1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:34,121 --> 00:00:37,428 [man] Buying an original work of art, there's something special about it 4 00:00:37,472 --> 00:00:43,260 because you know at some point in time, that artist was present with that piece of work. 5 00:00:43,304 --> 00:00:46,263 You are in the company of that artist's spirit, in a way. 6 00:00:49,658 --> 00:00:52,095 [Norval] Many times people come up to me and say, 7 00:00:52,139 --> 00:00:55,142 "Norval, I thank you very much for healing me." 8 00:00:55,925 --> 00:00:59,233 What did it? That certain painting. 9 00:00:59,276 --> 00:01:04,890 It will be a force that will protect whatever situation you're in. 10 00:01:12,550 --> 00:01:15,771 [man] Norval Morrisseau, they call him the Picasso of the North. 11 00:01:17,207 --> 00:01:23,083 [man] Norval Morrisseau is a... a spiritual supernova. You know, a dynamo. 12 00:01:29,132 --> 00:01:31,482 [man] Where Morrisseau was trying to lift people up, 13 00:01:31,526 --> 00:01:36,096 but there were people who have been poisoning Morrisseau's legacy. 14 00:01:55,419 --> 00:01:59,597 [man] I feel in this story, I'm-- I'm just a little like Alice in Wonderland. 15 00:02:00,424 --> 00:02:02,644 I went through the little door, 16 00:02:03,210 --> 00:02:07,649 and it's just opened up to this whole, like, "Wow." 17 00:02:08,389 --> 00:02:10,565 I just wanted to buy a painting, really. 18 00:03:12,670 --> 00:03:16,631 [man] Kevin Hearn all of a sudden come out of the woodwork and decided to sue. 19 00:03:16,674 --> 00:03:20,765 He's gonna be spending a lot of money on lawyers. But he's got no hope in hell. 20 00:03:24,378 --> 00:03:27,859 Jonathan Somner, who's his lawyer - he's a scumbag. 21 00:03:27,903 --> 00:03:29,774 -[man] How come? -Yeah, he's just a sleaze ball. 22 00:03:29,818 --> 00:03:33,343 Part of me's just like, "Who are these people," you know? 23 00:03:34,388 --> 00:03:36,607 -[man] It's a circus. -[man] Yeah, it's a circus. 24 00:03:37,347 --> 00:03:40,350 Yeah this is-- this is-- this is complicated, yes. 25 00:03:43,571 --> 00:03:47,923 [man] Jim White, he owns, uh, more contested Morrisseaus 26 00:03:47,966 --> 00:03:49,881 than any other person in this country, 27 00:03:49,925 --> 00:03:52,057 and, uh, I wish him the worst. 28 00:03:56,323 --> 00:04:00,979 That's when I went into the gallery, I bought my painting. 29 00:04:02,764 --> 00:04:04,156 I bought my painting. 30 00:04:07,029 --> 00:04:07,856 Okay. 31 00:04:11,773 --> 00:04:15,690 I've never seen anything like this in my career. Very strange. 32 00:04:18,954 --> 00:04:22,827 [man] The value of a Morrisseau will only rise to what it was 33 00:04:22,871 --> 00:04:26,396 when all the people involved in these cases are dead. 34 00:04:27,397 --> 00:04:29,269 Sad, but true. 35 00:04:43,805 --> 00:04:48,113 Norval Morrisseau has huge significance - he's really a trail-blazer. 36 00:04:52,727 --> 00:04:57,471 [man] He's one of our most successful Indigenous artists ever. 37 00:04:58,123 --> 00:05:02,519 His significance obviously expands globally, 38 00:05:03,215 --> 00:05:06,349 to be included in exhibitions internationally-- 39 00:05:06,393 --> 00:05:12,312 [speaking in foreign language] 40 00:05:15,097 --> 00:05:19,623 [Greg] --to the reports of, uh, Marc Chagall and Picasso 41 00:05:19,667 --> 00:05:21,886 viewing his work and commenting on it. 42 00:05:23,410 --> 00:05:27,109 He's the first contemporary Indigenous artist 43 00:05:27,152 --> 00:05:31,113 to have had a commercial, uh, gallery exhibition. 44 00:05:32,201 --> 00:05:35,987 [presenter] It's Norval Morrisseau, a 31-year-old Ojibwe painter 45 00:05:36,031 --> 00:05:39,643 whose works were publicly displayed for the first time last week. 46 00:05:39,687 --> 00:05:41,863 [woman] What is your-- your name? 47 00:05:41,906 --> 00:05:46,346 Copper Thunderbird. 48 00:05:47,042 --> 00:05:48,739 It's, uh-- 49 00:05:48,783 --> 00:05:51,525 But if you want to say it in-- in Ojibwe, Ozaawaabiko-binesi. 50 00:05:51,568 --> 00:05:53,831 -Ozaawaabiko-binesi. -No. 51 00:05:53,875 --> 00:05:55,877 No. Not even close, eh? 52 00:05:57,618 --> 00:06:02,231 His work is so unusual, it is, uh, representational 53 00:06:02,274 --> 00:06:07,192 but yet it, uh, kind of plays with these figures that they've never seen before. 54 00:06:10,674 --> 00:06:13,808 [man] The art public was really amazed with the idea 55 00:06:13,851 --> 00:06:15,418 that here is an artist from, you know, 56 00:06:15,462 --> 00:06:17,768 so-called the-- the backwoods of Northern Ontario, 57 00:06:17,812 --> 00:06:22,730 doing something that they could interpret as modernizing ancient traditions. 58 00:06:24,732 --> 00:06:27,038 [Carmen] To me, he was a very flamboyant man. 59 00:06:27,082 --> 00:06:30,390 Every woman in the room was attracted to Morrisseau, 60 00:06:30,433 --> 00:06:34,437 and you couldn't help but be drawn to him because he was so charismatic. 61 00:06:36,265 --> 00:06:40,530 [Gerald] His art was very much about his culture, 62 00:06:40,574 --> 00:06:43,098 the representations of stories 63 00:06:43,141 --> 00:06:47,885 of important mythic creatures and characters 64 00:06:47,929 --> 00:06:50,366 that make up the Anishnaabe world. 65 00:06:55,284 --> 00:06:58,418 Well, I do see Morrisseau as an art star. 66 00:07:02,465 --> 00:07:05,599 [man] He was the first First Nations artist 67 00:07:05,642 --> 00:07:10,430 to get his work out of the gift shops and into the galleries. 68 00:07:14,608 --> 00:07:19,439 But the people who are receptive to it, immediately they say, "Wow. 69 00:07:20,657 --> 00:07:21,615 Far out." 70 00:07:22,877 --> 00:07:25,183 Ah. Wow, you know. 71 00:07:25,227 --> 00:07:31,015 Miskwaabik Animikii, Cooper Thunderbird, uh-- grandfather, uh, mishoomis. 72 00:07:31,668 --> 00:07:34,671 He's the founder, man, he's the godfather of what we do, man. 73 00:07:35,542 --> 00:07:40,634 First you would drive me down to the pits of the bottom of hell by your missionaries, 74 00:07:40,677 --> 00:07:44,376 and then later on, you'll lift me up with medals. 75 00:07:44,420 --> 00:07:46,596 And no matter what I want... 76 00:07:46,640 --> 00:07:50,818 He really understood the force and the power that he had, and-- and played with that. 77 00:07:50,861 --> 00:07:55,257 In the same way he was really pushing art in new directions, 78 00:07:55,300 --> 00:07:59,827 he was pushing the way people thought of Indigenous people in new directions also. 79 00:08:38,474 --> 00:08:43,827 This booth is, uh, showcasing Norval Morrisseau and Christian Morrisseau artwork. 80 00:08:43,871 --> 00:08:49,572 We have original pieces, we have serigraphs, regular prints, T-shirts, for that matter. 81 00:08:49,616 --> 00:08:54,316 We're here just to show him off and, uh, hopefully attract people to his work. 82 00:08:56,405 --> 00:08:58,407 [man] There are all these claims 83 00:08:58,450 --> 00:09:00,540 that there are a bunch of fake Morrisseaus floating around out there. 84 00:09:00,583 --> 00:09:01,410 Do you believe that? 85 00:09:02,977 --> 00:09:05,849 It's hard to believe, you know, and I-- you know, it's-- 86 00:09:05,893 --> 00:09:10,288 it's not, uh-- you know, there could be or there can't be. 87 00:09:10,332 --> 00:09:13,770 But at the bottom line, the very bottom line, 88 00:09:13,814 --> 00:09:18,427 it's always up to the, uh, buyer, on who's gonna buy the artwork, 89 00:09:18,470 --> 00:09:22,474 who's gonna fork out the money for it, you know, do they believe. 90 00:09:25,129 --> 00:09:30,091 Basically, as of right now, that's all they are considered to be - accusations. 91 00:09:30,134 --> 00:09:33,398 'Cause nothing has been proven in a court of law. 92 00:09:42,059 --> 00:09:45,976 [man] The painting I bought in 2005 from Joe McLeod 93 00:09:46,020 --> 00:09:48,370 was called Spirit Energy of Mother Earth. 94 00:09:51,852 --> 00:09:57,205 Before I bought the painting, I'd read in the papers and I'd read online, "Be careful," 95 00:09:57,248 --> 00:10:00,295 you know, "There's-- there's fake Morrisseaus out there." 96 00:10:04,081 --> 00:10:08,956 The gallery was called Maslak McLeod. It was in Yorkville. 97 00:10:09,521 --> 00:10:11,741 Not only did he have Morrisseau paintings, 98 00:10:11,785 --> 00:10:15,136 but he also represented Morrisseau's sons. 99 00:10:15,179 --> 00:10:19,575 And so I thought, "Oh, okay, this is a safe place." 100 00:10:19,619 --> 00:10:23,274 Little did I know, you know, the spider web was around me. 101 00:10:24,928 --> 00:10:28,062 Twenty thousand was the price. 102 00:10:36,461 --> 00:10:40,335 Since 1995, I've been with the Barenaked Ladies. 103 00:10:40,378 --> 00:10:43,686 ♪ If all else fails You can blame it on me♪ 104 00:10:46,907 --> 00:10:50,867 ♪ If all else fails You can blame it on me♪ 105 00:10:50,911 --> 00:10:53,914 [Kevin] We've sold over fifteen million records. 106 00:10:53,957 --> 00:10:56,568 We were nominated for a couple Grammys. 107 00:10:57,395 --> 00:11:00,877 We also did the theme song for the Big Bang Theory show. 108 00:11:00,921 --> 00:11:05,490 ♪ If all else fails You can blame it on me♪ 109 00:11:05,534 --> 00:11:09,625 So twenty grand at that time wasn't-- wasn't a huge deal for me. 110 00:11:17,851 --> 00:11:19,069 There she is. 111 00:11:19,853 --> 00:11:22,420 I think I had it about three or four years. 112 00:11:26,033 --> 00:11:29,210 The AGO, the Art Gallery of Ontario, 113 00:11:29,253 --> 00:11:33,214 wanted people from the art community to curate a show, 114 00:11:34,389 --> 00:11:38,828 including works from that person's private collection. 115 00:11:39,786 --> 00:11:42,005 I was excited to do it. 116 00:11:42,049 --> 00:11:46,140 The Spirit Energy was one of the-- the larger pieces in the show. 117 00:11:46,183 --> 00:11:48,708 A few days later, I got a call. 118 00:11:50,753 --> 00:11:54,278 "Kevin, I have bad news, we had to take your painting down. 119 00:11:54,322 --> 00:11:59,631 Gerald McMaster, who was the head curator of Canadian Art at the time, 120 00:11:59,675 --> 00:12:01,677 believes it's a fake." 121 00:12:03,679 --> 00:12:06,813 I threw up cautionary flags and contacted Kevin, 122 00:12:06,856 --> 00:12:11,948 who I think started questioning are these works actually authentic. 123 00:12:16,387 --> 00:12:17,954 [man] This is Joe McLeod. 124 00:12:25,440 --> 00:12:31,011 And Joe said, "Kevin, if I give you your money back, 125 00:12:31,054 --> 00:12:36,581 that will set off a series of events that will result in the closing of my gallery." 126 00:12:37,147 --> 00:12:42,283 And he said, "Kevin, can you show me one court case 127 00:12:42,326 --> 00:12:45,025 where they found that a painting is fake?" 128 00:12:46,069 --> 00:12:48,202 I said, "No, not that I know of." 129 00:12:48,245 --> 00:12:53,773 He goes, "Well, then there's no fakes. And I'm sorry that I can't help you." 130 00:12:54,643 --> 00:12:56,253 And then he showed me the door. 131 00:13:00,170 --> 00:13:06,089 I felt, "Okay. This guy ripped me off, and he's probably ripped a lot of people off." 132 00:13:20,277 --> 00:13:24,847 Everything Joe stood for was his love of art 133 00:13:24,891 --> 00:13:27,502 and his love of the art of Norval Morrisseau. 134 00:13:27,545 --> 00:13:31,593 He didn't look to gain financially 135 00:13:31,636 --> 00:13:33,856 from Norval Morrisseau at all, 136 00:13:33,900 --> 00:13:39,253 he only wanted to gain, uh, spiritually from the artwork of Norval Morrisseau. 137 00:13:39,296 --> 00:13:40,776 [interviewer] Well, he did sell it. 138 00:13:41,690 --> 00:13:46,173 Yeah, Joe sold, uh, Morrisseau's art, 139 00:13:46,216 --> 00:13:48,349 but I think it was more important to him 140 00:13:48,392 --> 00:13:51,395 that he, um, that he-- he-- 141 00:13:51,439 --> 00:13:54,572 he had a genuine love of Morrisseau's art. 142 00:13:54,616 --> 00:13:59,577 And-- and yes, he was also somebody who was trying to earn a living selling art, 143 00:13:59,621 --> 00:14:02,972 and what better way to do it than to sell art that you love? 144 00:14:04,017 --> 00:14:08,630 The only way for me to now continue my conversation with Joe 145 00:14:08,673 --> 00:14:13,243 is through legal channels. 146 00:14:15,680 --> 00:14:18,596 Joe and his lawyer came out swinging. 147 00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:22,296 Kevin Hearn is a very, uh, 148 00:14:22,339 --> 00:14:26,778 well-respected and loved artist in this country, 149 00:14:26,822 --> 00:14:31,435 and he deserves that. Um, I've met him, he's a gentleman. 150 00:14:31,479 --> 00:14:35,918 They threatened that if I couldn't prove it, they would come after me. 151 00:14:37,572 --> 00:14:42,925 [Brian] Because his case was in the paper, because of who he is, 152 00:14:42,969 --> 00:14:48,148 there were allegations in his pleading that linked to Joe 153 00:14:48,191 --> 00:14:51,151 as somehow being involved in a fraud ring. 154 00:14:54,328 --> 00:14:59,986 [man] You can look at this case as being a simple tale about a single painting that's fake. 155 00:15:01,726 --> 00:15:07,645 But to tell the story of how that happened, you have to get into a much bigger story. 156 00:15:09,778 --> 00:15:12,694 Kevin Hearn wanted to find out the truth 157 00:15:12,737 --> 00:15:15,349 about where the painting came from, warts and all. 158 00:15:26,664 --> 00:15:28,666 [Kevin] Lots of crazy shit happened here, though. 159 00:15:32,627 --> 00:15:36,152 This is where I lived a hell every day for years. 160 00:15:51,515 --> 00:15:55,867 Before I went and met Joe McLeod, I asked him in writing, 161 00:15:55,911 --> 00:16:01,525 I said, "I really need a list of the provenance of this painting." 162 00:16:02,874 --> 00:16:08,097 Provenance traces the history of the painting backwards to the artist, 163 00:16:08,141 --> 00:16:09,969 so you can see who owned it. 164 00:16:11,622 --> 00:16:16,149 So Joe McLeod, uh, gave me a list of provenance, 165 00:16:17,106 --> 00:16:22,503 so we have Rolf Schneider, Robert Voss, 166 00:16:22,546 --> 00:16:25,549 and Irving Jacobs. 167 00:16:25,593 --> 00:16:30,424 Rolf Schneider, an art collector, well-known in the Thunder Bay area, 168 00:16:30,467 --> 00:16:34,515 has never seen this painting, and he's never owned it. 169 00:16:34,558 --> 00:16:39,085 Robert Voss doesn't exist. 170 00:16:39,955 --> 00:16:41,652 Irving Jacobs? 171 00:16:41,696 --> 00:16:44,612 He's never seen my painting or owned it. 172 00:16:45,221 --> 00:16:50,052 So now we have this provenance that is rubbish. 173 00:16:52,794 --> 00:16:56,102 [Brian] I believe Joe genuinely believed the sources, 174 00:16:56,145 --> 00:17:00,976 but there's no question that there's controversy about where they came from particularly, 175 00:17:01,020 --> 00:17:04,936 which is not unusual in-- in the secondary art market 176 00:17:04,980 --> 00:17:09,419 for Picasso, for Dali, and for Norval Morrisseau. 177 00:17:09,463 --> 00:17:12,031 It's just-- it's a reality of the marketplace. 178 00:17:15,295 --> 00:17:21,083 At some point, somewhere, somehow, there were a grouping of paintings. 179 00:17:21,127 --> 00:17:25,000 The timeframe when they were painted appears to be in the mid to late '70s. 180 00:17:26,045 --> 00:17:31,746 And some of that, what I'll call species of paintings, were not very well done. 181 00:17:31,789 --> 00:17:34,879 And the source of these paintings are in dispute. 