LOW DOWN TO HULL AND BACK NEWS / Language inspector Lucie Couvrette takes notes at antique store.

"It's intimidation - pure and simple," fumed Nikki Mantell, publisher and managing editor of The Low Down to Hull and Back News, circulation 2,000.

"They're trying to intimidate us into not printing a photo of a government official on government business," she added in a telephone interview from her office in Wakefield yesterday.

The flap began last week when Lucie Couvrette of the Commission de Protection de la Langue Francaise visited an antique store that adjoins the paper's office to take note of language-law violations.

After one of the paper's journalists snapped a picture of Couvrette against her will, she fired off two letters to Mantell - one demanding she send her the pictures and negatives within 10 days, the other warning her to refrain from printing any of the shots.

Couvrette also faxed Mantell a copy of a Supreme Court ruling last month that upheld the right of citizens not to have their photographs published without their prior consent, except under some circumstances.

Undeterred by those demands, Mantell's paper printed a photograph of Couvrette on the front page of its most recent issue, which hit the stands Tuesday.

"We can't show you this photo," said one headline over a picture of Mantell holding the contentious photograph. Below it was another headline over the photo itself, saying, "But we're going to anyway."

Mantell said yesterday she decided to run the photographs after seeking assistance from Gazette managing editor Raymond Brassard, who promised to cover the paper's legal fees if Couvrette or the commission sues, and referred her to Montreal lawyer Mark Bantey.

Bantey asserted in an interview yesterday that neither Couvrette nor the commission has any valid legal grounds to block publication of the photographs. 

"As far as I'm concerned, this is government gangsterism," he said.

Bantey drew a distinction between Couvrette's demands and last month's Supreme Court ruling forbidding publication of an identifiable picture of a private citizen without his or her consent.

"That ruling concerned invasion of privacy," he said, "because it involved a private citizen sitting on some steps on Ste. Catherine St. minding her own business. 

"This is different. This is a government official on government business enforcing a law."

Reached yesterday at the Commission's headquarters in Montreal, Couvrette refused repeatedly to answer questions about the dispute.

But Gilles Corbeil, chief of staff in the office of Louise Beaudoin, the minister responsible for the commission, promised to look into it and get back to a reporter today.

Mantell said the flap has roots that go back to mid-December, when Couvrette first showed up in the antique shop. When a photographer began snapping pictures of Couvrette, she objected, then ran out and drove away before a clear shot of her could be taken. The paper later published a photograph of Couvrette's truck, Mantell said.

When she returned to the store last week, Couvrette was already armed with a letter warning Mantell not to publish her picture in the paper, the publisher said.

Brassard noted yesterday that The Gazette has helped finance previous court battles involving freedom-of-expression issues, including the case that led to last month's Supreme Court ruling.