So you think you're pretty fucking smart...

After making breakfast in bed with for Catherine on Mother’s Day, I headed over to Beanz to grab breakfast myself before heading into the office to get a little work done. I ordered my customary cappuccino and toasted bagel and sat down to read Saturday’s Globe and Mail along the front counter looking out over Queen Street.

Before I had a chance to take a sip of my coffee, someone — I won’t name them here because it might only serve to make a bad situation worse — came up behind me, said hello, and then asked me about something I’d posted here about them on my weblog. I attempted to explain my reasons for making the post, but before I could finish they responded by saying “so you think you’re pretty fucking smart” and then took a swing at the full cup of coffee in my hand, spilling it across the counter and over my newspaper and breakfast.

Without another word they went out the front door and sped off in their car.

The Criminal Code of Canada says that “assault,” among other things, happens when someone:

…attempts or threatens, by an act or a gesture, to apply force to another person, if he has, or causes that other person to believe on reasonable grounds that he has, present ability to effect his purpose

By that definition, I think I was assaulted this morning. I wasn’t injured, at least not physically, and certainly my assault pales in comparison to the kinds of things that others suffer every day. But violence is violence, it it ain’t fun no matter the degree.

After taking an hour to settle down — the kind folks at Beanz who witnessed the incident and helped me mop up the coffee gave me another cappuccino on the house — I decided it was important to report the incident to the police. I didn’t want to have this person charged with a crime, but I wanted their actions on the record. I called the Charlottetown City Police and they took my details and promised to have someone call me back.

About 30 minutes later I got a call from an officer. I explained the details of the incident, tried to give a little bit of the context, and asked them what they suggested. They told me they would go and talk to the person in question to explain that their actions were “an inappropriate response.”

I suppose this morning serves to refute, at least a little, my suggestion that, when it comes to Prince Edward Islanders:

…for the most part, things work out: Islanders have a way of relating to each other that allows people of wildly divergent political, religious or philosophical views to, well, joke with each other.

Certainly I’ve written some things that have been critical of my assailant in this space. But, going back now through the archives, I think my comments have always been fair. Forthright, perhaps. Rhetorical. But fair.

Which, of course, is completely beside the point. Even if my comments hadn’t been fair, the “appropriate response” to words is not violence. Indeed, as it says here:

In Canada, a criminal act is seen as a crime against all of Canadian society, since all people have an interest in seeing that the rule of law is upheld. Therefore, an individual who has been the victim of a crime does not have to handle the charge against the wrongdoer.

In other words, when someone gets angry about something that’s written about them and responds by assaulting the writer, they’re working to erode freedom of expression for all of us.

And of course it’s working already: why am I really not giving you the name of the person who took a swipe at me this morning? Because I’m afraid that if I do they’ll only get angrier, and the next time I meet them instead of spilling my coffee they’ll throw a punch. And that’s too bad.