182 00:17:36,707 --> 00:17:41,103 [Jonathan] After we filed our statement of claim and served it on Mr. McLeod, 183 00:17:41,147 --> 00:17:45,107 the defense, in our view, showed a new story 184 00:17:45,151 --> 00:17:47,153 about where the painting came from. 185 00:17:47,196 --> 00:17:49,546 And the defense talked about Randy Potter 186 00:17:49,590 --> 00:17:53,942 running the auction that the painting had allegedly come through. 187 00:17:53,985 --> 00:17:56,684 I have fourteen. Fifteen... 188 00:17:56,727 --> 00:17:59,208 [Brian] I believe that that painting of Kevin Hearn's 189 00:17:59,252 --> 00:18:03,778 was purchased by Joe McLeod from Potter Auctions directly. 190 00:18:04,518 --> 00:18:07,260 I actually sold that painting to Joe McLeod, 191 00:18:08,652 --> 00:18:11,394 2,500 dollars, that was the price. 192 00:18:12,787 --> 00:18:17,792 I think I got a deal. 20,000. What a steal. 193 00:18:21,665 --> 00:18:26,496 In pursuing this litigation, that cost to Kevin's has been several times 194 00:18:26,540 --> 00:18:29,543 the cost of purchasing the painting in the first place. 195 00:18:37,986 --> 00:18:43,165 [Kevin] I began to see footage online of Randy Potter auctioning off paintings 196 00:18:43,209 --> 00:18:47,474 and I began thinking, "Wow, how many people have bought fake paintings?" 197 00:18:47,517 --> 00:18:51,173 People that probably don't want me to prove this, 198 00:18:51,217 --> 00:18:53,349 they don't want the truth to come out, 199 00:18:53,393 --> 00:18:57,397 because then their paintings are only worth 300 dollars. 200 00:19:00,182 --> 00:19:05,100 [man] Over the years, we'd evolved from selling quite a few paintings by Group of Seven 201 00:19:05,144 --> 00:19:08,190 and established artists like that, and concentrating on, uh, 202 00:19:08,234 --> 00:19:10,671 the best contemporary artists we can represent. 203 00:19:15,719 --> 00:19:18,374 I felt like a friend to Norval, a real friend. 204 00:19:18,418 --> 00:19:23,945 And we became his exclusive dealer for, uh, nineteen or so years, until he died. 205 00:19:28,341 --> 00:19:32,997 I became aware of a large number of paintings that were being sold at auctions. 206 00:19:33,041 --> 00:19:38,742 They were all from the 1970s, and paintings by Norval from the 1970s were in fact 207 00:19:38,786 --> 00:19:40,744 relatively rare in the market. 208 00:19:42,311 --> 00:19:45,096 The number of paintings that came out became suspicious. 209 00:19:49,362 --> 00:19:52,234 Randy Potter here with my son Jordan, 210 00:19:52,278 --> 00:19:54,802 we're gonna show off this beautiful Norval Morrisseau. 211 00:19:56,630 --> 00:19:58,501 Okay, come around, Jordan. 212 00:20:04,072 --> 00:20:06,248 [interviewer] Tell me about your businesses. 213 00:20:06,292 --> 00:20:10,296 What businesses? All my businesses? You don't wanna know all my businesses. 214 00:20:11,601 --> 00:20:15,431 Worked at GM for twenty years, then quit there, became an auctioneer, 215 00:20:16,389 --> 00:20:19,174 and now I just own a restaurant. 216 00:20:21,002 --> 00:20:22,612 The rest is history. 217 00:20:22,656 --> 00:20:25,180 Twenty-five hundred? And we have twenty-five hundred, right here. 218 00:20:25,224 --> 00:20:26,355 Twenty-five hundred. 219 00:20:28,139 --> 00:20:30,881 The art thing started, basically, with the Norval Morrisseau stuff. 220 00:20:33,623 --> 00:20:37,540 Didn't know much about him, I heard his name, and I put him through my auction, 221 00:20:37,584 --> 00:20:40,543 and we did pretty good with him the first-- first day, 222 00:20:40,587 --> 00:20:44,721 and then, once it started getting decent money for the Norval Morrisseaus, 223 00:20:44,765 --> 00:20:48,159 and sometimes really good money for the Morrisseaus, and it would catch on, 224 00:20:48,203 --> 00:20:53,034 and so it started turning into more of a more upper class auction, I guess it was. 225 00:20:53,077 --> 00:20:55,950 [man] Look at the frigging frieze, get it closer with the frieze. 226 00:20:55,993 --> 00:20:58,126 This thing's awesome, man. 227 00:20:59,693 --> 00:21:04,306 [interviewer] Tell me about how important a part of your business the Morrisseaus became. 228 00:21:04,350 --> 00:21:08,832 Oh, he probably became eighty percent of my-- my revenue for an auction. 229 00:21:14,098 --> 00:21:17,058 [Don] Every time there was an auction, maybe every week or so, 230 00:21:17,101 --> 00:21:21,018 I'd count the number of paintings that were there and made a note, 231 00:21:21,062 --> 00:21:23,934 and after a while, I got up to 800 paintings. 232 00:21:23,978 --> 00:21:26,937 This is too many and they don't look quite right. 233 00:21:29,026 --> 00:21:32,029 [interviewer] Over the course of your auction, your career, 234 00:21:32,073 --> 00:21:33,814 how many Morrisseaus did you sell, roughly? 235 00:21:33,857 --> 00:21:35,816 Probably 1,500 to 2,000. 236 00:21:35,859 --> 00:21:37,426 In that ballpark area. 237 00:21:38,645 --> 00:21:41,822 We went probably from making two or three hundred thousand a year 238 00:21:41,865 --> 00:21:44,390 to making, you know, one to two million dollars a year. 239 00:21:46,522 --> 00:21:48,742 It was the best thing to ever happen to me in my life. 240 00:21:54,095 --> 00:22:00,144 We decided to really delve into the-- into the whole problem of authenticity, and in this case, 241 00:22:00,188 --> 00:22:02,364 of the ones from Randy Potter Auctions. 242 00:22:02,408 --> 00:22:04,671 They did have some unique characteristics, 243 00:22:04,714 --> 00:22:07,195 which we didn't see in Norval's originals. 244 00:22:10,894 --> 00:22:12,461 Oh my lord. 245 00:22:12,505 --> 00:22:15,159 [Don] Many of the creatures that were in the images, 246 00:22:15,203 --> 00:22:19,338 they were very fiery-toothed, multi-toothed, sharp teeth. 247 00:22:19,381 --> 00:22:20,861 Eugh. 248 00:22:22,776 --> 00:22:25,909 They're creatures eating other creatures, stuck under rocks underground. 249 00:22:25,953 --> 00:22:29,739 It's what Norval called lower plane astral work. 250 00:22:29,783 --> 00:22:35,266 It looks like a-- an aquarium, a nightmare aquarium to me. Terrible. 251 00:22:50,064 --> 00:22:54,285 [Don] With the suspicious paintings, sometimes even the color schemes didn't seem right. 252 00:22:54,329 --> 00:22:59,247 The colors seemed to be not as bright. Perhaps muddier. 253 00:23:01,380 --> 00:23:05,558 He never used a green like that. Isn't that an awful green? 254 00:23:11,302 --> 00:23:14,871 [Ritchie] Norval Morrisseau and I were working together very intensely, 255 00:23:14,915 --> 00:23:20,573 uh, from September 9th, 1979 until, uh, 1981. 256 00:23:21,791 --> 00:23:25,316 On the first day that I met Norval Morrisseau, he said to me, 257 00:23:25,360 --> 00:23:28,711 "Stardreamer, where have you been? I've been looking for you everywhere." 258 00:23:28,755 --> 00:23:31,322 And that was the name that he gave me. 259 00:23:35,762 --> 00:23:40,462 I mixed his paints. The less white we could get into a color, the better. 260 00:23:42,725 --> 00:23:47,251 [Norval] To me, I just put the color I like. If I want to put purple here, I put purple there, 261 00:23:47,295 --> 00:23:49,602 I want to put blue, I put blue. 262 00:23:49,645 --> 00:23:53,127 You know, I-- I just don't say that's the color I want to put, I just put the color under. 263 00:23:55,042 --> 00:23:58,393 But these fake paintings were milky. 264 00:23:58,437 --> 00:24:01,527 White had been mixed in liberally into the paint. 265 00:24:04,181 --> 00:24:08,621 Norval would do the-- the drawing on a bare canvas, put in the colors, 266 00:24:08,664 --> 00:24:12,320 do the lining on top, do layers on top of those colors. 267 00:24:17,020 --> 00:24:21,895 For the most part, these guys were doing their sketch right on the canvas, 268 00:24:21,938 --> 00:24:25,333 doing the black lines, then filling in the colors on top of the black. 269 00:24:26,595 --> 00:24:31,382 They missed everything, really, that was Morrisseau, from my perspective. 270 00:24:37,258 --> 00:24:42,263 Eight hundred? Eight hundred? Seven fifty, eight hundred. 271 00:24:43,046 --> 00:24:46,093 [Randy] For ten years, the Morrisseau paintings were selling very well. 272 00:24:46,572 --> 00:24:50,053 [interviewer] Who were some of the galleries and collectors you were mainly dealing with? 273 00:24:50,097 --> 00:24:54,580 Uh, Joe McLeod from Maslak McLeod Galleries, uh, Jim White. 274 00:24:56,843 --> 00:24:58,888 He was one of my bigger buyers. 275 00:24:58,932 --> 00:25:02,413 [interviewer] When did people first start talking about fake Morrisseaus? 276 00:25:02,457 --> 00:25:08,376 That was, uh, 2000, 2001. And all of a sudden, they're fakes. 277 00:25:08,419 --> 00:25:10,160 And really killed the market. 278 00:25:13,773 --> 00:25:15,383 Don Robinson started it. 279 00:25:17,690 --> 00:25:21,215 Well, his prices say he was sold the painting for 30,000, and I'm selling them for five. 280 00:25:21,258 --> 00:25:24,566 Now, people are gonna come to my auction and buy paintings 281 00:25:24,610 --> 00:25:27,482 before they're gonna go to his place and buy retail. 282 00:25:27,526 --> 00:25:31,181 Who's gonna spend thirty grand when you can buy six of them at my place for thirty grand? 283 00:25:31,225 --> 00:25:33,009 -[woman] Yep! -Thirty five. 284 00:25:33,923 --> 00:25:37,753 [man] So Robinson goes to the National Post, gives his bullshit story. 285 00:25:39,320 --> 00:25:44,151 "Oh, I've discovered this auction house selling Norval Morrisseau paintings, 286 00:25:44,194 --> 00:25:45,544 but I wouldn't buy there. 287 00:25:47,633 --> 00:25:51,027 Because they're, you know, only we are the authentic one for Norval Morrisseau. 288 00:25:51,071 --> 00:25:56,946 And the National Post does this article with images of Jim White's Morrisseau paintings. 289 00:26:01,995 --> 00:26:05,346 [interviewer] Tell me about Kinsman Robinson and the competition. 290 00:26:05,389 --> 00:26:09,263 I'm sorry, who? This is where this is going? 291 00:26:09,306 --> 00:26:11,004 [interviewer] I'm sorry, no, I'm just... 292 00:26:11,047 --> 00:26:13,615 No. Who? That's as far as you'll get. 293 00:26:13,659 --> 00:26:15,748 [interviewer] I see. You don't want to tell me about... 294 00:26:15,791 --> 00:26:16,923 I'm sorry, what? 295 00:26:19,621 --> 00:26:21,754 Don Robinson was a greedy, greedy man. 296 00:26:21,797 --> 00:26:23,886 [interviewer] What was he trying to do? 297 00:26:23,930 --> 00:26:26,541 He was trying to corner the market. He was trying to basically corner the market. 298 00:26:26,585 --> 00:26:27,586 The white man. 299 00:26:29,152 --> 00:26:30,676 You know, where Morrisseau always talks about the white man 300 00:26:30,719 --> 00:26:32,634 and the white man ripped him off. 301 00:26:32,678 --> 00:26:35,898 It was basically one person who ripped him off more than anything. 302 00:26:35,942 --> 00:26:37,465 And that was Don Robinson. 303 00:26:39,728 --> 00:26:41,904 It's a shame. 304 00:26:41,948 --> 00:26:45,255 Everything they say about me, basically, is-- it was... it was just... just not true. 305 00:26:45,952 --> 00:26:47,910 I started really getting the sense 306 00:26:47,954 --> 00:26:52,785 that there was a real ongoing feud with different factions. 307 00:26:56,919 --> 00:27:01,054 [Jonathan] There is a huge cast of characters 308 00:27:01,097 --> 00:27:07,016 who appear at the court dates who write blogs, 309 00:27:07,060 --> 00:27:13,066 um, who will viciously attack you online. 310 00:27:15,242 --> 00:27:17,461 [interviewer] When you say, "We took them on..." 311 00:27:17,505 --> 00:27:22,031 Well, the people that, like Joe McLeod, Joe Otavnik, um, 312 00:27:22,075 --> 00:27:27,341 Jim-- Jim White, um, the Goldis, John Goldi and Joan Goldi. 313 00:27:27,384 --> 00:27:28,385 They fought back. 314 00:27:30,387 --> 00:27:32,607 Keep your fucking camera off me. 315 00:27:32,651 --> 00:27:33,782 [man] Oh, sorry. 316 00:27:35,262 --> 00:27:39,048 I think they're just people who have financial interests 317 00:27:39,092 --> 00:27:42,878 in the authenticity of these paintings, 318 00:27:42,922 --> 00:27:48,188 that may be indirectly implicated in these lawsuits. 319 00:27:50,669 --> 00:27:54,585 [interviewer] What proportion of your business does Morrisseau represent? 320 00:27:54,629 --> 00:27:59,242 I would say approximately a hundred percent of my business is Morrisseaus. 321 00:27:59,286 --> 00:28:02,593 I've dealt in approximately 189 Morrisseaus. 322 00:28:02,637 --> 00:28:04,552 But who's keeping track. 323 00:28:07,729 --> 00:28:11,211 I gave some money to help with the lawyers and stuff like that, yeah, we all did. 324 00:28:11,254 --> 00:28:16,390 It was just a little group of us that used to give out money to help the other guy. 325 00:28:16,433 --> 00:28:18,697 I guess it was only a fair thing to do, right? 326 00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:28,445 Well, the feud, what's fascinating about it is that it involves so many characters. 327 00:28:28,489 --> 00:28:31,361 Good, back, ugly, there are lots of them. 328 00:28:33,755 --> 00:28:37,019 There are people like Ritchie Sinclair 329 00:28:37,063 --> 00:28:39,979 who has brought a lot of controversy to the table. 330 00:28:42,068 --> 00:28:44,070 What about Ritchie Sinclair? 331 00:28:44,113 --> 00:28:47,508 [interviewer] Can you tell me about what he tried to do to the-- to the market. 332 00:28:47,551 --> 00:28:48,814 No. 333 00:28:48,857 --> 00:28:50,685 [interviewer] You don't want to discuss that. 334 00:28:50,729 --> 00:28:52,556 There are matters before the court. 335 00:28:55,429 --> 00:28:59,650 I identified Jim White on morrisseau.com, specifically. 336 00:28:59,694 --> 00:29:04,220 I said, "Did you buy this fake Morrisseau painting from Mr. White?" 337 00:29:08,964 --> 00:29:14,840 My first impression of Ritchie was, "Is this guy a nut, or, you know, what's going on?" 338 00:29:14,883 --> 00:29:17,494 So, but he had come prepared, 339 00:29:17,538 --> 00:29:21,847 and he had things to show me that were solid ideas. 340 00:29:23,109 --> 00:29:28,375 I saw some inferior Morrisseau-esque paintings on the internet 341 00:29:28,418 --> 00:29:30,551 that I knew weren't done by Norval. 342 00:29:30,594 --> 00:29:34,511 A dozen or more legitimate Canadian galleries, 343 00:29:34,555 --> 00:29:37,210 some of them top flight galleries, were carrying them. 344 00:29:37,253 --> 00:29:42,563 A dozen or more galleries, quote gallery-- eBay channels. 345 00:29:42,606 --> 00:29:47,263 Some people contacted me, hassled me for being quiet about it, uh, 346 00:29:47,307 --> 00:29:50,832 "Stardreamer, the silence is deafening, why won't you say anything? 347 00:29:50,876 --> 00:29:52,573 Why won't you stand up for your friend?" 348 00:29:54,793 --> 00:29:58,492 Once I decided I was gonna do something about it, I wasn't gonna screw around. 349 00:30:01,538 --> 00:30:05,455 And then, I proceeded to upload more than a thousand images 350 00:30:05,499 --> 00:30:08,719 of fake Morrisseau paintings to morrisseau.com. 351 00:30:11,548 --> 00:30:16,075 Inferior, counterfeit Morrisseau painting number one. 352 00:30:16,118 --> 00:30:19,252 Number two. Number three. Number four. 353 00:30:25,562 --> 00:30:27,826 I think the man's mentally unstable. 