Halifax Kyushu Jutsu Bullshido

**TKD Black Belt** · Posted On: 7/09/2006 2:04pm

It sounds as though Jack Dionne was a very gifted athlete with a skill for fighting. After reviewing the video tapes posted on the Halifax website I failed to see anything that was earth shatteringly fantastic in them.

Now this is usually swept away by saying that the techniques taught were for introductory purposes only but I find that to be Bullshido in and of itself. A first class in BJJ will start to show you techniques that you will use from the first day through to the last day and in multiple alternative situations. I enjoy Jack's escape from bear hug from behind but he seems to have only read the first page of Helio's description in how to escape from that technique and then ad-libbed the rest.

Now I'm not trying to take anything away from Mr. Dionne for as I mentioned he appears to be a fantastic athlete and from how highly you speak of him a great person on top of that. This said, there are a number of highly skilled persons like this that lack the general ability to pass on the skills that make them unique. If you were able to pick up and learn from a person like this then more power to you. We only need to look to Canada's national pastime to see the great athletes make bad coaches, Wayne Gretzky anyone?

We are all subject to bad decision making in our lives. I just finished trying to teach TKD fighters the basics of Submission Wrestling. After a weekend of having me put them on their backs faster than a cheer leader at a post game party, I over heard someone say the sicking phrase:

"... in the streets he wouldn't be able..."

Seems as though the structure of the club in Halifax is a little less than perfect (perhaps a gross understatement on my part). The promotion of a BB to a master level by his own students should scream of crap on a stick (or as per FSD poop in a bucket).

As opposed to the entire system being brought into question, perhaps take out the key stone. After all, he does in theory outrank you ;)

Must run, my dog has offered to promote me to sixth dan pink and purple black belt in FSD this afternoon and I must not keep Grand Master Sir Barkles waiting.

TKD

**Cdnronin** · Posted On: 7/09/2006 6:46pm

Originally Posted by unibrow

yes...groan...must be south keys tact partnership club or crackheadville (kemptville)...i was caught up in it too which was why after I woke up we parted ways..there should be some old t-shirts too with the same claim on the back with some picture taken out of some historical book on samurai arms & armour I believe...those make your own t-shirts deal with iron-ons..gifts from halifax. I will now again attempt to commit suicide with a pellet gun....

Curioser and curiouser. First the 1129 claim is a Halifax thing, then you provide 2 examples involving you where the same claim was made. It is curious as the flyer is for the Heron Community center.

The TACT school was just off Johnson, if my memory serves?

What is a real shame is that the Halifax school no longer shows the lineage chart tracing the art back to 1129. Comprehensive proof with what, 6 or 7 names over the last 8 centuries?

**Jorec** · Posted On: 7/09/2006 8:50pm

Originally Posted by unibrow

Greetings. My public venue training is out of the PPSI combat room (Police & Public Safety Institute) at the Algonquin College-woodroffe campus, so P Bldg, Rm P121. I train with a group of swordhandlers and we start up again next wed. (July 12) from 7-9pm and we can be found there pretty well every wed and come fall, we're so packed we also do the mon. & fri.'s . We've had the pleasure of meeting ma's from all walks of life and experience here & are always glad to have more fresh blood er sparring partners.

Hi, i'm actually a student at Algonquin, well will be when classes start again. Irrigardless I was wondering how people join your class. Would I have to sign up through the algonquin website or just show up and go about it that way.

**unibrow** · Posted On: 7/10/2006 5:49am

[quote=TKD]Must run, my dog has offered to promote me to sixth dan pink and purple black belt in FSD this afternoon and I must not keep Grand Master Sir Barkles waiting.

:) thankyou. lol I just fell off my chair laughing my head off. cheers

**Revdark** · Posted On: 7/10/2006 2:37pm

You're lucky.

My dog, a master of the ancient art of Pei-fu demoted me. I have been relegated to following him around the back yard and scooping up his nuggets, in hope that one will contain wisdom.

**yngwie** · Posted On: 2/04/2007 8:27am

My name is Mike Epp. I was a student of Jacques Dionne for quite a few years. Jean, I think I remember you when I came back and helped with a few classes. I was with Jacques the same period as Ashley Murfin, mid to late 80's. I was the senior active student at the time and his senior student. I still have his ancient hinged box of yawara sticks, stacks of old Golden Dragon and many other blank grading certificates, etc. I had essentially taught all of the classes for several years. Jaques would just circle around and answer questions.

