional Service of Canada for negligence for housing him at Kingston Penitentiary without regard to risk arising from his previous status as a police officer;[97] James Ernest Ponton, charged with second degree murder after shooting his victim twice in the back—who was acquitted by a jury on the basis of Botting's argument of self-defence;[98] Clifford Edwards, for whom Botting sought a moratorium on extradition from the Minister of Justice on the grounds that the Canada-US Extradition Treaty has never been ratified by Parliament;[99] Karlheinz Schreiber, a German-born Canadian entrepreneur who fought extradition from Canada for nearly a decade;[3][100] friends of Marc Emery, a cannabis policy reform activist who consented to his extradition to the United States;[101] Mark Wilson, who won his 2011 extradition appeal on the basis that the extradition judge had refused to admit important evidence;[102][103] the family of Dr. Asha Goel, an Ontario obstetrician murdered in her sleep while visiting her brother's house in Mumbai, India—the Canadian component of the investigation having been squelched by the Department of Justice;[104][105] Emmanuel Alviar, who received a one-month jail sentence for his part in the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot in Vancouver;[106][107][108][109] Sean Doak, who fought extradition to the United States for allegedly leading a drug smuggling ring while incarcerated in a federal penitentiary;[110] Brinder Rai, a Calgary man who sued his grandfather (since deceased) and other relatives for allegedly conspiring to shoot him in the back at close range with a shotgun in an "honour killing" attempt;[111][112][113] Donald Boutilier, for whom Botting successfully challenged the constitutionality of dangerous offender legislation in the British Columbia Supreme Court,[114] a challenge rejected by the B.C.

"The other half could sign onto the new UMET in due course, once they met specific minimal standards of justice, including protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.