In March, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews announced that the new appointees — drawn from police organizations in B.C., Alberta and Manitoba — would “provide important suggestions and input” to firearms legislation.

But weeks before that announcement, Public Safety Canada staff sent Toews a memo suggesting that “while the changes to membership … will provide a greater voice for law enforcement on the committee, the changes will still not reflect the full spectrum of the firearms control debate.”

The Feb. 12 memo, signed by Francois Guimont, the deputy minister of public safety, was obtained under access-to-information laws.

Toews’ spokeswoman, Julie Carmichael, said in an email Wednesday that the new appointees “further strengthened the membership of (the committee) to ensure the advice that is given is representative of all sides of the debate.”

“As a government, we believe in an effective firearms program, appropriate laws and effective law enforcement, all of which are essential to protecting public safety and combating the criminal use of firearms,” she added.

Toews’ decision to shuffle the committee’s membership was spurred by remarks made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in December on the anniversary of the mass shooting at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique.

Asked by the opposition about documents showing that the firearms advisory committee — heavily weighted with sports shooting enthusiasts — was advocating for the reclassification of certain prohibited weapons, Harper told the House that he had “absolutely no intention” of accommodating those recommendations and agreed that the committee’s membership needed some “re-examination.”

Toews subsequently sent letters to three members of the committee thanking them for their service, particularly in helping to end the long-gun registry, but advising them that their tenure was ending “effective immediately.”

Those cut from the committee were co-chair Linda Baggaley, a Red Deer gun auctioneer and vice-president of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association; Gerry Gamble, president of the Sporting Clubs of Niagara and a director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association; and Kerry Higgins, a gunsmith from Saskatchewan.

They were replaced by Rick Hanson, chief of the Calgary Police Service; Bob Rich, chief of the Abbotsford Police Department; and Mike Sutherland, president of the Winnipeg Police Association.

The Abbotsford police chief  made international headlines in December when he appeared in a Christmas greeting card decked out in a Santa Claus outfit toting a rifle used by his emergency response team. The card was sent to gang members and prolific offenders advising them that it’s never too late to make better choices.

Rich has stated publicly that he believes Canada has taken the “wrong approach” on handguns and that they should be prohibited “in all cases.” Appearing before a House of Commons committee in 2010, Rich also stated that “assault rifles should never be in the hands of any private person. There’s just no reason for that.”

Rich said he supported scrapping the long-gun registry because it was filled with inaccurate information.

Hanson told the same committee that he wasn’t opposed to a properly administered registry but said he opposed criminalizing people for owning unregistered sporting weapons.

In an interview with The Canadian Press following his ouster, Gamble complained that the new appointees were “not friends of gun owners” and were chosen “purely for public relations purposes.”

Those who remain on the committee include the executive director and president of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, a police firearms trainer, a member of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, a police sergeant and firearms master instructor, a criminologist, and an Olympic gold medallist in pistol shooting.

Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae last month decried the committee’s lack of mental health professionals and domestic violence experts.

“Given that 72 per cent of firearms-related deaths are by suicide, how does the prime minister feel that the firearms advisory committee can appropriately advise the government on these matters without the input of mental health experts?” Rae said in a statement.

dquan(at)postmedia.com

Twitter.com/dougquan

The front of the card shows Santa dressed in police tactical gear and carrying a machine gun.

The message on the front asks “Which list will you be on next year?” and inside, it tells the recipient it’s never too late to make a better choice.

The card is signed by Abbotsford’s Chief Constable Bob Rich and his two deputy constables.

The department mailout will go to those who have been caught many times for property crimes and those who are known for drug and gang activity.

There’s also a phone number attached to the card where the offenders can call and leave their name and contact information to get help in making a life-changing choice.

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“Poem for Joseph Cornell’s ‘Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall’” by Bob Rich

I am standing near the sea, on wet sand, in the dark of the gloomy night, and the ocean waters in front of me being to rise into an accumulating wave of great and watery sadness.  Within moments, the waves heave upward and expands into an immense liquid wall which threatens to soon loom over me with its approaching shadow.  I wonder, “How can anyone escape such sorrow?”

