On this message for Christmas Day I want to wish people of all faiths the very best of the season. In my early life this was a special time of year for many reasons. It brought some happiness to my otherwise sad life at that time. May you receive the best gifts of all: good family, good friends, good health and good prospects in your work. These are things worth seeking as well as wishing for. That being said, helping others may be the most important and rewarding of all things.

Someone who had read my book Dominatrix on Trial asked me an interesting question. He wanted to know whether, when I was in business, we were open on Christmas. Let me expand a bit on that and say that on most statutory holidays I just operated my dungeons like any other day. I needed the revenue, and clients often had more time those days. However on Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day I would be closed so as to spend time with family and friends and allow my staff to do the same. It was also a welcome break.

In my last blog I told you about how some doms who worked for me for a short time and then left the business felt about that experience looking back. I have also spoken to some professional dominatrices who have been at it for many years. Believe it or not, some of them have done nothing else since being teenagers. Most of them would not have made another career choice. When they expressed regrets it was about specific decisions made while working within the field, such as which facility they set up, who they hired and that sort of thing.

Some more comments about the doms who worked for me. Here I am going to speak about the ones I have spoken to who did it for a while in the past and moved on. I asked them if they regretted the experience. None of them did, and they were fully in agreement with my comments in Dominatrix on Trial, my memoirs. Next time I’ll tell you what the doms still in practice told me.

I have a few more things to say about the doms who worked for me. Some of them have read my book and gotten back to me. Those who did think they were reasonably portrayed in the book. They also said they were happy I told the public about the grunt side of the dominatrix trade, meaning the paperwork, phone calls, cleaning and all that sort of thing. A couple of them told me that they had no idea until they read the book how horrible my earlier life was or what I have been through with all my legal battles or how many others were involved in these battles.

Some people were curious about whether I am in touch with the various doms who worked for me. Of course my answer is sometimes. I hear from a few of the gals from time to time. I don’t see any of them regularly, though. Where I live is not quite convenient to downtown Toronto. Also, they all know that it is hard for me to make dates and keep them, simply because I may not be well enough to do so that day. Also, most of my communication nowadays is with people involved with or following the decision striking down Canada’s prostitution laws.

Let me share some more thoughts about the pictures in the book. I had no photographs of the “Bondage Bungalow” which was the subject of the big trial in the 1990’s. It just never occurred to me or anyone else to take any. I learned and took many of my second house operated from 1999 to 2002, and I can assure you that it is fundamentally representative of what the first house was like inside. However, I am going to be posting, on my Facebook pages, some of the photographs taken by York Regional Police, inside the Thornhill Bondage Bungalow before they stripped it bare. You can see few of those items in the pictures in the book. This is because as I got most of the stuff lost in the raid on the first house back while I was operating the second house.

Some readers of the book have asked about the pictures in the book. One of the things they wanted to know was why the faces of some of the people in the pictures were obscured. Basically it was because you must have a person’s permission before you publish their image. This is something that must be done by a lawyer, and the editor’s advised me that it would not hurt the quality of the book if I protected privacy. I also wanted to reproduce newspaper headlines and photos in the book, but it involved so much extra work and expense that it was clear that I should use what was mine to use.

Some readers of the book from the United States and elsewhere have been in touch with me after reading the book. Some actually said reading got them thinking about how their authorities have dealt with people like me, a dominatrix. Some of them could never even recall a dom being busted in their community or city. Others said their police do not even bust prostitutes at all, not even the ones who work the streets. Still others said they could not recall any significant coverage of a trial such as mine. I reminded them that in the book I went into the reasons charges such as those against me rarely come to trial, and that there are in fact many women in jails in Canada and the U.S. that are basically forgotten.

Be sure to become a friend of mine on Facebook so you can follow all the detailed discussions and other things there. I have been asked, since the book came out, how I occupy my time. I have been spending, I would say, an average of about 30 minutes a day doing some administration for a local small business. I spend an average of about 2 hours a day on Facebook. I am “meeting” so many interesting people there and I have so much material accumulated over the years to share with them and the public. I can’t get to the gym or pool these days for a number of reasons, but I do my stretches at home. The social media interaction has made being home bound so much easier to deal with.

During the weeks I have been commenting about the impending release of the appeal decision questions and reactions to my book, Dominatrix on Trial, have been coming in. Also, thanks yet again to all those who have read it. Thanks as well to those who have commented on it. I am pleased that people who have been critical in their remarks were critical of the positions I have taken and not of the book. Dominatrix on Trial has been very well received. In the coming blogs I will share the questions and comments and my reactions to them.