354 00:30:28,783 --> 00:30:33,005 Like I'm gonna set up a website and call Picasso's work fake? 355 00:30:33,048 --> 00:30:35,398 They're all-- they're all fake. I mean come on. 356 00:30:35,442 --> 00:30:41,187 I-- I just thought it was a joke and nobody would take it seriously, and I was wrong. 357 00:30:45,931 --> 00:30:47,802 Well, it devastated the market. 358 00:30:47,846 --> 00:30:50,239 All the art dealers were saying, "Oh, Joe, you gotta do something." 359 00:30:52,111 --> 00:30:54,591 [Ritchie] One month after I started putting them up, 360 00:30:54,635 --> 00:30:59,292 I was sued for seventeen million dollars by nine plaintiffs, 361 00:30:59,335 --> 00:31:02,599 of which, uh, five of them were... were galleries. 362 00:31:03,252 --> 00:31:06,734 And this Joe Otavnik, even though I had the seventeen- million-dollar lawsuit, 363 00:31:06,777 --> 00:31:07,996 he also sued me. 364 00:31:11,043 --> 00:31:15,351 [Joe] My family came from nothing, from a little country called Slovenia, 365 00:31:15,395 --> 00:31:18,137 and we were given the privilege to live in this country 366 00:31:18,180 --> 00:31:19,834 and what else can you ask for? 367 00:31:22,141 --> 00:31:26,232 He has no connection with the art world, he said he was a risk management specialist. 368 00:31:26,797 --> 00:31:31,846 But I also diversified into generators and combined heat and power systems. 369 00:31:31,890 --> 00:31:35,981 He claims under oath that he has more than fifty Morrisseau paintings. 370 00:31:36,024 --> 00:31:38,461 And here's your typical Spirit Bear. 371 00:31:38,505 --> 00:31:43,292 Young Thunderbird, exoskeleton style. Come on, I'll show you some more. 372 00:31:44,641 --> 00:31:49,124 I have probably around 35 Norval Morrisseau paintings. 373 00:31:49,168 --> 00:31:53,128 This is your typical Norval Morrisseau style too. 374 00:31:53,172 --> 00:31:56,305 There's the bird protecting the nest from the evil snake. 375 00:31:56,349 --> 00:32:01,310 He gives all these paintings away to family and friends to be used as tax benefits. 376 00:32:01,354 --> 00:32:05,532 I just, uh, bought, it could be a K-mark special, for all I know. 377 00:32:06,185 --> 00:32:10,406 And this here is my favourite one, Maurice "the Rocket" Richard. 378 00:32:11,190 --> 00:32:15,934 He sued me for putting an image of his painting on the internet. 379 00:32:19,415 --> 00:32:23,202 Anybody who has called my works fake, I've taken to court. 380 00:32:23,245 --> 00:32:24,681 [interviewer] So how many times... 381 00:32:24,725 --> 00:32:25,944 Oh, let's see, uh. 382 00:32:26,814 --> 00:32:28,859 Ritchie Sinclair, 383 00:32:28,903 --> 00:32:32,951 Kinsman Robinson I settled out of court, maybe two or three others. 384 00:32:34,691 --> 00:32:39,958 And I think I sued Ritchie's roommate, too. I believe. 385 00:32:41,655 --> 00:32:45,006 He sued my best and oldest friend, Mr. Garth Cole. 386 00:32:45,050 --> 00:32:47,400 -[interviewer] And wasn't that his lawyer? -Well-- 387 00:32:47,443 --> 00:32:51,360 Then he sued my lawyer, who represented me in federal court. 388 00:32:51,404 --> 00:32:53,841 Well, yes, well, his lawyer-- 389 00:32:53,884 --> 00:32:58,063 his lawyer, uh, Zak Muscovitch, yes. Yes. 390 00:32:58,106 --> 00:33:03,155 A lawyer by the name of Zak Muscovitch called me and hired me to be his lawyer. 391 00:33:03,198 --> 00:33:09,030 He was still going into court knowingly knowing that what he was representing was BS. 392 00:33:09,074 --> 00:33:11,380 Then he sued my lawyer's wife-- 393 00:33:11,424 --> 00:33:14,731 -[interviewer] And Muscovitch's wife? -I believe so, yes. 394 00:33:14,775 --> 00:33:17,430 For no legitimate purpose. 395 00:33:17,473 --> 00:33:19,780 [interviewer] And how did you come to understand the law? 396 00:33:19,823 --> 00:33:22,826 Oh, it's very simple. You call something fake, you have to prove it's fake. 397 00:33:22,870 --> 00:33:24,611 I don't have to prove it's real. 398 00:33:24,654 --> 00:33:28,049 And those were settled for two dollars, ultimately. 399 00:33:28,093 --> 00:33:31,052 When you go into court, you assume that people there know what they're doing, 400 00:33:31,096 --> 00:33:33,185 and this judge didn't know that. 401 00:33:33,228 --> 00:33:36,188 I don't mind saying that. If you wanna record this and have him sue me, go ahead. 402 00:33:36,231 --> 00:33:37,580 'Cause you are wrong. 403 00:33:40,583 --> 00:33:44,065 Really, it was-- it was a harassment campaign 404 00:33:44,109 --> 00:33:47,634 that eventually became a character assassination campaign. 405 00:33:49,418 --> 00:33:51,899 [Joe] Anybody who thinks that Ritchie Sinclair 406 00:33:51,942 --> 00:33:54,902 is an expert in Norval Morrisseau is just ridiculous. 407 00:33:55,468 --> 00:33:58,471 "I was his protégé," and I'm like, "Yeah, okay, sure, whatever." 408 00:33:58,514 --> 00:33:59,820 I mean, how do I know? 409 00:34:04,346 --> 00:34:08,611 [Randy] Ritchie Sinclair is a wannabe Ojibwe artist, 410 00:34:08,655 --> 00:34:13,877 or Ojibwe person - he's a white man who likes to pretend he's an Indian. 411 00:34:13,921 --> 00:34:15,575 [interviewer] Are you Indigenous? 412 00:34:15,618 --> 00:34:20,101 Um, I'm Scottish, born and brought up in Thunder Bay, Ontario. 413 00:34:20,145 --> 00:34:24,540 He knew Norval Morrisseau through-- from what I've heard, 414 00:34:24,584 --> 00:34:28,979 he was Norval's lover for a little while. I heard two weeks. 415 00:34:29,676 --> 00:34:33,549 [Joe] Norval Morrisseau used to put personal ads in the Toronto Star, 416 00:34:33,593 --> 00:34:37,379 looking for young men - 'cause Norval was bisexual. 417 00:34:37,423 --> 00:34:40,730 Ritchie answered one of those ads, 418 00:34:40,774 --> 00:34:44,256 and Norval and Ritchie, you know, did their business. 419 00:34:44,299 --> 00:34:46,954 Norval and I were never lovers. You know? 420 00:34:46,997 --> 00:34:50,262 But meanwhile, these guys will do anything, 421 00:34:50,305 --> 00:34:53,134 so as far as they're concerned, I'm an art terrorist. 422 00:34:54,004 --> 00:34:56,529 I'm guilty of cultural genocide. 423 00:35:03,536 --> 00:35:07,061 I've been in court a hundred times at least with these gentlemen, 424 00:35:07,105 --> 00:35:11,109 and, uh, it's a moment when worlds collide, really. 425 00:35:16,766 --> 00:35:20,553 One of the issues that came up today was that, uh, during the morning, 426 00:35:20,596 --> 00:35:25,471 uh, Ritchie Sinclair, uh, said that he'd been approached by Joseph Otavnik. 427 00:35:29,823 --> 00:35:33,435 I tend to feel, on our side, we're very calm people, 428 00:35:33,479 --> 00:35:36,046 pacifists, I'm a pacifist by nature. 429 00:35:38,310 --> 00:35:41,313 [Jonathan] And Otavnik made some comment to him 430 00:35:41,356 --> 00:35:44,968 about how he was sucking cocks or something, 431 00:35:45,012 --> 00:35:46,013 like, this is what he said. 432 00:35:48,146 --> 00:35:51,323 Twice I was walking with my partner, right in the courtroom, 433 00:35:51,366 --> 00:35:56,066 and, uh, he followed me around till he got a moment where he could get close enough to say 434 00:35:56,110 --> 00:35:59,809 the usual things that he would say to me, like, uh, uh, 435 00:35:59,853 --> 00:36:03,422 "You're still sucking cock, Mr. Sinclair," for example, you know? 436 00:36:03,465 --> 00:36:07,730 I decided not to bring that to the attention of the court at that point, 437 00:36:07,774 --> 00:36:10,516 but then it happened again later on. 438 00:36:10,559 --> 00:36:12,779 [Ritchie] "Still sucking cock, Sinclair," 439 00:36:12,822 --> 00:36:16,739 uh, "Ricky, you wanna go suck some cock?" that sort of thing. 440 00:36:16,783 --> 00:36:21,657 Ugh. That's all they do, is Ritchie, that's all Ritchie does, is-- 441 00:36:21,701 --> 00:36:24,182 is "This person harassed me, that person harassed me..." 442 00:36:26,706 --> 00:36:30,840 [Jonathan] So at that point, I had Ritchie speak to the court about what had happened. 443 00:36:31,624 --> 00:36:35,236 -[interviewer] Did you tell him to go suck a... -God, no. Why would I bother? 444 00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:39,240 I mean, the fact of the matter is, that's already been testified to, 445 00:36:39,284 --> 00:36:42,417 that he was basically one of Norval's boy toys. 446 00:36:42,461 --> 00:36:44,854 I mean, why is it relevant to this case? 447 00:36:46,726 --> 00:36:51,774 Over at City Hall, he put me in a headlock on the front steps of criminal court. 448 00:36:51,818 --> 00:36:54,821 So this guy is, you know... 449 00:36:57,476 --> 00:37:00,653 [Jonathan] We felt it was an important thing to bring to the court's attention, 450 00:37:00,696 --> 00:37:04,918 just to illustrate the-- the weirdness of this landscape. 451 00:37:07,268 --> 00:37:11,185 [Ritchie] Certainly their motivation became very clear. 452 00:37:13,927 --> 00:37:18,279 They couldn't get rid of the truth of the matter, so they had to discredit me. 453 00:37:22,109 --> 00:37:24,024 Uh, here we go, here. 454 00:37:24,938 --> 00:37:27,201 [interviewer] How do you know this is a real Morrisseau? 455 00:37:27,245 --> 00:37:29,769 Well, all the colors meshing together. 456 00:37:29,812 --> 00:37:34,077 And the theme is consistent with Christianity, smallpox and all that. 457 00:37:37,037 --> 00:37:41,520 [interviewer] Was this the color scheme that he was using in this period? 458 00:37:41,563 --> 00:37:44,610 Well, I-- I can't-- I'm-- I'm not an expert. 459 00:37:44,653 --> 00:37:48,091 But if you just look at it, you say, "Okay, this painting just makes sense." 460 00:37:48,135 --> 00:37:50,442 That's how you can know. It's like a cover band. 461 00:37:50,485 --> 00:37:53,749 Anybody can play a Rolling Stones song after it's been created. 462 00:37:53,793 --> 00:37:57,623 But before that, who can do that? That's the genius of Norval Morrisseau. 463 00:38:03,281 --> 00:38:09,156 The controversy lays primarily in, they are all signed on the back 464 00:38:09,199 --> 00:38:14,596 by Norval Morrisseau in English, in dry black brush. 465 00:38:16,816 --> 00:38:20,080 [Jonathan] Which is where the artist takes a brush that has paint 466 00:38:20,123 --> 00:38:23,997 that's kind of been dried and wiped off, and they then write on the back 467 00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:26,695 with that dry brush. 468 00:38:28,784 --> 00:38:32,614 So here we have the, um, dry brush signature. 469 00:38:34,355 --> 00:38:39,229 See, this looks weird to me. No. No. 470 00:38:40,970 --> 00:38:44,713 So if you look at the well-established, 471 00:38:44,757 --> 00:38:49,327 good provenance paintings of Norval's that are in public institutions 472 00:38:49,370 --> 00:38:51,590 that have been there since the '70s or the '80, 473 00:38:51,633 --> 00:38:54,897 the signature he would apply to them was a syllabic signature. 474 00:38:56,116 --> 00:38:59,554 [Don] Which consists of eight syllabic characters on the front. 475 00:38:59,598 --> 00:39:04,820 It signifies Copper Thunderbird and it was the way he signed his paintings, uh, on the front. 476 00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:10,783 [Ritchie] Norval hardly ever signed the back of his paintings at all, with anything. 477 00:39:11,740 --> 00:39:13,394 Norval never did this. 478 00:39:13,438 --> 00:39:16,702 He... he did not do this black dry brush thing. 479 00:39:17,659 --> 00:39:20,923 Oh, I see. Oh, no, no, no. 480 00:39:21,750 --> 00:39:25,275 [Ritchie] So when you see these paintings, that is someone trying to say, 481 00:39:25,319 --> 00:39:30,324 "This is a really lousy painting on the front, but you better believe it's a Mor-- 482 00:39:30,368 --> 00:39:34,763 'cause people don't know the syllabics, the general person that's gonna buy it. Right? 483 00:39:35,982 --> 00:39:40,421 Wow. It's just a fake, there's no-- no mistaking it. 484 00:39:43,032 --> 00:39:45,557 [interviewer] What is a black dry brush painting? 485 00:39:46,645 --> 00:39:48,734 Oh. I'll show you. 486 00:39:48,777 --> 00:39:50,300 This is what they mean. 487 00:39:54,217 --> 00:39:56,829 And that one there, you see how it's dried and faded. 488 00:39:56,872 --> 00:39:59,745 Well, it's faded because it's thirty-year-old painting, 489 00:39:59,788 --> 00:40:02,356 forty-year-old painting, which would make sense, right? 490 00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:04,924 It's a canvas painting - makes sense. 491 00:40:05,664 --> 00:40:07,709 And then there'll be, typically, a title... 492 00:40:07,753 --> 00:40:10,059 The Jesuit, 1977... 493 00:40:10,103 --> 00:40:14,977 Often there's a copyright symbol, and sometimes there'll be some little symbol 494 00:40:15,021 --> 00:40:17,458 like a thunderbird, for example. 495 00:40:17,502 --> 00:40:19,329 And that's a little mini thunderbird, so... 496 00:40:20,679 --> 00:40:23,943 [man] When, uh, Joe was selling me the painting, he said, 497 00:40:23,986 --> 00:40:27,163 "When Norval found a painting 498 00:40:27,207 --> 00:40:30,428 to be special or of significant worth or value, 499 00:40:30,471 --> 00:40:33,431 he would draw this thunderbird on the back." 500 00:40:34,736 --> 00:40:36,825 And I thought, "Wow, well, that's cool." 501 00:40:39,001 --> 00:40:41,700 [Joe] 'Cause he was called the Copper Thunderbird, that was his name. 502 00:40:41,743 --> 00:40:46,444 This is a very good piece, this is a very strong piece and this is what people want. 503 00:40:46,487 --> 00:40:47,793 Pieces like this. 504 00:40:50,012 --> 00:40:54,452 And they say that all of those are, uh, frauds. 505 00:40:57,759 --> 00:41:03,504 We went to almost every major public art institution 506 00:41:03,548 --> 00:41:06,812 across Canada, so, all the major museums 507 00:41:06,855 --> 00:41:09,728 that have Norval Morrisseau collections. 508 00:41:10,511 --> 00:41:13,514 He never signed anything in black dry brush in the back. 509 00:41:13,558 --> 00:41:16,822 He didn't sign it in black dry brush, he didn't sign it in red dry brush. 510 00:41:16,865 --> 00:41:18,345 It simply didn't happen. 511 00:41:18,388 --> 00:41:21,914 Guess how many more thunderbird drawings we found? 512 00:41:23,002 --> 00:41:28,268 The answer is none. None more thunderbird drawings. 513 00:41:44,545 --> 00:41:49,898 [Kevin] Originally, Joe McLeod told me that the painting came from this fellow David Voss, 514 00:41:49,942 --> 00:41:55,295 in Thunder Bay, who had a huge collection of Morrisseau paintings 515 00:41:55,338 --> 00:41:59,299 stored in a warehouse for years and years, 516 00:41:59,342 --> 00:42:02,302 since the '70s, and he's just released them 517 00:42:02,345 --> 00:42:05,566 and they've come through Randy Potter Auction house. 518 00:42:05,610 --> 00:42:08,482 His name was David Voss, he showed up one day, 519 00:42:08,526 --> 00:42:12,399 and then we were sitting on a picnic table eating hamburgers and French fries. 520 00:42:23,715 --> 00:42:27,370 And he walked in and mentioned he had some art for me to sell. 521 00:42:30,112 --> 00:42:32,898 And the first to enter my mind was, "Oh, more art." 522 00:42:32,941 --> 00:42:35,378 Because it was just, mostly art's not worth nothing. 