I too was annoyed today after reading the crap going on out East. I too parted ways with Jacques after having enough of his lies. We had it out pretty good, mostly in writing. I was trying to encourage him to stop accepting these dan gradings from Don Wrobel's Golden Dragon Ju Jutsu Association. He was Godan when I joined him and 7th or 8th about 5 years later! The funny thing is that I don't think that Wrobel was charging him for these, just as I was not charged when I received my shodan from Golden Dragon. I still remember him sitting quitely in the office where we changed. He was sitting there tracing over all of the writing on the diploma and contemplating. This is when I started challenging him on this.

I began to really question things a lot further. I already had a background in TKD and Judo with a Japanese sensei. I brought my Golden dragon certificate to this sensei and he said that all of the writing on it was "nothing" and "this is not real".

Jacques lies went on and on and covered so much of his conversation that I could not live with it anymore. After spending so much time with him I was able to get through all of the inconsitencies. I challenged him to drop it all and just be truthfull. He was a good man underneath it all, but had a pathological need to embellish everything.

I was saddened to here of his passing. Even with our differences, I would have wanted to be at his service.

Jean - Your post really says much of what I wanted to say about this sham. However, I am afraid that you too have bought into some of his lies.

Anyway, just to clarify a few things:

This letter was drafted by Jacques and he got it written up in Japanese by someone. All that embassy stuff is BS.

Jacques never spoke of this Tadanobu teacher in all of our time together, including the period of our "fight". This stuff only surfaced with this letter, soon after it surfaced in his imagination.

Jeff David's Jiu Jitsu was Can Ryu. The whole Soke Sacronowski (sp.) Oikiru ryu stuff was what was going on at the time. His association was selling dan ranks all around north america. Wrobel was part of this before he branched off and became a soke himself and formed Golden Dragon. All this soke crap was another thing from a traditionalist point of view that I rebelled against.

The Ju Jitsu in the Kyushu site is not anything like Jacques. He was all about blow, blow throw blow, much like the early Can Ryu that he learned through David. I have a black and white video of a much younger Dionne from these earlier days. It was a shame because he demonstrated some interesting stuff on this video that he lost with lack of practice.

Anyway, the stuff on the east coast in not from Jacques. He was not into the Aikido side of things as a response. Another contemporary of his, Ken Gowdie, who used to teach at General Vanier in the earlier days used to be really into fingerlocks like the techniques in the clips.

I could go on about an awful lot of stuff, but my battery is dying. Jean - good job trying to get the truth out there. You said a lot of what I wanted to say. I am saddened that the lies continue, even after his death. Trully very sad. Like I said, Jacques was a good man, but the lying was really too bad.

**TKD Black Belt** · Posted On: 2/04/2007 1:39pm

TKD

**HearWa** · Posted On: 2/04/2007 7:40pm

Why do all these senior traditional japanese martial arts guys always have such a wierd vibe to them? :S

