05/02/2020 2016 ONCJ 35 (CanLII) | CanLII Ms. Guthrie interpreted some of Mr. Elliott’s July tweets as him using the hashtag #shesrightfolks to follow discussions on the party thrown for her. For her part, she worked to teach him a lesson, participating in an ongoing debate about siccing the internet on Bendilin Spurr. She tweeted about him without using his handle: “Should’ve heard the ‘Ughhhhhhh’ in the room upon mention of the name ‘Greg Elliott’ #shesrightfolks”. As the period charged in the information approached, Ms. Guthrie and Mr. Elliott had been engaged, benignly from February to April by Twitter, unhappily – though only when looking back through the lens of what happened later – in April at dinner and by email, contentiously but consensually through June, and very unhappily for Ms. Guthrie from July 7 when she blocked him. August 1 to September 12 Within the period set out in the information are three discrete periods: August 1 to September 9, September 9 to 12, and starting November 5 just prior to the arrest. Between these dates there was relative calm, as there were no tweets between Mr. Elliott and Ms. Guthrie that the Sysomos search captured. On August 3, the Toronto Star published an article about Ms. Guthrie. Mr. Elliott tweeted about it and added, “#Hate is hate” with a smiley face. The article was about Ms. Guthrie’s campaign against Bendilin Spurr. In a tweet, Mr. Elliott accused Ms. Guthrie of “media-whoring”, as the full tweet in Exhibit 2A demonstrates. Indeed, Mr. Elliott’s August 3 tweet employed one of the ways in which the Crown alleges that the non-direct tweets amount to communicating with and harassing Ms. Guthrie: he mentions her. “@coreymintz the #TOStar hack promotes his friend @amirightfolks as she ‘media-whores’ in the name of ‘misogyny’ thestar.com/living/article…#topoli”. Around August 12, Ms Guthrie testified, things became serious regarding Mr. Elliott, and she began to be fearful of him. But between the July 28 celebration of her and August 3, he hadn’t done anything except tweet about the article, and she was not afraid when July ended. Then Ms. Guthrie renewed the Twitter discussion about Mr. Elliott. Consistent with her intention to teach him a lesson, according to her testimony, she began to inform more people about what she considered his mistreatment of women. Ms. Guthrie, though in her perception not sexually harassed herself, retweeted six tweets that included Mr. Elliott’s handle. Others, she had learned, had confronted him about his unwanted sexual tweets to them. She testified that she wanted him to know that his behaviour was unacceptable, so she retweeted the tweets from other women. She knew that he would read them as they had his handle. Mr. Elliott meanwhile continued to tweet, using #TOpoli at the beginning of some of his tweets. The Sysomos program that Det. Bangild used searched all of Mr. Elliott’s tweets in which Ms. Guthrie’s handle appears. This includes as recipient, someone mentioned or appearing in a retweet or a reply to someone who has tweeted to or mentioned Ms. Guthrie. During this period, Ms. Guthrie does not allege any sexual harassment or threats to her or any specific harassing language, but relies on the volume of Mr. Elliott’s tweets to her, that mention her, or that use hashtags she follows or created. After July 15 Mr. Elliott tweeted to Ms. Guthrie only once – in the sense of beginning the tweet with her handle – on August 15. Ms. Guthrie testified that she did not see this tweet. The use of the hashtags in this discussion and Ms. Guthrie’s handle is the indirect communication on which the Crown relies. The tweets show that Mr. Elliott was continuing to debate the Spurr affair, as well as responding to tweets from individuals about his behaviour with women and his dispute with Ms. Guthrie. I will review some of the tweets as representative, but in general, his tweets explain his perspective, respond to tweets about him and advance his views, however offensive or wrong they may be. He names @amirightfolks as attacking his followers, and talks about his dinner with Ms. Guthrie and the poster, and @amirightfolks’s tweets about it. His language is vulgar and sometimes obscene, and once inexplicably homophobic, though this tweet was not captured in the Sysomos search, as explained above. Several tweets said he was the target of a calling out, was harassed himself and that his behaviour was misrepresented. file:///Users/nerissa/Downloads/Columbia CSV/R v Gregory Allan Elliott.htm 21/43