523 00:42:38,991 --> 00:42:41,515 So then he mentioned the word-- name Norval Morrisseau. 524 00:42:44,257 --> 00:42:46,564 I went outside with him and he had eight of them in-- 525 00:42:46,607 --> 00:42:49,523 in the trunk of his Cadillac, all rolled up, nice and pretty. 526 00:42:50,176 --> 00:42:52,395 He was happy with the prices, 527 00:42:52,439 --> 00:42:57,096 and so, uh, he started sending me down sometimes a whole bunch and sometimes a few. 528 00:42:59,664 --> 00:43:03,842 But he used to phone up and we'd talk a little bit - he was usually too drunk to talk. 529 00:43:03,885 --> 00:43:04,712 David. 530 00:43:06,671 --> 00:43:10,588 In case he sees this. But he was, uh, he's a character, put it that way. 531 00:43:13,416 --> 00:43:15,157 [interviewer] So you never had to go there... 532 00:43:15,201 --> 00:43:16,724 [Randy] I've never been to Thunder Bay. 533 00:43:16,768 --> 00:43:19,074 He's invited me up a million times, never went up. 534 00:43:19,118 --> 00:43:20,728 Never once. 535 00:43:20,772 --> 00:43:22,425 And I say, "David, get this fucking thing straightened out, 536 00:43:22,469 --> 00:43:24,427 I can start making some fucking money again." 537 00:43:26,168 --> 00:43:29,258 Oh, yeah. But I, he just drives me crazy. 538 00:43:29,302 --> 00:43:32,131 Fucking tequila means more to him than anything else, right? 539 00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:34,829 Ugh, I don't know. 540 00:43:34,873 --> 00:43:36,570 That's why I never went up to visit him, 541 00:43:36,614 --> 00:43:38,616 'cause I knew it'd just be a big fucking drunk fest. 542 00:43:38,659 --> 00:43:40,705 I'm not into that shit anymore, man. 543 00:43:41,967 --> 00:43:45,840 Fuck. Fucking squaws all weekend. Anyways, let's do it. 544 00:43:58,723 --> 00:44:02,074 [interviewer] And where did David Voss get a thousand Morrisseaus? 545 00:44:02,117 --> 00:44:04,772 [Kevin] He used to fly into the Aboriginal reserves... 546 00:44:04,816 --> 00:44:08,123 There's tons of them up in Thunder Bay area - there was, anyways. 547 00:44:09,864 --> 00:44:12,388 [Jonathan] So one of the stories that we'd heard 548 00:44:12,432 --> 00:44:16,044 was that at some point in time, in the '70s, 549 00:44:16,088 --> 00:44:20,701 Norval was in the prison in Kenora. 550 00:44:20,745 --> 00:44:25,445 And this prison guard, known as Dieter Voss, 551 00:44:25,488 --> 00:44:28,840 had then acquired a bunch of Norval Morrisseau paintings. 552 00:44:28,883 --> 00:44:31,930 And that his collection had been stored for a long time 553 00:44:31,973 --> 00:44:35,585 and eventually made its way through the auction houses. 554 00:44:36,456 --> 00:44:41,591 And I do know that David Voss's father was a jail guard in Kenora. 555 00:44:41,635 --> 00:44:44,986 And a lot of the jail guards had paintings from Norval Morrisseau. 556 00:44:48,860 --> 00:44:52,559 The guards used to get Norval to do paintings while he was in jail. 557 00:44:57,825 --> 00:45:01,307 And he'd paint for, you know, five bucks, a bottle of whisky, whatever. 558 00:45:01,350 --> 00:45:04,876 And of course, obviously, the guards would probably take them and sell them, 559 00:45:04,919 --> 00:45:06,094 whatever there was, right? 560 00:45:08,096 --> 00:45:11,578 So that's the source of the paintings from Potter Auctions, that I know of. 561 00:45:14,755 --> 00:45:17,845 [Jonathan] We wrote to Corrections Canada 562 00:45:17,889 --> 00:45:21,457 and asked them whether in fact there was a Voss, 563 00:45:21,501 --> 00:45:25,374 a Dieter Voss who had been, um, a guard there, 564 00:45:25,418 --> 00:45:27,463 at any time during those years, 565 00:45:27,507 --> 00:45:30,075 and they responded and said that there had not. 566 00:45:34,514 --> 00:45:39,824 [interviewer] There were some rumours that guards had stolen stuff he painted in prison. 567 00:45:41,826 --> 00:45:43,610 I don't know where that came from. 568 00:45:43,653 --> 00:45:46,961 Morrisseau would've said that to me if, uh, if it had happened, 569 00:45:47,005 --> 00:45:51,270 because I did see him and-- and he did trust me at that-- at that time. 570 00:45:51,313 --> 00:45:53,751 You know, it's just-- it's not possible. 571 00:45:57,885 --> 00:46:01,802 Norval Morrisseau spent six months in jail in Kenora 572 00:46:01,846 --> 00:46:07,155 when I was there, and I got the painting material for him. 573 00:46:07,852 --> 00:46:11,246 It would've been 1970, 574 00:46:11,290 --> 00:46:14,467 around then, I, uh, I had just gotten to Kenora. 575 00:46:16,034 --> 00:46:19,167 There was a domestic dispute with his wife 576 00:46:19,211 --> 00:46:23,432 and he ended up going to jail for, uh, six months. 577 00:46:24,520 --> 00:46:28,960 [reporter] Formerly, any Indian arrested for drunkenness spent his time here in Kenora jail. 578 00:46:31,919 --> 00:46:34,879 [Bob] In Kenora, he had his own personal cell, 579 00:46:34,922 --> 00:46:38,099 and there was a cell for his supplies. 580 00:46:39,884 --> 00:46:42,974 He would paint and do his wash and all that in the range. 581 00:46:43,017 --> 00:46:46,238 And he was one of the prisoners that they didn't lock his door, 582 00:46:46,281 --> 00:46:50,068 so during certain hours, he could go in and out of his, uh, cell, 583 00:46:50,111 --> 00:46:51,939 and it was, like, free range. 584 00:46:59,077 --> 00:47:01,906 Well, I'm sorry about the look, I don't know what to say. 585 00:47:01,949 --> 00:47:05,997 If you're gay or bisexual, 586 00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:09,696 it's not a bad place to be if you're in range in-- 587 00:47:09,739 --> 00:47:14,832 in the range in Kenora to, uh, so that kind of stuff went on, too. 588 00:47:14,875 --> 00:47:20,272 And it was all very open, it was very odd for me to see that, so, um, anyway. 589 00:47:20,968 --> 00:47:24,363 That's another strange thought I haven't had for a long time. 590 00:47:25,625 --> 00:47:28,106 He was king of the range. 591 00:47:31,936 --> 00:47:34,939 He did spectacular paintings in prison, 592 00:47:34,982 --> 00:47:38,420 he'd been sober and straight for a long time, and those-- those paintings 593 00:47:38,464 --> 00:47:43,469 I ended up selling and, uh, ended up using them to buy a house for him. 594 00:47:46,254 --> 00:47:47,865 He did about thirty. 595 00:47:49,475 --> 00:47:53,871 And I ended up selling them to a doctor in Toronto. 596 00:47:54,567 --> 00:47:59,180 -[interviewer] Were those all the paintings? -Ah. Good question. Yes. 597 00:48:02,270 --> 00:48:08,015 And he could not have done more than that in that time, in the space that was available. 598 00:48:11,671 --> 00:48:16,241 Apparently, there are literally hundreds of other ones that are signed on the back. 599 00:48:17,198 --> 00:48:20,332 And there you go. Norval Morrisseau. 600 00:48:20,985 --> 00:48:25,946 They did not come from him at that era. I'm sure. 601 00:48:25,990 --> 00:48:27,513 [interviewer] How are you sure? 602 00:48:27,556 --> 00:48:31,778 I was there, I was there weekly, and I saw what he painted. 603 00:48:31,821 --> 00:48:34,781 And it wasn't anything that was signed on the back, 604 00:48:34,824 --> 00:48:38,480 and it wasn't anything that, uh, had English on them. 605 00:48:47,228 --> 00:48:50,579 He did sketches on this green prison paper, 606 00:48:50,623 --> 00:48:55,541 sometimes both sides, and they were spectacular sketches. 607 00:48:58,413 --> 00:49:00,415 His intention was to actually paint them 608 00:49:00,459 --> 00:49:03,027 when he got out and he had supplies and space. 609 00:49:12,166 --> 00:49:16,083 The painting that Kevin bought did not look 610 00:49:16,127 --> 00:49:18,564 like any of those drawings that Morrisseau had done. 611 00:49:19,565 --> 00:49:21,567 Not even close. Nothing close. 612 00:49:25,353 --> 00:49:28,574 [Brian] Morrisseau probably couldn't care less about this. 613 00:49:28,617 --> 00:49:34,319 He probably had no interest in whether people thought a painting was authentic or not. 614 00:49:34,362 --> 00:49:38,410 He painted it. It fulfilled him in some way. 615 00:49:38,453 --> 00:49:41,021 And if some of them aren't his, he'd probably say, 616 00:49:41,065 --> 00:49:44,677 "Okay, some of them aren't mine. Just-- some of them are. 617 00:49:44,720 --> 00:49:46,984 Some of them aren't. It is what it is." 618 00:49:47,027 --> 00:49:50,770 I believe that that's what his approach would've been to this whole controversy. 619 00:49:56,167 --> 00:50:00,823 [man] I met Norval in, uh, in Vancouver, spring of '87. 620 00:50:05,176 --> 00:50:09,484 He was, uh, yeah, he was down and out, living-- living on the streets. 621 00:50:11,878 --> 00:50:16,578 I, I lost a bottle, too. I don't know where I put it. Forty ounces. 622 00:50:20,843 --> 00:50:23,716 I was quite wayward and life was very distressing, 623 00:50:23,759 --> 00:50:27,894 and, uh, he said to me, he says, uh, "I'm gonna sober up." 624 00:50:32,116 --> 00:50:34,988 We were very, um, very connected, 625 00:50:35,032 --> 00:50:37,773 you know, he considered me his-- his son, 626 00:50:37,817 --> 00:50:40,689 and I considered him my father, my father figure. 627 00:50:46,434 --> 00:50:49,046 And I'm like, "I can do anything you want me to do. 628 00:50:49,089 --> 00:50:51,570 Just tell me what you need done - I will do it." 629 00:50:53,137 --> 00:50:55,617 And then I became his manager. 630 00:51:00,535 --> 00:51:05,279 It seems like at a point, I think it was maybe 2000, or 2002, 631 00:51:05,323 --> 00:51:08,848 the fakes started coming, and proliferating, 632 00:51:08,891 --> 00:51:11,459 and just started popping up here, and there. 633 00:51:13,548 --> 00:51:15,594 It was, like, getting right in our face, 634 00:51:15,637 --> 00:51:18,814 and now we have computer and we're able to look online. 635 00:51:19,728 --> 00:51:24,168 He's like, "I didn't paint that. I didn't paint that. I didn't paint that." 636 00:51:24,777 --> 00:51:27,823 And it's like, "Wait a minute, there's something wrong." 637 00:51:27,867 --> 00:51:32,741 Like, there's a major strategy, or a major network 638 00:51:32,785 --> 00:51:37,094 moving a whole bunch of shit right into the marketplace. 639 00:51:41,663 --> 00:51:42,795 And then, 640 00:51:43,752 --> 00:51:45,624 "What are you gonna do about it? 641 00:51:49,018 --> 00:51:50,803 What are you gonna do about it, Gabe?" 642 00:51:50,846 --> 00:51:55,155 I'm like, "Okay. I know what I'll do. We'll go see lawyers." 643 00:51:55,199 --> 00:52:00,508 I'll make the arrangements. Let's go do what we need to do. And he was all for it. 644 00:52:06,906 --> 00:52:09,822 No one's ever proven to me one Norval Morrisseau fake. 645 00:52:09,865 --> 00:52:12,868 No one can ever say Norval Morrisseau said this. 646 00:52:12,912 --> 00:52:16,959 Wh-- When he wasn't sick. And that's-- that's-- that's terrible. 647 00:52:20,963 --> 00:52:25,142 [Jonathan] Norval then, through a number of lawyers, 648 00:52:25,185 --> 00:52:29,494 signed a whole series of sworn declarations 649 00:52:29,537 --> 00:52:32,105 identifying specific fakes 650 00:52:32,149 --> 00:52:36,065 in the specific catalogues of different art galleries, 651 00:52:36,109 --> 00:52:39,678 including Joe McLeod's gallery, Maslak McLeod. 652 00:52:43,247 --> 00:52:49,296 "No, I did not paint these things. They are not to be in the marketplace. 653 00:52:49,340 --> 00:52:51,646 They are not representative of my work." 654 00:52:54,954 --> 00:52:59,219 Morrisseau's sworn statements were all over the place. 655 00:52:59,263 --> 00:53:04,224 And I think he signed statements because he was asked to sign statements. 656 00:53:04,268 --> 00:53:08,359 But if you take those actual statements and compare them, 657 00:53:08,402 --> 00:53:12,841 there's so much contradiction between them 658 00:53:12,885 --> 00:53:15,322 that it renders his statements useless. 659 00:53:17,977 --> 00:53:21,110 [Jonathan] The story that's been told many times by the other side 660 00:53:21,154 --> 00:53:27,204 is that at the time that he signed these sworn declarations identifying fakes, 661 00:53:27,247 --> 00:53:30,337 that he lacked mental capacity, 662 00:53:30,381 --> 00:53:34,341 or that he was being forced or pressured to do so 663 00:53:34,385 --> 00:53:37,779 by unscrupulous persons who were controlling him. 664 00:53:41,957 --> 00:53:43,698 [interviewer] So you don't think he was... 665 00:53:43,742 --> 00:53:46,005 -No. -Mentally... 666 00:53:46,048 --> 00:53:51,228 Oh, God, no. God no. That's probably be from 2001 and so that he's not doing very well. 667 00:53:51,271 --> 00:53:55,275 So I wanna be clear, without anybody fucking around with the cameras and-- 668 00:53:55,319 --> 00:53:57,190 and the voice and stuff. 669 00:53:57,234 --> 00:54:02,239 His mental capacity was always there. 670 00:54:02,848 --> 00:54:08,201 Even though he may not verbalize things, and the manifestation of Parkinson's, 671 00:54:08,897 --> 00:54:13,380 it never stopped him from thinking and being as sharp as a pencil. 672 00:54:13,424 --> 00:54:15,600 He knew what he wanted. 673 00:54:15,643 --> 00:54:20,779 He knew what he wanted to express. Right until the end, he was completely sharp. 674 00:54:31,093 --> 00:54:33,052 What do you think? Is that good? 675 00:54:35,402 --> 00:54:38,275 The man was far beyond 676 00:54:38,318 --> 00:54:42,583 what you and I would call normal ability to recognize life. 677 00:54:42,627 --> 00:54:43,497 A shame. 678 00:54:46,413 --> 00:54:49,721 [Joe] And I know from my conversations with Christian Morrisseau 679 00:54:50,374 --> 00:54:53,333 that his father was very sick, and even in 2000. 680 00:54:53,377 --> 00:54:57,990 And he was in a-- he was in a nursing home in Nanaimo, I know that. 681 00:55:01,907 --> 00:55:04,126 [interviewer] What kind of shape was he in at that point? 682 00:55:04,170 --> 00:55:08,870 Uh, mentally he was well, full aware of what was going on, who was were, 683 00:55:08,914 --> 00:55:12,091 'cause soon as I walked in, his eyes just lit up right away, 684 00:55:12,134 --> 00:55:14,398 he realized who I was, and, uh... 685 00:55:14,441 --> 00:55:16,269 [interviewer] What year was this? 686 00:55:16,313 --> 00:55:20,534 Uh, that was in, uh, 2006. Yeah, not long before he died, 687 00:55:20,578 --> 00:55:23,015 'cause he passed away in 2007, right? 688 00:55:29,891 --> 00:55:34,113 The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society, NMHS, 689 00:55:34,156 --> 00:55:37,682 is a group of curators and scholars 690 00:55:37,725 --> 00:55:41,903 who came together at Morrisseau's invitation in 2005 691 00:55:41,947 --> 00:55:46,995 to find a way to authenticate his work, 692 00:55:47,039 --> 00:55:51,043 which Morrisseau by then realized was being faked. 693 00:55:57,223 --> 00:56:00,835 [Greg] The importance of him as an artist is his legacy, 694 00:56:00,879 --> 00:56:06,667 and for that to be tarnished by the very poor quality works that were put out, 695 00:56:06,711 --> 00:56:10,018 basically an abomination, you know, of-- of, uh, 696 00:56:10,062 --> 00:56:15,067 in comparison to-- to works that he actually painted. It was a travesty. 