TOOKER GOMBERG, 1955-2004

"On Friday March 5, Susan Aitken of Canadian Press reported that Tooker Gomberg was missing and presumed dead. Her report suggested that Tooker had taken his own life by jumping from a bridge in Halifax. The story, which was widely replicated by many news organizations, stressed that Tooker was suffering from severe depression. What Ms. Aitken's report did not mention was that on the day of his disappearance, Tooker was scheduled to have faced a number of criminal charges in Calgary for the episode when he and an associate locked themselves in the vault of Premier Ralph Klein's constituency office in an effort to draw media attention to the so-called "Lost Document" **. The Lost Document was an Alberta government report laying out the evidence of how Alberta could actually improve the province's economy through a conservation scheme that would reduce CO2 emissions beyond what is called for by the Kyoto Protocol. The attached Indymedia link * presents Tooker's and Jerry's account of what happened in the vault and in a Calgary jail cell, where Tooker would face an added charge for what he called "defacing a swastika."

Tooker Gomberg participated in several important ways in the birth of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Indeed, Tooker is one of the world's pioneers in the use of the internet, but especially video streaming techniques, for positive social change. He and his wife Angela Bischoff contributed generously in our early experiments in "Globalization since 1492" in different modes of web interactivity. We shall miss Tooker terribly. We send our profound condolences to his family and his friends. Our consolation is that we know he touched the lives of hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, with his constant stream of uplifting ideas and proposal on how to make our world a better place. He was far ahead of his time in pointing the way to a society where our political economy is integrated with, rather than hostile to, the ecological renewal of Mother Earth in all her rich diversity and abundance."

Related Documents:

*Please be patient with this link. The video is worth watching, it just takes a few minutes to download.

**This is an executive summary of the lost document.

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