But then, in my mind’s eye, I find the memory of a work of art:  an upright, rectangular, three-dimensional box, which contains carefully arranges photographs that, at first, I can see only in shadow.  And a white wild horse appears before me in the darkness of the wet sand, in front of the giant wave.  I walk closer to the horse, with its blazing white eyes, and then the stately horse kneels down so that I can climb onto its back, where its mane flutters in the cold wind like rippling white silk.  I stare more intently at the dimly lit box in my memory.  And now the  white horse lifts her head and calmly directs herself toward the vast wave that lies before us.  I recall that the 3-D box in my memory was designed to be like a coin-operated arcade machine; so, I place a penny into the box’s side.  The box becomes lit from within, by a row of seven lights along the top of the artwork, with five more lights just beneath the seven lights.  And the white mare begins to walk toward the towering trembling wall of water, while I sit atop the mare’s back, holding her mane as she precedes forward.  At once, the bottom of the artwork in the box is brightened and a ball is set into motion along a groove, rolling from left to right.  Then, two rows of photographs inside the box are lit:  a row of five pictures toward the top, and a row of three pictures immersed in deep blue along the bottom.  Yet, all these pictures, the five and the three, are veiled in mystery:  the top five photographs portray distant buildings and secretive moments, while the bottom three photographs reveal only glimpses of a woman with a warm aura. Then, the white horse quickens her pace to a steady trot as we grow closer to the ocean wave which continues to build in size, and I start to hear a rumble from within the giant wave.  And, two columns of photographs get lit within the box:  a column of five small pictures along the left and a column of six small pictures along the right.  As I lean in toward the box to get a closer look, I see that the woman portrayed in these small pictures is self-assured, glowing with feminine strength.  I notice that a few of these small photographs on the left and right show her as a smiling young girl, radiant in light as if she is destined for greatness.  Now, the white horse focuses, leaning in toward the icy wind and striking out in a strong canter toward the center of the enormous wave that still grows in its percolating height.  And the wave’s rumbling has grown so much more intense all around me!  In the center of the box, in my memory, a large prominent picture now shines brightly into view, striking my soul like a hot breath of life as the woman’s identity is clearly revealed.  And I remember Lauren Bacall’s elegance; her grace that could melt Humphrey Bogart’s burnt and battered heart with a whisper; her poise and her gorgeous eyes; and,  beneath me, I feel the white horse intensifying her pace into a strong gallop toward the oncoming wave.  The wave is now so close that it thunders in a deafening roar, full of hissing steam.  I close my eyes, wondering how so much sadness could possibly be overcome?  But then, as I keep reflecting on the shining box in my memory, I see the calm serenity of white stars that speckle the blackness of the night sky.  I remember Joseph Cornell’s fondness for constellations, and from seven stars in the night sky, in one electrifying instant, seven white branches of lightening flash out – connecting many stars into a lovely pattern – until the many lightning bolts have formed the luminous profile of Lauren Bacall on the dark canvass of the night sky.  It’s the same portrait as the central photograph in the assemblage box in my memory, but made from bolts of white.

As I consider how Lauren Bacall etched her place in cinema history, her portrait of lightning, there in the night sky, grows in increasing brightness until all I see is blinding white — and I realize that the white horse beneath me has begun to leap, with loud neighing and floating grace, straight into the crumbling wave of water in front of us; but. all I feel once we enter the wave is a gentle mist, like the soft effervescence rising from a glass of champagne, and, instead of the sound of crashing water, I hear the quiet clatter of a movie projector. As the blinding white light softens, I see that it is coming from the aperture of a movie projector’s lens, which is displaying a feature film onto a large silver screen in a darkened movie theater where I am now sitting. “Thank God,” I happily declare with a sigh of relief, from my seat in the front row of the theater. “But, what will I do if, someday I encounter such a terrible sadness again?” Then, I hear a soft stirring from the silver screen above me, and Ms. Bacall looks down at me from the projected movie, as she says: “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”

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Normally when you get the call to shoot a Billionaire industrialist, you can pretty much bet you’re gonna have five minutes in a stark boardroom and there won’t be a whole lotta fun involved. This was exactly what Jeff Beasley…the Picture Editor at FourFourTwo magazine…hoped wouldn’t happen when he asked me to shoot Bob Rich, the Chairman of Rich Products Corporation, for a feature on unlikely soccer club owners. Rich had recently gotten involved with the Bedlington Terriers F.C.…a small football club playing in the Northern League based in Bedlington, England…after tracing his family tree back to the area and after his wife purchased the title of Lord Bedlington for him as a gift. Jeff wanted a portrait that would show Rich’s Big City American roots…something that might mimic a photograph I did of Howard Sontag high above Madison Avenue…while still tying in the Soccer aspect of the story. It turned out the Buffalo-based billionaire was going to be in New York City for a couple of days, but his schedule was extremely tight. We had a tiny window of opportunity to shoot him at his hotel…the Peninsula New York…but while extremely nice, was not exactly a soccer pitch in midtown. I called the hotel and their P/R person told me they that since it was Mr. Rich, they would gladly make the roof bar area available to us and that it has a “lovely view” of Central Park. Feeling buoyed by that news, I headed uptown (in the rain) to scout it out. This was the “lovely view” of the Park…

It wasn’t exactly the pastoral oasis amongst the concrete I had envisioned, but panning the roof I figured I could make something with what I had to work with…

The next morning the rain had stopped and Kaz and I arrived at the (extremely humid) crack of dawn and went about moving the 50 or so tables out of the way to turn the Salon de Ning Rooftop Lounge into our studio for the day…

With the sun out, lighting was super simple…all we needed was the Mola Setti on a boom and the backlighting did the rest…

We even broke out the tried & true ‘Ball Juggling’ routine…

Bob approves…

…and FourFourTwo liked it, too…