697 00:56:16,982 --> 00:56:21,116 [Ruth] Some of the fakes were laid out on the floor, and he was looking at them. 698 00:56:21,900 --> 00:56:24,816 [Don] And Norval was asked whether they were his paintings or not, 699 00:56:24,859 --> 00:56:29,255 and his answer was, "I've never seen these before. They're not my paintings." 700 00:56:29,298 --> 00:56:33,128 "This one, this one, this one, this one are fakes." 701 00:56:35,217 --> 00:56:37,437 [Ruth] He was perfectly lucid. 702 00:56:37,481 --> 00:56:41,615 And shortly after that meeting, he sent us letters, 703 00:56:41,659 --> 00:56:46,011 which he signed, commissioning us to do the work that we had outlined for him. 704 00:56:48,622 --> 00:56:50,624 They're trashing Norval Morrisseau's legacy. 705 00:56:50,668 --> 00:56:53,932 I mean, that's pretty clear. And it's just-- and it's just for greed. 706 00:56:54,715 --> 00:57:00,025 All of us are, were and are, and have always been, unpaid volunteers. 707 00:57:00,068 --> 00:57:04,333 [interviewer] If they're trying to trash his legacy, what are you trying to do? 708 00:57:04,377 --> 00:57:09,426 I'm just trying to tell people, if you have a Norval Morrisseau, it's a real Norval Morrisseau. 709 00:57:09,469 --> 00:57:13,995 And there are no fakes out there. And all this stuff is a bunch of nonsense. 710 00:57:15,083 --> 00:57:17,434 I mean, Norval was a great artist, and the real deal, and... 711 00:57:17,477 --> 00:57:19,131 Yeah. 712 00:57:19,174 --> 00:57:21,438 -Here's a great Canadian artist, being trashed. -It's funny. 713 00:57:21,481 --> 00:57:26,268 People are questioning the authenticity of his work, when it shouldn't be an issue at all. 714 00:57:26,312 --> 00:57:27,748 -No. -That's basically what it is. 715 00:57:27,792 --> 00:57:28,662 Yeah. 716 00:57:30,447 --> 00:57:34,015 [Ruth] A man named Joseph Otavnik, who was totally unknown to me, 717 00:57:34,059 --> 00:57:37,889 emailed me, emailed all other members of the Society, 718 00:57:37,932 --> 00:57:41,980 and emailed their, uh, bosses, complaining 719 00:57:42,023 --> 00:57:45,766 that we were defaming Morrisseau and we were, basically, 720 00:57:45,810 --> 00:57:49,291 ignorant people who were involved in mischief. 721 00:57:50,379 --> 00:57:54,775 It was a-- a direct threat that we could be sued for what we were doing. 722 00:57:55,776 --> 00:57:57,778 -It's a shame. -Yeah, it is, it is. 723 00:57:57,822 --> 00:58:01,869 We've been fighting a long time over this. A lot of years, a lot of money. 724 00:58:02,653 --> 00:58:04,524 In addition to that, um, 725 00:58:04,568 --> 00:58:09,442 there are other people who have, uh, developed a blog, 726 00:58:09,486 --> 00:58:14,229 in which we are accused of being like Nazi book burners. 727 00:58:14,969 --> 00:58:17,755 Instead of burning books during the Nazi period, 728 00:58:17,798 --> 00:58:20,888 we're burning original Morrisseau paintings. 729 00:58:23,804 --> 00:58:28,461 And sending horrible messages about me, 730 00:58:28,505 --> 00:58:33,031 with links to this website, the Norval Morrisseau Hoax blog, 731 00:58:33,074 --> 00:58:38,993 which was just ramping up, and saying more and more unsettling things, 732 00:58:41,213 --> 00:58:46,087 particularly considering I'm of Lakota ancestry... 733 00:58:46,131 --> 00:58:48,525 Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, 734 00:58:48,568 --> 00:58:51,702 I'm a kind of quiet academic in the ivory tower... 735 00:58:58,578 --> 00:59:04,105 [man] There is a couple by the name of John and Joan Goldi, who run a website. 736 00:59:06,281 --> 00:59:10,590 Virtually anybody who stands up and even suggests 737 00:59:10,634 --> 00:59:12,766 that there might be a problem with fakes 738 00:59:12,810 --> 00:59:16,988 can expect to be viciously attacked by these people. 739 00:59:21,862 --> 00:59:26,301 [man] Those with a vested interest in selling what I consider to be fake Morrisseaus 740 00:59:26,345 --> 00:59:30,523 will contact any company or organization I work with, 741 00:59:30,567 --> 00:59:35,397 and threaten them with lawsuits, "We're contacting all your sponsors, 742 00:59:35,441 --> 00:59:38,618 we're gonna destroy your reputation on the internet." 743 00:59:39,967 --> 00:59:44,319 [Don] I was being accused of being part of some sort of a Ritchie-Robinson conspiracy, 744 00:59:44,363 --> 00:59:45,886 which of course wasn't true at all. 745 00:59:45,930 --> 00:59:47,671 Just being called out on the internet, 746 00:59:47,714 --> 00:59:51,631 that I am guilty of cultural genocide against the First Nations, 747 00:59:51,675 --> 00:59:54,939 is just like putting a target on my back. 748 00:59:57,419 --> 01:00:02,990 Someone had thrown a brick through the front window of the Kinsman Robinson Gallery. 749 01:00:03,034 --> 01:00:05,558 I said, "Who did this?" 750 01:00:06,690 --> 01:00:09,649 Our videos showed a car driving up in front and-- 751 01:00:09,693 --> 01:00:11,738 and someone getting out of it, 752 01:00:11,782 --> 01:00:16,351 but the image was not defined enough to be able to identify the person. 753 01:00:20,617 --> 01:00:24,533 At that time, I was under severe stress - even my life had been threatened - 754 01:00:24,577 --> 01:00:29,408 "We've gotta do something about this guy. Don Robinson, are you listening? 755 01:00:29,451 --> 01:00:35,370 What'cha gonna do when they come for you?" That made me feel-- mmmm. 756 01:00:38,243 --> 01:00:40,245 It's not only a mental harassment, 757 01:00:40,288 --> 01:00:44,902 but there was also a-- a physical danger that was really present at that time. 758 01:00:45,729 --> 01:00:47,644 Ritchie Sinclair, that freaking scumbag. 759 01:00:47,687 --> 01:00:48,775 Yeah. 760 01:00:51,343 --> 01:00:53,998 [Ritchie] First the Otavnik threats 761 01:00:54,041 --> 01:00:58,611 by having people hunting me down, "are gonna find you". 762 01:01:01,135 --> 01:01:03,747 And meanwhile, I'm, like, I'm not even hiding. 763 01:01:03,790 --> 01:01:06,184 If I had six months to live, I'd shoot that fucker. 764 01:01:06,227 --> 01:01:07,620 Yeah. 765 01:01:07,664 --> 01:01:09,361 I'd do! If I had six months to live, I'd shoot him. 766 01:01:09,404 --> 01:01:12,059 -Who? -Ritchie Sinclair. If I had six-- oh, yeah, for sure. 767 01:01:12,103 --> 01:01:13,757 I'd do-- I'd be doing society a favour. 768 01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:16,890 That man ruined a lot of people's lives for no reason. 769 01:01:16,934 --> 01:01:17,848 It's funny-- 770 01:01:26,247 --> 01:01:27,858 [Don] I ended up having a stroke. 771 01:01:29,990 --> 01:01:33,385 It's left me, as one of the characteristics, completely blind in the right eye. 772 01:01:40,914 --> 01:01:44,918 He thought we're gonna run away and-- and just bury our heads in the sand, but we didn't. 773 01:01:44,962 --> 01:01:46,267 We fought back. 774 01:01:50,663 --> 01:01:55,886 [Don] I realized that there was probably around three thousand fake paintings out there, 775 01:01:55,929 --> 01:01:59,411 and they were selling in the range of ten thousand dollars, 776 01:01:59,454 --> 01:02:01,021 we're talking thirty million dollars. 777 01:02:04,895 --> 01:02:09,247 This is the greatest art scam by far in all-- in all Canadian history. 778 01:02:09,290 --> 01:02:12,685 There've always been fakes by famous painters, 779 01:02:12,729 --> 01:02:15,601 but none of them that even begin to be on this scale. 780 01:02:16,602 --> 01:02:19,518 Three thousand fake paintings is a lot of fake paintings. 781 01:02:19,561 --> 01:02:22,216 So I'm not surprised that many, many people 782 01:02:22,260 --> 01:02:24,436 opposed our view that the paintings were fakes. 783 01:02:40,104 --> 01:02:43,542 [Gabe] Norval was involved with many people. 784 01:02:44,238 --> 01:02:46,284 Many bad people, too, in this life. 785 01:02:46,327 --> 01:02:50,462 Who came in from left field, and, "Oh, yo, we love your art! 786 01:02:50,505 --> 01:02:52,464 Mr. Morrisseau, we love your art!" 787 01:02:53,247 --> 01:02:57,121 In hindsight, later in life, what I learned - these people were killers. 788 01:02:57,164 --> 01:02:59,253 These people are fucking animals. 789 01:03:05,172 --> 01:03:08,567 [Ritchie] Well, the more you dived into a pool of garbage, 790 01:03:08,610 --> 01:03:11,222 the more you get to know the garbage within it. 791 01:03:17,141 --> 01:03:22,886 [Kevin] Each stone we overturned revealed five more stones, 792 01:03:22,929 --> 01:03:28,152 and I found myself in this sort of complex, dark story, 793 01:03:28,195 --> 01:03:30,545 which went beyond art fraud. 794 01:03:35,072 --> 01:03:38,684 I was introduced to a-- a young man named Dallas. 795 01:03:39,990 --> 01:03:44,821 Dallas was on the inner circle of the fr-- of the fraud ring. 796 01:03:50,522 --> 01:03:52,611 [interviewer] How do you feel having been part of it? 797 01:03:54,874 --> 01:03:56,528 I wish I wasn't. 798 01:03:56,571 --> 01:04:01,446 I wish, you know, things turned out different for me, but-- 799 01:04:03,013 --> 01:04:08,496 I was dealt the hand I was dealt, and I just gotta play it out the best I could, I guess. 800 01:04:10,063 --> 01:04:14,676 And he worked with a man named Gary Lamont. 801 01:04:19,203 --> 01:04:24,991 He was a white guy, pretty big, scary, uh, yeah. 802 01:04:25,035 --> 01:04:30,518 I learned that how deeply involved Gary Lamont was in what was going on. 803 01:04:31,215 --> 01:04:33,260 -[interviewer] Gary Lamont? -Yeah, Gary Lamont. 804 01:04:33,304 --> 01:04:36,263 -Who is he? How does he... -Gary Lamont, I met him, 805 01:04:36,307 --> 01:04:38,918 he was selling Norval Morrisseau paintings on eBay. 806 01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:44,489 Gary Lamont was a drug dealer in Thunder Bay here, 807 01:04:44,532 --> 01:04:49,015 he's well-known for being a biker, a badass. 808 01:04:54,978 --> 01:04:59,634 This is where Gary used to live with Linda. 809 01:05:01,332 --> 01:05:05,858 Gary is my-- my-- Linda's common-law partner. 810 01:05:07,599 --> 01:05:09,601 [interviewer] So is-- he's your uncle? 811 01:05:10,645 --> 01:05:12,691 I don't consider him my uncle. 812 01:05:14,736 --> 01:05:17,870 I met Gary in 2001. 813 01:05:17,914 --> 01:05:23,658 Late 2001, early 2002. At the time, I wa-- I'd just turned sixteen. 814 01:05:25,660 --> 01:05:28,489 Yeah, this is Gary's first house, this is where I met him. 815 01:05:30,056 --> 01:05:33,625 Yeah, this is where he was selling his drugs out of. 816 01:05:34,495 --> 01:05:38,673 I just started buying marijuana off of him regularly, 817 01:05:38,717 --> 01:05:40,893 and then that's how I got to know him. 818 01:05:40,937 --> 01:05:43,330 Gary and Linda always had an-- an apartment 819 01:05:43,374 --> 01:05:47,726 attached to their-- their house, their-- their unit. 820 01:05:50,729 --> 01:05:56,169 So me and my mom would live on the opposite apartment from them. 821 01:05:59,999 --> 01:06:04,612 My mom used to hang around the Satan's Choice Clubhouse 822 01:06:04,656 --> 01:06:07,311 and that's how she met Gary, 823 01:06:07,354 --> 01:06:09,791 known him through there and through high school. 824 01:06:09,835 --> 01:06:12,272 Oh, there was a lot of drug u-- 825 01:06:13,360 --> 01:06:15,972 drug traffic in the houses. 826 01:06:20,802 --> 01:06:23,196 He sold weed, 827 01:06:23,805 --> 01:06:27,635 um, cocaine and heroin. 828 01:06:29,986 --> 01:06:32,031 It was pretty scary 'cause you didn't know 829 01:06:32,075 --> 01:06:35,556 who was coming through the door, at times. 830 01:06:38,342 --> 01:06:39,952 I was six. 831 01:06:41,214 --> 01:06:42,999 Yeah, my sister was four. 832 01:06:44,870 --> 01:06:49,005 He used to touch us, pinch our bum and boobs and stuff. 833 01:06:49,962 --> 01:06:52,878 It was very terrifying. 834 01:07:00,451 --> 01:07:04,977 Gary used to beat them up 835 01:07:05,021 --> 01:07:08,111 with baseball bats or anything he had, 836 01:07:08,154 --> 01:07:09,764 he could get his hands on 837 01:07:12,115 --> 01:07:13,986 if you didn't do what he wanted. 838 01:07:16,032 --> 01:07:18,295 [interviewer] Did you ever see that happening? 839 01:07:18,338 --> 01:07:21,080 Oh, I only seen one incident with my uncle. 840 01:07:24,736 --> 01:07:29,175 'Cause he thought my uncle stole money from Gary and Linda. 841 01:07:32,004 --> 01:07:33,658 They took a baseball bat to my uncle. 842 01:07:35,355 --> 01:07:36,965 My uncle Jack. 843 01:07:40,708 --> 01:07:46,236 He had a lot of bruises on his face and arms and stomach and everywhere. 844 01:07:47,411 --> 01:07:51,589 We seen a little bit, and then he yelled at me and my sister to get upstairs. 845 01:07:52,894 --> 01:07:56,376 Because they used to, in the basement of my-- my aunt's house, 846 01:07:56,420 --> 01:08:02,426 they used to have an arcade games. Like Pacman. 847 01:08:05,733 --> 01:08:08,519 So we used to go down and play Pacman. 848 01:08:19,878 --> 01:08:24,012 [Dallas] In the summer, he invited me out to his camp, to party. 849 01:08:25,971 --> 01:08:29,496 It was just north of the city on, uh, Warnica Lake. 850 01:08:29,540 --> 01:08:32,020 He would only come out a couple nights a week, 851 01:08:32,760 --> 01:08:34,545 and I'd just stay out there, look after it. 852 01:08:34,588 --> 01:08:39,071 He stored all his drugs there, so I just, it was like a fortress, 853 01:08:39,115 --> 01:08:41,856 right, once you locked the door, you couldn't get in or out, 854 01:08:41,900 --> 01:08:45,686 there was bars on all the windows and doors, is... 855 01:08:49,386 --> 01:08:53,825 As you can see, the bars on the windows, those were on every window. 856 01:08:54,565 --> 01:08:58,264 Barriers on the doors, big steel cages for the doors, and... 857 01:09:03,487 --> 01:09:07,055 Just sat around smoking dope and drinking all day and, you know, 858 01:09:07,099 --> 01:09:11,538 listening to music and then he bought a computer and I-- 859 01:09:11,582 --> 01:09:14,498 my family being poor, I never had a computer growing up, 860 01:09:14,541 --> 01:09:18,850 so this was just way out there for me, so I just loved it, right. 861 01:09:22,462 --> 01:09:25,117 And then he was buying artwork too, right. 862 01:09:25,161 --> 01:09:30,514 Just collecting, for show, had 'em up on his walls, bedrooms. 863 01:09:30,557 --> 01:09:32,820 That was my bedroom over there. 864 01:09:33,778 --> 01:09:36,737 I used to have a Benji Morrisseau original 865 01:09:36,781 --> 01:09:41,002 hanging in my room out at the camp, and all that. 866 01:09:43,353 --> 01:09:46,225 Norval was Benji's uncle. 867 01:09:48,923 --> 01:09:51,709 [Amanda] Benji was a very nice guy when we first met him. 868 01:09:53,145 --> 01:09:56,192 He wasn't doing no drugs or drinking. 869 01:09:56,235 --> 01:10:00,718 But then Gary got him into the drugs. Really bad. 870 01:10:02,676 --> 01:10:08,552 He just ended up at the camp, he started off painting a few pictures of his own style, 871 01:10:08,595 --> 01:10:14,297 the Woodland art style, for Gary, and then we're sitting around one night, 872 01:10:14,340 --> 01:10:16,908 and then I was-- Gary kept saying, 873 01:10:16,951 --> 01:10:19,302 "Oh, no, you can't do that, you can't do that," 874 01:10:19,345 --> 01:10:23,262 about the Norval's, uh, Copper Thunderbird syllabics, right? 