Ontario judge backs nudity law

BRACE BRIDGE, ONT. — In convicting a local businessman of public nudity charges after he shocked female clerks at drive-through windows at a local Tim Hortons and A&W restaurant, an Ontario court judge has upheld Canada’s nudity laws as an acceptable infringement of the man’s freedom of expression.

Justice Jon-jo Douglas dismissed Brian Coldin’s constitutional arguments that the law prohibiting public nudity violated his charter rights as well as his legal arguments that because he was wearing sandals he wasn’t actually nude.

Douglas declared that even “partial nudity” could be against the law if it disturbed public order.

“Defendant Coldin not only chooses to go unclothed, but clearly chooses to do so in places and in a manner that more or less ensures he will be confronting the clothed,” Douglas said in his lengthy ruling read Thursday in court.

Coldin displayed “if not a sense of exhibitionism . . . then certainly some missionary zeal.”

Police in Bracebridge, Ont., north of Toronto, criminally charged Coldin with three counts of being nude in a public place and two counts of being nude while in view of the public while on private property after his unencumbered errands in 2008 and 2009.

He was found not guilty of the incidents on his property but guilty of those in public. He challenged the constitutionality of the nudity law, arguing an infringement in his belief in naturism.