**Name321** · Posted On: 4/11/2007 3:58pm

Against my better judgment, I am allowing myself to be drawn into this forum. Mike, it was your message that caused me to post. Hopefully I can keep the wool out of my eyes long enough to type what I have to say, eh Jean? I will not bother to address the vast majority of Jean's diatribe as it is so littered with half-truths, untruths and statements taken out of context that I could probably make a second career out of ripping it apart. Jean, I know far more about you than you would like to believe. If you are so "chivalrous" and "honour-bound", why don't you answer a few questions for the nice people:
1) Have you ever been in trouble with the law (you know, driver's licence suspended one, two, maybe twenty times, forgot to pay a fine or two)?
2) How many times have you moved in the last decade or so? Ever missed a rent payment and ducked out on a landlord?
3) How's your credit history?
It doesn't really pertain to martial arts but the answers (whatever they may be) would certainly speak to your credibility. Of course, you could reply with whatever lies you want and no one would be the wiser but we know the truth, don't we?
I must add that I found it quite humourous how people reading your thread began to rip your statements apart! You were here to bash Frank and the 5 or 6 people on this planet of, what.....3 or 4 billion, who actually care what you had to say could see through your BS in no time. I loved it! Great stuff!
Anyways, back to you Mike. I do find this a sad state of affairs as you do. It is sad that even after his death, you would call Jack a liar and speak ill of him. Jack spoke to me of you often and never had a bad thing to say. He invested so many hours of his life into you and your training and you repay him with this? He cared so much about you. We all know that he was a notorious BSer, his stories were inconsistent and all that. I called him on that stuff many times and rarely got straight answers. That's because that is just who he was. And did it really matter? Did it change the fact that he was a genuinely good person? That he cared deeply about every person he taught (and there were hundreds, if not thousands of them)? Did it change the fact that he was a gifted martial artist who, contrary to what you may believe, got better and better right up until the day he died? Sad, yes. Sad that at your age and at this stage in your life you still can't let his "stories" go and remember him for the great man that he was. But that is your problem, no one else's, I suppose.
As for your statement along the lines of "that Halifax Kyushu stuff is not Jack. Jack was all about blow, blow, throw, blow" or whatever. I have seen the tapes with you on them. I have one in my book case as I write this where you were in a basement with some blond-haired yellow belt listening to 80's rock as you practiced in your red gi top and black pants. Like Jack said, it is obvious that you were very fast, very accurate and had practiced a great deal. But, those techniques you were doing are very primitive. You are right, Jack WAS all about blow, throw blow just like Can-Ryu......BUT THAT WAS 20 YEARS AGO! Do you think the man never progressed? If you are the great Japanese martial arts traditionalist that you imply that you are/were, you should know that it is well within the rights of the head of a system to progress and add/subtract techniques to and from the system as he sees fit! In his latter years, Jack taught us how to cause 10 times the amount of pain and destruction with a fraction of the effort that you can be seen exerting in that old footage. If he saw those tapes in the years leading up to his death, he would have laughed his head off and spent the afternoon ripping apart how ineffective and sloppy those techniques were. That is not a shot at you, Mike. You demonstrated what you learned and you learned it very well but those techniques are nothing compared to what Jack taught in his later years. Those "black belt" techniques you were doing are now in the white through yellow belt manuals. And do you think we don’t kick and punch anymore? You should ask Frank Zinck to demonstrate his punch to you if you ever have the inclination to face him with your issues instead of bashing him (a person you have never even met) on an anonymous web forum. I can tell you, that man could punch you and you would think you had been hit by a car going 80km/h. It is downright sickening. “Blow, blow, throw, blow”? Yeah, we used to do that but it belongs in systems like Can-Ryu which have never progressed and never will. If is unfortunate that you never got to learn what we practice nowadays. You would certainly be impressed if you did! If you are ever in Southwestern Ontario, I would gladly have you at my school for an update. That is not a challenge; I mean it sincerely and in the interest of education and enlightenment. I have nothing to prove to you or anybody else.
As for Jack's "pathological need to embellish everything".....I guess you are right, to an extent. Did he ever tell you the story about how he dove into the Ottawa River to save the lives of 2 young boaters when he was working at the Locks and how he lost his hearing as a result? No? Me neither. I didn't know about that until after he died. I knew he lost his hearing but he said it was "from a bad batch of beer" or something along those lines. The man who you say lied about everything was so humble that he never once boasted about this heroic act. How many other wonderful things did he do in his life that he never once took credit for? It is so easy for you and Jean to rip apart great people like Jack who will never go on record and tell everyone how great they really are! Sad, yes.
As for the wool being pulled over my eyes by master manipulator and evil liar Frank Zinck......ridiculous. Jean, you know very well that in my profession, I deal with liars, con-men, fraudsters many times daily. I know when someone is trying to bullshit me. I have to know or I could end up dead. You managed to pull the wool over my eyes when I was a kid; I actually thought you were a decent guy. Those days are long since past. Jack cursed your name up until the minute he died. The stress and anguish you caused him over the years probably contributed a great deal to his early death. Yes, you were at his funeral for 2 or 3 minutes until I kicked you out at the family's request because they were so utterly revolted by your presence there. You said that you hope to see him on the other side so you can "practice together again". Well, I hope so too. And I hope he kicks the crap right out of you like he did so many times when he was alive.
Mike, I visit Ottawa frequently (I plan to be there in May). If you would ever like to meet and talk about things and learn about the many things that happened in Jack’s life after you left, I would be more than happy to do so. I will buy the food and beer. You can post your response to my invitation.
Josh