875 01:10:23,306 --> 01:10:26,352 And I was, like, "No fucking way, you know how easy it is to do that?" 876 01:10:26,396 --> 01:10:30,965 And I grabbed it, did it. And then that must've just - boom. 877 01:10:31,009 --> 01:10:32,663 Brainstorm in his head. 878 01:10:32,706 --> 01:10:34,795 How easy it was to do the syllabics. 879 01:10:35,622 --> 01:10:40,671 Norval's syllabics, there's eight, and Benji's native syllabics, 880 01:10:40,714 --> 01:10:42,020 there's only six. 881 01:10:42,673 --> 01:10:45,676 And then I started seeing Benji 882 01:10:45,719 --> 01:10:49,506 signing Norval's signatures to his artwork after. 883 01:10:54,641 --> 01:10:57,035 Yeah, this was the guest camp here. 884 01:10:57,078 --> 01:11:02,083 The guest camp was also, uh, Benji's art studio. 885 01:11:04,303 --> 01:11:07,959 That's when they started making the fakes. 886 01:11:13,617 --> 01:11:16,794 [Amanda] When you go into the house, there's a side door. 887 01:11:16,837 --> 01:11:21,712 You go up, like, three sets of stairs, and then there's a little office they used. 888 01:11:23,061 --> 01:11:24,628 [interviewer] Who would be in there? 889 01:11:25,368 --> 01:11:28,153 Either Benji or Wolf. 890 01:11:29,372 --> 01:11:31,983 One of Norval Morrisseau's brothers. 891 01:11:33,506 --> 01:11:36,335 [interviewer] Was the door open or closed? 892 01:11:36,379 --> 01:11:39,904 Well, sometimes it was open and sometimes they got locked in there. 893 01:11:42,776 --> 01:11:47,651 Gary would lock them in the room, so, I guess, so they can hide in there, 894 01:11:47,694 --> 01:11:49,827 so no one knows what they're doing. 895 01:11:51,263 --> 01:11:55,093 The door was open a couple times, and I went by. 896 01:11:58,966 --> 01:12:02,753 Benji was in the room painting, and then singing his-- 897 01:12:02,796 --> 01:12:07,932 signing the Norval Morrisseau's name on to the front of the painting. 898 01:12:09,325 --> 01:12:12,023 At first we thought he was just painting his own work. 899 01:12:12,893 --> 01:12:15,156 Then we realized what he was doing when he started 900 01:12:15,200 --> 01:12:19,422 putting Norval Morrisseau's name on the back of the painting. 901 01:12:21,206 --> 01:12:24,905 [interviewer] How often would Benji or Wolf be in there painting? 902 01:12:25,863 --> 01:12:28,344 Probably every second day. 903 01:12:28,996 --> 01:12:32,957 After that it was-- they started painting them like crazy. 904 01:12:36,961 --> 01:12:39,311 Benji ended up being out there more and more, 905 01:12:39,355 --> 01:12:42,140 and then he started calling the guest camp his studio, 906 01:12:44,664 --> 01:12:46,927 and Gary's steady supply of booze, 907 01:12:46,971 --> 01:12:50,714 drugs went up there a few times, 908 01:12:50,757 --> 01:12:56,589 Benji was making backgrounds for the paintings, and all this stuff, 909 01:12:56,633 --> 01:13:02,029 rolling around butt naked in paint on canvas and he's all messed up, 910 01:13:11,256 --> 01:13:13,127 and just a lot of weird shit. 911 01:13:14,955 --> 01:13:18,785 [interviewer] How much of his business was art, and how much was drugs? 912 01:13:19,699 --> 01:13:23,181 Probably more than fifty percent was the art. 913 01:13:25,226 --> 01:13:27,620 Gary never told me, it just clicked, you know, I was like, 914 01:13:27,664 --> 01:13:29,927 "I know what the fuck's going on now," you know. 915 01:13:29,970 --> 01:13:33,321 And he was just like, "Yeah, well, you can't fucking tell anybody what's going on," 916 01:13:33,365 --> 01:13:35,933 and, you know, shit like that. 917 01:13:36,847 --> 01:13:39,240 [interviewer] And did he threaten you about it? 918 01:13:39,284 --> 01:13:41,852 No, no. It's Gary Lamont, like, 919 01:13:41,895 --> 01:13:46,509 everybody was scared of him at the time anyway, like, he didn't have to. 920 01:13:52,340 --> 01:13:56,519 [Amanda] I already knew his reputation around the city. 921 01:13:58,129 --> 01:14:01,654 Well, he used to tell people what he can do to people. 922 01:14:02,525 --> 01:14:07,791 Gary used to say, he's-- he's able to get people murdered. 923 01:14:14,928 --> 01:14:18,845 [Dallas] That's me and Gary. This is in 2003. 924 01:14:22,153 --> 01:14:25,373 Oh, he'd yell, he'd fucking just give you a look, 925 01:14:25,417 --> 01:14:29,247 and he-- you fucking knew to shut up, stop whatever the fuck you're doing, 926 01:14:29,290 --> 01:14:31,292 'cause the next thing that's gonna be coming 927 01:14:31,336 --> 01:14:33,120 is a fucking fist to the face. 928 01:14:33,730 --> 01:14:37,516 And he used to wear all these gold rings, yeah. 929 01:14:40,214 --> 01:14:43,391 That's what I mean by all his gold rings he'd wear. 930 01:14:44,654 --> 01:14:47,613 Hurt like hell getting punched in the face by him. 931 01:14:50,616 --> 01:14:53,445 Just come out of the blue, you'd end up fucking saying something, 932 01:14:53,489 --> 01:14:56,753 like, you know, just joking around, saying something he didn't like, 933 01:14:56,796 --> 01:15:00,234 and, you know, and it was "bssh!" You'd get, fucking, what the fuck, you know? 934 01:15:25,738 --> 01:15:27,697 [interviewer] How many paintings were being done? 935 01:15:27,740 --> 01:15:29,612 [Dallas] Hundreds. Hundreds. 936 01:15:30,264 --> 01:15:33,833 Hundreds, and lots of them were being painted 937 01:15:33,877 --> 01:15:37,794 at Benjamin's house in Collins, Ontario. 938 01:15:38,751 --> 01:15:42,320 And we would go meet Benji on the train, 939 01:15:42,363 --> 01:15:47,804 and pick up all the paintings, and none of them had the syllabics or were signed. 940 01:15:47,847 --> 01:15:49,022 [interviewer] Why not? 941 01:15:49,066 --> 01:15:51,677 'Cause Gary, for some reason, 942 01:15:51,721 --> 01:15:57,117 didn't want signatures on them in case they got pulled over in transport. 943 01:15:57,683 --> 01:16:00,512 He didn't want the cops. Something like that. 944 01:16:01,295 --> 01:16:04,995 Gary would whisk them away to the back room with a, you know, 945 01:16:05,648 --> 01:16:07,998 brush and some black paint, 946 01:16:08,041 --> 01:16:12,742 and on the syllabics went, in dry brush style on the back. 947 01:16:18,225 --> 01:16:20,750 Some of them had dates and that. 948 01:16:20,793 --> 01:16:23,796 Like, Gary would say what year they are, and everything, right, 949 01:16:23,840 --> 01:16:29,062 like, he acted like, you know-- he had a special bond with every single painting. 950 01:16:29,106 --> 01:16:31,717 You know, like, to me, a lot of it all looked the same. 951 01:16:32,413 --> 01:16:37,157 So I'd end up taking out, like, every picture out of the roll, and it's like, 952 01:16:37,201 --> 01:16:39,290 "Okay, is it this one?" You know? 953 01:16:40,030 --> 01:16:44,077 [interviewer] Tell me about where the, uh, supplies would come from. 954 01:16:44,121 --> 01:16:46,906 We'd go to Painted Turtle here in Thunder Bay. 955 01:16:51,084 --> 01:16:52,651 -How are you? -How are you? 956 01:16:52,695 --> 01:16:55,219 -Good to see you. -Just come to see you at your store. 957 01:16:55,262 --> 01:16:56,133 Yeah. 958 01:16:58,004 --> 01:17:01,399 And I remember coming in and getting art supplies for Benji and Tim. 959 01:17:01,442 --> 01:17:04,097 Yeah. I remember asking Gary, 960 01:17:04,141 --> 01:17:07,623 um, what are you doing with all this canvas? And... 961 01:17:07,666 --> 01:17:10,495 He said, "Oh, I'm buying Christmas gifts for all the-- 962 01:17:10,538 --> 01:17:12,671 the Aboriginals up north," and... 963 01:17:12,715 --> 01:17:15,979 Gary would actually get me or my mom to go with him, 964 01:17:16,022 --> 01:17:21,375 and we would present our status card so he didn't have to pay the tax on everything, and... 965 01:17:22,159 --> 01:17:25,466 -Does Benji still come in? -Yeah, he's been coming in for... 966 01:17:25,510 --> 01:17:28,469 Wonder if he's doing his own work or have you seen anything? 967 01:17:28,513 --> 01:17:30,080 I haven't seen his work. 968 01:17:30,123 --> 01:17:31,951 Well, it's a weird thing, eh. 969 01:17:31,995 --> 01:17:35,651 I've tried to find his work online, 'cause he said he sells online. 970 01:17:35,694 --> 01:17:38,131 I can't find anything that says "Benjamin Morrisseau." 971 01:17:38,175 --> 01:17:39,263 -Really? -No. 972 01:17:44,442 --> 01:17:47,401 [interviewer] Who are the key people in the-- in the fraud ring? 973 01:17:48,707 --> 01:17:50,230 Gary Lamont, 974 01:17:52,319 --> 01:17:53,930 and Linda Tkatchuk, 975 01:17:54,757 --> 01:17:59,936 Benji Morrisseau, and Wolf Morrisseau. 976 01:18:03,896 --> 01:18:06,203 Well, Gary got them to do the paintings. 977 01:18:06,769 --> 01:18:12,165 Benji was one of the painters, and Wolf was a painter too. 978 01:18:15,516 --> 01:18:17,736 Linda helped with the emails, 979 01:18:18,389 --> 01:18:20,826 and helping with the money and-- 980 01:18:20,870 --> 01:18:24,874 and making the arrangements for the paintings to go out. 981 01:18:26,484 --> 01:18:29,269 My sister had the bank account. 982 01:18:29,313 --> 01:18:32,708 My sister got told they needed the bank account 983 01:18:32,751 --> 01:18:35,754 to put the money from the paintings in there, so they can hide it, 984 01:18:35,798 --> 01:18:38,496 the money, so they wouldn't get caught. 985 01:18:46,983 --> 01:18:48,898 [interviewer] And what was the website called? 986 01:18:48,941 --> 01:18:52,249 [Dallas] Woodlandart.org, or .com. 987 01:18:52,902 --> 01:18:58,168 It was just, uh, Norval Morrisseau art that Benji painted. 988 01:19:03,260 --> 01:19:04,957 People were buying through the website, 989 01:19:05,001 --> 01:19:09,266 and most of the customers were out West, Calgary, 990 01:19:09,309 --> 01:19:11,442 uh, Edmonton, Vancouver. 991 01:19:13,661 --> 01:19:16,926 [Amanda] Dallas would help going on these trips with-- with Gary. 992 01:19:21,365 --> 01:19:25,064 [Dallas] And at that time, that's when production was just-- 993 01:19:25,108 --> 01:19:29,765 they're spitting them out the Norval Morrisseau fakes. 994 01:19:30,504 --> 01:19:32,898 It was crazy, that summer, 995 01:19:32,942 --> 01:19:37,424 in 2006, 2007, 996 01:19:37,468 --> 01:19:42,734 we went to Calgary approximately twenty-six times 997 01:19:42,778 --> 01:19:47,826 in a two, three month period, selling art. 998 01:19:53,527 --> 01:19:55,138 [interviewer] How would you get there? 999 01:19:55,181 --> 01:19:57,227 [Dallas] Driving in his truck. 1000 01:19:57,270 --> 01:20:01,535 Every time he bought a brand new, 2004 GMC Sierra, something, extended cab, 1001 01:20:01,579 --> 01:20:03,842 and that's how we drove, me, him, and Benji. 1002 01:20:04,712 --> 01:20:07,280 And Benji came on ninety percent of the trips, 1003 01:20:07,324 --> 01:20:11,023 'cause he was a driver and Gary-- they'd split the driving, 1004 01:20:11,067 --> 01:20:13,286 we'd drive to Calgary, one str-- straight shot, 1005 01:20:13,330 --> 01:20:15,723 twenty-three hours, twenty-four hours. 1006 01:20:15,767 --> 01:20:18,422 Sell the art and, you know, sleep 1007 01:20:18,465 --> 01:20:20,728 and be gone the next morning, drive straight back. 1008 01:20:26,734 --> 01:20:31,391 And on every trip, there was probably about thirty paintings that Gary would bring. 1009 01:20:31,957 --> 01:20:36,440 Average price was probably around three grand per painting. 1010 01:20:37,745 --> 01:20:41,880 Always the same question - why--why cash, and Gary would just say, 1011 01:20:41,924 --> 01:20:43,186 "That's the way I want it." 1012 01:20:44,230 --> 01:20:46,667 No paper trail. That's why. 1013 01:20:49,714 --> 01:20:53,196 Every trip, I got paid six hundred dollars cash. 1014 01:20:53,239 --> 01:20:57,591 'Cause I'd be corresponding with customers through emails 1015 01:20:57,635 --> 01:21:02,683 and showing arts and retrieving the paintings out of the carton tubes, 1016 01:21:02,727 --> 01:21:07,123 and, you know, just everything, making his coffee, it's pretty much being his bitch. 1017 01:21:12,215 --> 01:21:16,436 [interviewer] Who were some of the other buyers that you heard Gary talking about? 1018 01:21:16,480 --> 01:21:18,917 David Voss is one of the names, yeah. 1019 01:21:21,528 --> 01:21:23,139 [interviewer] And Jim White? 1020 01:21:23,182 --> 01:21:24,792 Jim White I've heard of. 1021 01:21:28,579 --> 01:21:31,887 And then we went to-- 1022 01:21:33,018 --> 01:21:35,847 where was that-- Southern Ontario, 1023 01:21:35,891 --> 01:21:39,677 to Randy Potter Auction House. 1024 01:21:43,333 --> 01:21:45,596 And we just stopped in there, um, 1025 01:21:48,077 --> 01:21:50,949 Gary went inside the auction house and me and Benji sat in the truck in the parking lot. 1026 01:21:56,650 --> 01:21:58,391 A couple hours later, Gary came out 1027 01:21:58,435 --> 01:22:01,917 and we took off to Niagara Falls to go see his niece, Tanya. 1028 01:22:03,048 --> 01:22:06,399 That one is actually the same day, later on that evening. 1029 01:22:08,358 --> 01:22:11,839 Gary Lamont, I met him on eBay. 1030 01:22:11,883 --> 01:22:13,711 [interviewer] Did you ever buy from him? 1031 01:22:13,754 --> 01:22:15,582 No. Never bought a painting from Gary Lamont. 1032 01:22:15,626 --> 01:22:18,934 Fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred? I have fourteen hundred over here. 1033 01:22:18,977 --> 01:22:22,285 [interviewer] How important a client was for Randy Potter Auction? 1034 01:22:22,328 --> 01:22:25,766 Very, because of the amounts they bought. 1035 01:22:25,810 --> 01:22:28,247 [interviewer] Would you go to them, or would they come to you? 1036 01:22:28,291 --> 01:22:32,077 They came to him. They came to hi-- they actually flew into Thunder Bay 1037 01:22:32,121 --> 01:22:36,386 from, uh, down Toronto area just for that one sale. 1038 01:22:36,429 --> 01:22:42,348 They rented a van, there was three of them that came, a girl and two guys. 1039 01:22:42,392 --> 01:22:45,438 They ended up buying, I think, 1040 01:22:45,482 --> 01:22:49,312 like, thirty pieces for, like, a hundred and twenty-- 1041 01:22:50,052 --> 01:22:53,838 I can't remember, a hundred and twenty something thousand dollars, cash. 1042 01:22:59,061 --> 01:23:00,976 [interviewer] What was your role then, after? 1043 01:23:01,019 --> 01:23:03,979 [Dallas] Just to count the money with his wife, Linda. 1044 01:23:04,022 --> 01:23:07,504 I didn't know, I was just counting thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, 1045 01:23:07,547 --> 01:23:10,855 that's what I was told at the end - I was, like, "Well, how much fucking is here?" 1046 01:23:11,812 --> 01:23:13,379 And, "Hundred and twenty-six." 1047 01:23:15,251 --> 01:23:17,383 A lot of things were going through my fucking head at that time, man, 1048 01:23:17,427 --> 01:23:21,909 they just, you know, fuck, grabbing a bat, fucking doing them both in, you know. 1049 01:23:22,606 --> 01:23:24,782 Especially I was a young kid, you know. 1050 01:23:25,870 --> 01:23:31,484 I'd never seen that kind of money in my life, I still haven't, since. That's, yeah. 1051 01:23:37,142 --> 01:23:40,450 [interviewer] And what was your sense of-- of how Gary would pay? 1052 01:23:40,493 --> 01:23:43,322 Well, Gary would pay Benji and Wolf, 1053 01:23:43,366 --> 01:23:47,848 sometimes in drugs and sometimes money, depending what they asked for. 1054 01:23:48,458 --> 01:23:53,158 [Dallas] There was an incident with, uh, Benjamin, and, uh, they had a disagreement. 