Parallel with this excitement was a very hot legal battle in the City of Quebec. The small pioneer group there​—Laurier Saumur, John Maynard How, Gerald Barry and Russell Herbert Headworth—​faced such a rapid-fire series of proceedings in and out of Recorder Mercier’s court and in and out of prison that the newspapers dubbed it “The Battle of the Writs.” All this activity kept feeding the press, so that Quebec stories became a daily part of the news across the country. Many honest-hearted people admired the intrepid stand of Jehovah’s Christian witnesses.

In February 1947, four of the special pioneers from Quebec City​—three of whom were out on bail—​went to Ithaca, New York, to become students in the ninth class of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead. While they were at Gilead, the case of Laurier Saumur and Gerald Barry was taken to the Supreme Court of Canada. But the Court refused to hear the case on a technical ground. As a result, Laurier Saumur had to leave Gilead School in June, before graduation, and go back to jail in Quebec City to complete his sentence. This dismissal by the Supreme Court put us back into the courts of Quebec with, by that time, over 1,700 cases pending.