1055 01:23:53,202 --> 01:23:57,989 I guess Gary wasn't paying him, and then Benji told him, 1056 01:23:58,033 --> 01:24:01,036 flat out, "When the money stops, the brush stops." 1057 01:24:01,949 --> 01:24:06,041 And then they had a falling out, Benji wasn't in the picture for a couple months, 1058 01:24:06,084 --> 01:24:09,261 and then that's when Tim Tait came into the picture, 1059 01:24:09,305 --> 01:24:14,614 and started doing the fraudulent art at his house on York Street in Thunder Bay here. 1060 01:24:18,401 --> 01:24:21,752 Gary Lamont put Norval Morrisseau's name on my paintings. 1061 01:24:25,886 --> 01:24:31,153 [Dallas] And it was the same deal, uh, Gary would go inside and check on, you know, 1062 01:24:31,196 --> 01:24:34,504 how progress was being made, and how it's looking and everything, 1063 01:24:34,547 --> 01:24:37,985 a couple of times a week he'd go there, tell him, you know, 1064 01:24:38,029 --> 01:24:40,945 "Okay, well, this has got to go this way," or whatever, you know, and... 1065 01:24:45,645 --> 01:24:48,083 [Tim] I wonder why he's asking me to do all this, you know, 1066 01:24:49,997 --> 01:24:52,087 like-- he told me to paint this, paint that... 1067 01:24:55,394 --> 01:24:56,569 I did. 1068 01:24:57,222 --> 01:24:59,094 Yeah. To get my fix. 1069 01:25:06,884 --> 01:25:09,365 Ah, man, I was in bad shape those days. 1070 01:25:10,148 --> 01:25:13,456 That's why I lost my wife and my mortgage and everything. 1071 01:25:13,499 --> 01:25:14,326 Everything was gone. 1072 01:25:15,284 --> 01:25:17,155 I got into the drugs. 1073 01:25:19,549 --> 01:25:21,986 Crack, coke, uh, 1074 01:25:22,029 --> 01:25:26,817 OxyContin, Percocet, everything. Everything that was around. 1075 01:25:30,690 --> 01:25:33,302 [interviewer] Tell me about how you first became aware 1076 01:25:33,345 --> 01:25:36,131 that paintings you had done 1077 01:25:36,174 --> 01:25:39,525 were being passed off as Norval Morrisseau's work. 1078 01:25:40,526 --> 01:25:43,790 After the fiftieth painting, I think, I started realized, started thinking, 1079 01:25:43,834 --> 01:25:45,357 "What does he do with these paintings." 1080 01:25:47,968 --> 01:25:52,234 Gary Lamont bought a house right during that time. 1081 01:25:53,713 --> 01:25:55,889 Made me think, like, "Where is he getting money from?" 1082 01:25:59,632 --> 01:26:01,721 Holy smokes, I remember those. 1083 01:26:02,983 --> 01:26:05,638 See, that's mine right there, too, I always see that one. 1084 01:26:09,729 --> 01:26:11,688 How could they think this is Norval's? 1085 01:26:11,731 --> 01:26:14,908 It's not Norval's style, it's just-- you can tell it's my style in a way. 1086 01:26:15,518 --> 01:26:18,564 That's the one that's on the computer, I always look at. 1087 01:26:20,479 --> 01:26:22,612 That's not Norval Morrisseau's, that's mine. 1088 01:26:23,917 --> 01:26:25,180 The signature? 1089 01:26:26,355 --> 01:26:28,008 I didn't do those signatures at all. 1090 01:26:29,227 --> 01:26:32,230 This is one of the early ones I did, for Gary. 1091 01:26:33,666 --> 01:26:36,191 I thought-- I thought it was gonna be, like, my work. 1092 01:26:37,279 --> 01:26:41,979 This one, I didn't sign. But he-- I guess he did that. 1093 01:26:43,023 --> 01:26:46,331 Ozaawaabiko-binesi. Copper Thunderbird. 1094 01:26:47,158 --> 01:26:48,420 Norval Morrisseau. 1095 01:26:50,205 --> 01:26:52,511 Huh. I think Gary's the one that did that one himself, you know? 1096 01:26:53,425 --> 01:26:56,341 You know what, if I had a chance to beat the shit out of him, excuse me-- 1097 01:26:56,385 --> 01:26:57,908 beat the hell out of him, I would. 1098 01:26:58,604 --> 01:26:59,431 You know what I mean? 1099 01:27:00,867 --> 01:27:03,130 That's the kind of anger I have in me right now. 1100 01:27:08,048 --> 01:27:13,184 And then Gary and Benji, they're back in good graces again 1101 01:27:13,228 --> 01:27:14,751 with each other. 1102 01:27:14,794 --> 01:27:17,797 I guess Gary paid them off whatever money he owed Benji. 1103 01:27:25,152 --> 01:27:28,286 [interviewer] There are people who say they were part of a fraud ring, 1104 01:27:28,330 --> 01:27:32,029 who have been saying that Gary Lamont was selling 1105 01:27:32,072 --> 01:27:34,510 these paintings as Norval Morrisseau paintings. 1106 01:27:34,553 --> 01:27:39,297 I've heard such stories. But I have no, uh, 1107 01:27:42,082 --> 01:27:43,780 direction towards that. 1108 01:27:44,433 --> 01:27:48,263 Let me just ask you directly, I mean, did-- did you ever paint... 1109 01:27:48,306 --> 01:27:52,049 No. Not ever. Not ever. 1110 01:27:52,092 --> 01:27:57,054 -You never painted... -I paint Woodlands Art, okay. 1111 01:27:57,097 --> 01:28:00,927 For me to-- to, uh, uh, 1112 01:28:00,971 --> 01:28:03,843 sign, uh, shaman's name 1113 01:28:05,323 --> 01:28:09,414 would be such a bad omen on my spirit 1114 01:28:10,067 --> 01:28:12,199 that it would probably stop me. 1115 01:28:12,243 --> 01:28:14,201 I haven't attempted this. 1116 01:28:14,245 --> 01:28:19,555 Because I already know, on hand, I wouldn't be able to do this thing. Okay? 1117 01:28:19,598 --> 01:28:23,080 So I'm here today to set this record straight. 1118 01:28:23,123 --> 01:28:26,388 With you, my good man, and the rest of the art community, 1119 01:28:26,431 --> 01:28:29,826 that I have never forged my uncle's work. 1120 01:28:34,483 --> 01:28:38,530 Funny thing about this picture is it's Benji who's taking it. 1121 01:28:48,061 --> 01:28:51,630 [Bryant] Norval was a great storyteller and he always told me this story. 1122 01:28:52,370 --> 01:28:56,505 He told me many times. Kind of drummed it into me. 1123 01:28:58,333 --> 01:29:03,163 That money was like a river and it flows by your back door. 1124 01:29:05,601 --> 01:29:09,039 And you can go to the bank of the river 1125 01:29:09,082 --> 01:29:11,520 and you can dip in and get what you need, 1126 01:29:12,869 --> 01:29:15,480 or you can wade into the river and drown. 1127 01:29:22,008 --> 01:29:25,229 [Amanda] Norval Morrisseau was around lots when I was a kid. 1128 01:29:27,013 --> 01:29:31,496 'Cause Gary and Linda used to help him out with-- with groceries and rent. 1129 01:29:34,238 --> 01:29:36,371 And some of his bills that he had. 1130 01:29:37,589 --> 01:29:40,244 Gary said, well, said that they were close. 1131 01:29:41,637 --> 01:29:45,858 Gary said the paintings were coming from when he was helping him. 1132 01:29:45,902 --> 01:29:48,644 So he was getting that in exchange. 1133 01:29:56,129 --> 01:29:59,742 [Bryant] Back in the, uh, late '80s, early '90s, 1134 01:30:00,525 --> 01:30:02,527 Norval unfortunately 1135 01:30:03,093 --> 01:30:06,662 was majorly into substance abuse. 1136 01:30:07,402 --> 01:30:09,099 He was living in Thunder Bay, 1137 01:30:09,882 --> 01:30:13,712 and he hooked up with this fella that, um, 1138 01:30:13,756 --> 01:30:15,627 for one reason or another, 1139 01:30:15,671 --> 01:30:18,804 started making these fake paintings. 1140 01:30:21,372 --> 01:30:24,854 [Gabe] Lamont was the son of a very close friend of Norval's. 1141 01:30:25,681 --> 01:30:30,555 And then as Lamont got-- grew older, he started hanging around Norval. 1142 01:30:30,599 --> 01:30:35,908 And then, I think, Norval's close friend, Lamont's father, 1143 01:30:35,952 --> 01:30:38,824 asked him to watch out for his son, take care of him. 1144 01:30:41,261 --> 01:30:47,093 So I think Norval felt like he was gonna try and help this young man. 1145 01:30:47,137 --> 01:30:49,922 But this young man is way beyond help. 1146 01:30:51,446 --> 01:30:54,753 I think Norval was involved in, not only Gary, 1147 01:30:54,797 --> 01:30:59,192 but obviously Gary's chaos or whatever that he was creating brought into his life. 1148 01:30:59,236 --> 01:31:02,413 And it would be, like, almost like, "Okay, 1149 01:31:02,457 --> 01:31:05,460 I'm willing to make a deal with the devil and I won't get burned." 1150 01:31:05,503 --> 01:31:08,419 It's like, "You're gonna get fucking burned." 1151 01:31:15,121 --> 01:31:17,428 [Bryant] You know, I've always told other people this, 1152 01:31:17,472 --> 01:31:21,171 and some of them don't like me to say it, but it's the truth, 1153 01:31:22,041 --> 01:31:24,479 is I believe that Norval was complicit. 1154 01:31:27,003 --> 01:31:30,528 In the fact that he didn't like people to not do well. 1155 01:31:30,572 --> 01:31:32,487 He wanted everybody to do well. 1156 01:31:33,183 --> 01:31:35,968 And he-- he's seeing someone, 1157 01:31:37,448 --> 01:31:39,363 you know, doing one of his paintings, 1158 01:31:39,406 --> 01:31:41,713 and getting some money for it, and they did better. 1159 01:31:42,409 --> 01:31:43,715 And he saw it like that. 1160 01:31:43,759 --> 01:31:47,719 And, um, you know, it didn't bother him, right? 1161 01:31:48,677 --> 01:31:49,634 At the time. 1162 01:31:50,635 --> 01:31:52,245 In the very beginning, 1163 01:31:52,942 --> 01:31:55,118 he knew that Gary Lamont 1164 01:31:55,901 --> 01:32:00,297 was having fake paintings made. He knew that. 1165 01:32:00,340 --> 01:32:01,516 [interviewer] How do you know? 1166 01:32:02,691 --> 01:32:04,693 Because Norval talked about it. 1167 01:32:10,612 --> 01:32:13,571 [Norval] Many times people come up to me and say, "Norval, 1168 01:32:13,615 --> 01:32:15,878 I thank you very much for healing me. 1169 01:32:15,921 --> 01:32:18,402 I thank you very much for helping me. 1170 01:32:18,445 --> 01:32:20,447 I thank you very much for doing this." 1171 01:32:20,491 --> 01:32:22,449 I have never seen those people. 1172 01:32:23,320 --> 01:32:24,234 What did it? 1173 01:32:24,930 --> 01:32:26,410 That certain painting. 1174 01:32:28,151 --> 01:32:32,721 It will be a force that will protect whatever situation you're in. 1175 01:32:36,376 --> 01:32:38,335 [Bryant] Norval called him "the dope dealer." 1176 01:32:38,901 --> 01:32:40,990 I never once heard him say his name. 1177 01:32:41,556 --> 01:32:45,385 But he'd say, "Oh, the dope dealer did this, and the dope dealer did that." 1178 01:32:45,429 --> 01:32:50,173 It was actually years later that I figured out who the dope dealer was. 1179 01:32:52,305 --> 01:32:55,178 [Ritchie] Now, my suggestion about this Gary Lamont thing is, 1180 01:32:55,874 --> 01:32:59,182 he saw a wonderful business opportunity. 1181 01:32:59,704 --> 01:33:02,794 With Morrisseau's paintings, he could convert drug money 1182 01:33:03,447 --> 01:33:06,755 into money that you could buy a car or buy a house with. 1183 01:33:06,798 --> 01:33:09,627 It could be, uh, surfaced. 1184 01:33:09,671 --> 01:33:11,498 Just from things that he said, 1185 01:33:11,542 --> 01:33:15,328 I believe that he knew in the very beginning what was happening. 1186 01:33:16,547 --> 01:33:17,983 And he could-- 1187 01:33:19,332 --> 01:33:23,032 you know, Lamont got him a place to live, 1188 01:33:24,294 --> 01:33:26,513 basically gave him booze and drugs, 1189 01:33:26,557 --> 01:33:29,038 and he sat around and good-- had a good time, 1190 01:33:29,081 --> 01:33:30,517 and other people painted paintings. 1191 01:33:30,561 --> 01:33:32,215 But it was small scale, though. 1192 01:33:32,258 --> 01:33:34,913 It was some, it was enough for all these people 1193 01:33:34,957 --> 01:33:37,307 that were around him to get by. 1194 01:33:37,916 --> 01:33:40,658 You know, he wants everybody to have a good life. 1195 01:33:46,446 --> 01:33:48,492 Well, we figured, near the end, 1196 01:33:48,535 --> 01:33:52,627 that they had a relationship going on, sexually, in a way. 1197 01:33:53,279 --> 01:33:55,064 The way they were acting together. 1198 01:33:55,934 --> 01:33:58,589 Just the way he was always, like, on him. 1199 01:33:58,633 --> 01:33:59,677 Touching him. 1200 01:34:00,417 --> 01:34:02,332 Like, rubbing his legs and... 1201 01:34:02,898 --> 01:34:04,421 [interviewer] Who was touching whom? 1202 01:34:04,464 --> 01:34:07,554 Gary was touching him like that. 1203 01:34:08,991 --> 01:34:11,210 [interviewer] And was Norval receptive? 1204 01:34:11,254 --> 01:34:12,168 No. 1205 01:34:15,867 --> 01:34:17,739 He kept moving to different chairs. 1206 01:34:19,001 --> 01:34:20,655 Being uncomfortable. 1207 01:34:21,612 --> 01:34:23,875 And so he stopped coming over for a while. 1208 01:34:27,531 --> 01:34:31,970 And my aunt just went to his house and gave money for groceries and paid his rent. 1209 01:34:32,841 --> 01:34:34,712 And Gary just stayed back. 1210 01:34:38,194 --> 01:34:42,546 [Bryant] Over the years, this fraud developed and snowballed 1211 01:34:42,589 --> 01:34:45,723 and became more prevalent, and they became greedy, 1212 01:34:45,767 --> 01:34:47,464 and they wanted more and more and more, 1213 01:34:47,507 --> 01:34:50,685 and they were doing paintings, you know, hundreds of paintings 1214 01:34:50,728 --> 01:34:56,473 and it's, you know, it-- it became, uh-- it became a monster for him. 1215 01:35:03,045 --> 01:35:04,524 They got greedy. 1216 01:35:04,568 --> 01:35:07,136 And they waded into the river, and they drowned in it. 1217 01:35:08,790 --> 01:35:12,097 And by then it was too late for Norval to do anything about it. 1218 01:35:17,494 --> 01:35:19,409 [Gabe] And then later in life, 1219 01:35:19,452 --> 01:35:23,108 what I learned about Gary Lamont is that he's a creep 1220 01:35:23,152 --> 01:35:26,329 and been in all kinds-- involved in all kinds of things. 1221 01:35:32,639 --> 01:35:36,121 [interviewer] Are you scared talking about the art fraud now? 1222 01:35:36,165 --> 01:35:38,297 I was in the beginning, but I'm not anymore. 1223 01:35:38,341 --> 01:35:40,473 Because I already-- you know, 1224 01:35:40,517 --> 01:35:43,999 I have fantasies of killing Gary all the time over the sexual assault stuff and that, 1225 01:35:44,042 --> 01:35:47,698 you know, so-- wasn't that, you know. 1226 01:35:49,308 --> 01:35:53,878 I wouldn't be able to live with myself after 1227 01:35:53,922 --> 01:35:55,924 if I just backed out now. 1228 01:36:05,672 --> 01:36:07,849 Gary had lots of Native boarding students 1229 01:36:07,892 --> 01:36:10,416 that would come in from the up North reserves 1230 01:36:10,460 --> 01:36:12,810 to continue their high school education. 1231 01:36:16,161 --> 01:36:19,077 [Amanda] Well, my aunt signed up for boarding students 1232 01:36:19,121 --> 01:36:22,646 from different reserves to live in their hou-- in their home. 1233 01:36:26,432 --> 01:36:29,609 [Dallas] And I was friends with a couple of them. 1234 01:36:34,484 --> 01:36:37,400 [Amanda] Well, they were coming from small reserves, 1235 01:36:37,443 --> 01:36:38,967 some-- some of them were dry reserves, 1236 01:36:39,010 --> 01:36:42,492 so they didn't know about drinking or drugs. 1237 01:36:43,798 --> 01:36:45,669 So she would take six at a time. 1238 01:36:46,975 --> 01:36:48,715 Six boarding students. 1239 01:36:50,717 --> 01:36:51,936 Native guys. 1240 01:36:52,589 --> 01:36:56,288 In between eighteen and twenty-five. 1241 01:36:58,595 --> 01:37:00,379 They wouldn't take the females. 1242 01:37:03,992 --> 01:37:05,732 [Dallas] That's what he called the camp, 1243 01:37:05,776 --> 01:37:08,126 it was just north of the city, and they were like, 1244 01:37:08,170 --> 01:37:09,693 "Okay, well, let's go out to camp." 1245 01:37:11,608 --> 01:37:15,786 [Amanda] Gary introduced them to having a beer, or an alcohol drink. 1246 01:37:16,482 --> 01:37:20,704 He used to drop Valiums in our drinks, right, and it was-- 1247 01:37:20,747 --> 01:37:24,839 it was like a big joke - "Oh, hahahaha, you got dosed, duhduhduh," 1248 01:37:24,882 --> 01:37:28,407 you know, and everybody, like, he'd drug everybody around the table, 1249 01:37:28,451 --> 01:37:31,454 different times, different partying times, and... 1250 01:37:32,237 --> 01:37:36,198 And then we got stories from the, some of the-- the boarders they took, 1251 01:37:37,068 --> 01:37:40,332 that they're waking up with their pants off and everything. 1252 01:37:40,376 --> 01:37:43,074 And being sore when they'd go back. 1253 01:37:44,684 --> 01:37:46,904 So they didn't know what was happening to them. 1254 01:37:51,561 --> 01:37:55,782 And then this, uh, room to the right of it was, uh, 1255 01:37:55,826 --> 01:37:59,264 there was bunk beds in there for all the Native boarding students, 1256 01:37:59,308 --> 01:38:01,310 and this is where he kept them all. 1257 01:38:03,007 --> 01:38:05,140 And I ended up getting drugged, 1258 01:38:05,183 --> 01:38:08,926 and then he kicked everybody out, and then I had my own bedroom, 1259 01:38:08,970 --> 01:38:11,842 right beside his in the main house, and everybody else, 1260 01:38:11,886 --> 01:38:15,846 he kicked out to the guest camp and then locked the door. 1261 01:38:15,890 --> 01:38:19,458 That night, I-- there was, like, a blue light from the stereo, 1262 01:38:19,502 --> 01:38:22,331 I remember, I remember him coming into the room, 1263 01:38:23,158 --> 01:38:26,378 I was just thinking to myself, "I'm fucked." 1264 01:38:34,691 --> 01:38:36,649 He kept the keys on him at all times. 1265 01:38:36,693 --> 01:38:39,609 Once he locked the door, there was no getting out. 1266 01:38:39,652 --> 01:38:43,439 He pretty much did whatever he wanted. 1267 01:38:47,138 --> 01:38:49,184 And I was just so fucked up, 1268 01:38:49,227 --> 01:38:53,666 and then that's basically when I became a prisoner in this house. 1269 01:38:54,406 --> 01:38:58,976 He threatened my life, he started threatening me, he told me once, 1270 01:38:59,020 --> 01:39:02,327 when he was raping me, he was punching me in the head, 1271 01:39:02,371 --> 01:39:07,550 he told me that I better just go along with it or I'll end up like Scott Dove. 1272 01:39:12,772 --> 01:39:18,735 [Amanda] Scott Dove owed money for drugs to Gary. They found him. 1273 01:39:20,345 --> 01:39:25,481 He was hung with his privates cut off and shoved down his throat. 1274 01:39:30,399 --> 01:39:32,444 Gary was one of the suspects. 1275 01:39:33,924 --> 01:39:36,144 [interviewer] And was-- Was anyone ever arrested? 1276 01:39:37,101 --> 01:39:41,279 They didn't have enough evidence. So he got off the charges. 1277 01:39:49,505 --> 01:39:52,856 [Dallas] He raped me, and then just went to bed like nothing happened, 1278 01:39:52,899 --> 01:39:56,381 and woke up the next day and acted like nothing happened. 1279 01:39:58,427 --> 01:40:02,126 Everybody else was around, I felt all ashamed and down... 1280 01:40:09,829 --> 01:40:14,530 This was Linda and Gary's room. This was the living room. 1281 01:40:17,141 --> 01:40:20,840 I never expected the sexual assaults to start happening again, 1282 01:40:20,884 --> 01:40:22,799 because his wife lived there, right? 1283 01:40:24,801 --> 01:40:26,846 And then my room was there. 1284 01:40:29,719 --> 01:40:32,026 And, you know, we all lived on the same floor, 1285 01:40:32,069 --> 01:40:36,639 and he was coming into my room at night and, you know, 1286 01:40:36,682 --> 01:40:39,772 raping me while his wife's, you know, 1287 01:40:40,730 --> 01:40:44,603 just on the other side of the kitchen in her bedroom, 1288 01:40:44,647 --> 01:40:47,650 and just progressively got worse and worse 1289 01:40:47,693 --> 01:40:52,481 and more and more violent, and I was scared, I was young, 1290 01:40:53,873 --> 01:40:56,180 and it was a nightly occurrence. 1291 01:40:57,660 --> 01:41:02,230 Uh, somewhere in the neighbourhood of five, six hundred times 1292 01:41:02,273 --> 01:41:06,234 that I could estimate. 1293 01:41:22,206 --> 01:41:24,643 [Amanda] A couple of the students went to Linda, 1294 01:41:24,687 --> 01:41:27,472 and told what was happening to them. 1295 01:41:28,560 --> 01:41:32,390 Then she con-- Well, she confronted Gary, and Gary denied everything. 1296 01:41:34,784 --> 01:41:38,179 She just believed Gary, whatever Gary says. 1297 01:41:42,400 --> 01:41:47,188 I thought that people would think of me, I'm a bitch, you know, whatever. 1298 01:41:47,231 --> 01:41:49,233 You know, just really negative. 1299 01:41:55,196 --> 01:42:00,375 It was like he was trying to brainwash me, but I never enjoyed it. 1300 01:42:00,418 --> 01:42:03,943 It, just, even to this day, it just-- 1301 01:42:04,857 --> 01:42:07,991 think about it, it really bothers me. 1302 01:42:08,644 --> 01:42:10,994 Just-- it's-- yes. 1303 01:42:25,226 --> 01:42:28,011 With the Native school, I went and called it in. 1304 01:42:28,054 --> 01:42:31,362 Told the school what was going on, so they put a stop to taking-- 1305 01:42:31,406 --> 01:42:33,451 getting-- Linda to take students. 1306 01:42:34,670 --> 01:42:37,063 [interviewer] And what was their reaction, Gary and Linda's? 1307 01:42:37,107 --> 01:42:40,284 They were kind of upset about it, 'cause they wanted that income to come in, 1308 01:42:40,328 --> 01:42:41,503 so they can-- 1309 01:42:41,546 --> 01:42:44,593 say they got income from some other place 1310 01:42:44,636 --> 01:42:46,725 instead of what they were actually doing. 1311 01:42:47,683 --> 01:42:50,642 So it was an excuse for them to have all that money. 1312 01:43:12,316 --> 01:43:17,756 [interviewer] What year was it that you began to speak out and testify about the assault? 1313 01:43:17,800 --> 01:43:20,498 [Dallas] It was 2012. 1314 01:43:24,067 --> 01:43:28,376 2012 would be the year I came out about it all, 1315 01:43:28,419 --> 01:43:32,162 uh, actually followed through the cops, and then that's, 1316 01:43:32,206 --> 01:43:35,296 actually something got done, something happened. 1317 01:43:38,124 --> 01:43:40,605 [man] Thunder Bay OPP began their investigation in June, 1318 01:43:40,649 --> 01:43:44,218 after receiving allegations of incidents that occurred at Warnica Lake 1319 01:43:44,261 --> 01:43:47,046 between 1997 and 2007. 1320 01:43:47,090 --> 01:43:49,875 As a result, 51-year-old Gary Bruce Lamont 1321 01:43:49,919 --> 01:43:53,618 has been charged with eight offences, including assault, sexual assault... 1322 01:43:53,662 --> 01:43:55,881 [woman] The OPP confirms that 52-year-old Gary Lamont 1323 01:43:55,925 --> 01:43:58,014 was arrested today on nine new charges. 1324 01:43:58,057 --> 01:44:01,670 They include forcible confinement, three sexual assaults, 1325 01:44:01,713 --> 01:44:04,238 sexual exploitation, and assault with a weapon. 1326 01:44:09,068 --> 01:44:13,856 [Jonathan] As we've been going through the process of this fakes lawsuit, 1327 01:44:13,899 --> 01:44:18,730 some of the victims of Gary Lamont filed complaints with the police, 1328 01:44:18,774 --> 01:44:22,604 and that led to prosecution of Gary Lamont 1329 01:44:22,647 --> 01:44:24,997 for sexual assault and other charges. 1330 01:44:25,041 --> 01:44:29,088 He was convicted and sentenced to five years in federal prison. 1331 01:44:31,177 --> 01:44:34,877 Three new victims have come forward, two men and one woman. 1332 01:44:36,618 --> 01:44:41,797 They ended up charging him for one female. That was me. 1333 01:44:50,806 --> 01:44:53,591 [Dallas] I don't know, I've cried lots about it, 1334 01:44:53,635 --> 01:44:56,290 I've got no more tears to cry about this at all. 1335 01:45:00,642 --> 01:45:03,993 I feel good about becoming the first one, 1336 01:45:04,036 --> 01:45:07,736 and giving other people the courage to come forward 1337 01:45:07,779 --> 01:45:10,347 and put this guy where he belongs. 1338 01:45:10,391 --> 01:45:15,700 In jail. He's a predator, and that's where predators belong, in a cage. 1339 01:45:15,744 --> 01:45:21,053 Can't control themselves, it's just-- it's horrible, he's a monster. 1340 01:45:23,360 --> 01:45:26,320 In every sense of the word, a monster. 1341 01:45:49,430 --> 01:45:52,607 There's a lot of mixed feelings, you know, nervousness. 1342 01:45:53,259 --> 01:45:56,959 Everything this trial represents about the fake Morrisseaus, 1343 01:45:57,002 --> 01:46:01,746 and all the sexual assaults that took place while these were being made, 1344 01:46:02,617 --> 01:46:04,445 and it's just a lot. 1345 01:46:05,315 --> 01:46:09,841 I think he's very brave and courageous for doing what he's doing. 1346 01:46:09,885 --> 01:46:14,106 He's nervous, but, you know, he's doing the right thing and I'm proud of him. 1347 01:46:16,282 --> 01:46:19,590 She doesn't have to wonder anymore, you know, 1348 01:46:19,634 --> 01:46:22,724 about everything, what took place, what happened, 1349 01:46:23,594 --> 01:46:28,947 why I am the way I am, I guess, today, how it shaped me. 1350 01:46:29,731 --> 01:46:31,820 Messed up my life, pretty much. 1351 01:46:35,476 --> 01:46:39,175 Starting to get nervous, yeah. Just sweating away. 1352 01:46:39,218 --> 01:46:40,306 Me too. 1353 01:47:08,334 --> 01:47:10,685 [Dallas] In my opinion, I'm being a warrior, 1354 01:47:10,728 --> 01:47:13,383 I'm standing up for what's right, what I believe in, 1355 01:47:13,427 --> 01:47:17,126 and the Native people were all about that. 1356 01:47:21,565 --> 01:47:23,001 How do you feel? 1357 01:47:23,045 --> 01:47:24,176 Extremely nervous. 1358 01:47:29,181 --> 01:47:31,357 This is, uh, private property. 1359 01:47:31,401 --> 01:47:33,229 Yeah. No kidding. 1360 01:47:33,272 --> 01:47:34,752 -How you doing, Gabe? -Good. 1361 01:47:35,710 --> 01:47:37,146 [Ritchie] It's incredible. 1362 01:47:37,189 --> 01:47:39,235 I'm totally blown away, 1363 01:47:39,278 --> 01:47:44,109 I had the biggest cry last night to realize with overwhelming truth 1364 01:47:44,153 --> 01:47:46,111 what these people are doing. 1365 01:47:46,155 --> 01:47:50,855 The beauty of it, the exposure, the dignity. It's like a sacred moment. 1366 01:47:55,164 --> 01:47:56,818 -How's it going? -How are you doing? 1367 01:47:56,861 --> 01:48:01,649 -I'm good, you? -I'm so proud of you. Thanks for doing this. 1368 01:48:01,692 --> 01:48:06,088 Are you testifying again today, too? Yeah, I heard you did yesterday. I heard you did good. 1369 01:48:08,438 --> 01:48:10,527 -Well, should we head in? -Definitely. 1370 01:48:10,571 --> 01:48:11,572 Yeah. 1371 01:48:15,576 --> 01:48:16,751 All right, babe, you ready? 1372 01:48:16,794 --> 01:48:17,795 Let's go. 1373 01:48:19,797 --> 01:48:22,713 [Dallas] All these paintings offer a story. 1374 01:48:22,757 --> 01:48:27,544 Gary pretty much just took advantage of it for profit. 1375 01:48:29,024 --> 01:48:30,721 To make a penny, you know. 1376 01:48:30,765 --> 01:48:34,769 This is my culture and my heritage, being Native, 1377 01:48:35,596 --> 01:48:40,775 and total disrespect, disregard for anything. 1378 01:48:42,167 --> 01:48:45,388 And it just doesn't sit well with me, 1379 01:48:45,431 --> 01:48:51,220 how he's making money off of Natives like that. 1380 01:48:57,792 --> 01:49:01,535 I felt like crying after I came out, brought up a lot of stuff. 1381 01:49:02,492 --> 01:49:05,321 I feel really shitty mood, personally, you know, 1382 01:49:05,364 --> 01:49:07,758 and this-- I don't know, I'm feeling really down right now. 1383 01:49:08,542 --> 01:49:12,850 Trying to forget about some of this stuff, you know. 1384 01:49:14,548 --> 01:49:16,854 I wanted to hug you in the courtroom, 1385 01:49:16,898 --> 01:49:18,639 but I didn't know if I was allowed. 1386 01:49:19,770 --> 01:49:21,772 -That was powerful. -Thank you. 1387 01:49:22,381 --> 01:49:25,776 Thank you. I'll see you in a bit. 1388 01:49:25,820 --> 01:49:26,647 Okay. 1389 01:49:32,130 --> 01:49:36,221 [interviewer] Do you know what was testified to at the end of the last leg of the trial? 1390 01:49:37,396 --> 01:49:40,008 Two people testified that they were inside an art fraud ring-- 1391 01:49:40,051 --> 01:49:42,706 -You're kidding. ---paintings with black dry brush on them. 1392 01:49:44,055 --> 01:49:45,796 Hahaha. Very funny. 1393 01:49:45,840 --> 01:49:48,016 That's what was testified to, I'm not kidding. 1394 01:49:48,059 --> 01:49:50,801 I don't-- I don't disagree. Where are they? Did they show any? 1395 01:49:50,845 --> 01:49:52,629 They described the whole process. 1396 01:49:52,673 --> 01:49:55,197 They described. I can describe many things to you, 1397 01:49:55,240 --> 01:49:58,417 but if I don't show you, you don't even know it exists! 1398 01:49:58,983 --> 01:50:00,724 So you think it was all made up? 1399 01:50:00,768 --> 01:50:03,118 I have never seen a fake. Have you? 1400 01:50:03,771 --> 01:50:08,297 -Well, I've seen... -Have you? I have not. What can I tell you? 1401 01:50:18,873 --> 01:50:22,920 Randy Potter here, we're gonna show off this beautiful Norval Morrisseau. 1402 01:50:22,964 --> 01:50:27,359 [Dallas] There's a lot of people that are saying that there are no fakes out there, 1403 01:50:27,403 --> 01:50:31,363 when I've seen hundreds and hundreds of fake paintings. 1404 01:50:35,237 --> 01:50:40,895 I just feel like Gary pretty much raped my culture, doing this. 1405 01:50:45,726 --> 01:50:47,989 [Kevin] I just wanted to buy a painting, really. 1406 01:52:36,314 --> 01:52:38,360 [interviewer] What do you know about this painting? 1407 01:52:39,535 --> 01:52:43,757 On a personal level? I'd give you five bucks for it. 1408 01:52:46,542 --> 01:52:49,066 Spirit Energy of Mother Earth, 1409 01:52:49,110 --> 01:52:52,722 that sounds really familiar. 1410 01:52:53,636 --> 01:52:55,116 Spirit Energy. 1411 01:52:56,595 --> 01:53:00,730 'Cause it looks all, like, lots of, many of, 1412 01:53:00,774 --> 01:53:03,864 I've seen that Benji has painted, for sure. 1413 01:53:05,996 --> 01:53:10,479 [interviewer] You said that the one that his lawsuit is over, you don't think is yours, right? 1414 01:53:10,522 --> 01:53:11,567 I don't think it's mine. 1415 01:53:13,787 --> 01:53:18,530 It kind of reminds me, uh, the bottom piece here reminds me of one that Benji painted, 1416 01:53:18,574 --> 01:53:21,229 I called it, uh, the 'Kung Fu Bears.' 1417 01:53:21,272 --> 01:53:25,407 Cause it was a bear and it looked like they're doing kung fu. 1418 01:53:27,322 --> 01:53:29,280 [interviewer] You don't think it's a Norval? 1419 01:53:29,324 --> 01:53:32,283 No. I don't. Not personally. 1420 01:53:33,458 --> 01:53:36,244 -[interviewer] And you don't know anything about... -No. 1421 01:53:36,287 --> 01:53:38,202 -Did you paint it? -No. 1422 01:53:39,290 --> 01:53:42,380 I swear on Norval's grave and my grandmother's. 1423 01:53:42,424 --> 01:53:43,947 I never painted that. 1424 01:53:44,818 --> 01:53:48,604 If I could, it would look ten times better than that. 1425 01:53:48,647 --> 01:53:52,826 That looks like my five-year-old son painted it. Okay?