Blue Like You
Conservative musings - formerly Joanne’s Journey
Abandoned in Canada’s Beirut - Bumped with big update!
Sunday, September 23rd, 2007I don’t know how this one got by me yesterday.
Christie Blatchford, who recently returned from Afghanistan, has filed a report from another lawless and explosive situation - Caledonia, Ontario.
In her Saturday Globe column (Their Caledonia House is No Longer a Home), Christie gives us her own unique perspective on the unbelievable nightmare that Dave Brown and Dana Chatwell have been forced to endure. The events leading up to the couple’s decision to sue the provincial government and the Ontario Provincial Police for $10 million are well documented:
…Life in their isolation has meant having to present a “passport” to natives when leaving or returning to their house, having their car searched by masked men at barricades, being refused access to their property, having no mail or garbage removal and enduring threats, noise and their house being ransacked.All the while, police refused to intervene, including ignored 911 calls, they said…
In fact, 911 told them, “Don’t call again. We can’t help you“.
In Caledonia. In Ontario, Canada.
I am not making this up.
Christie goes on:
Finally, early on the morning of April 20 last year, the OPP raided the property to enforce the order, but were ultimately overrun and forced to leave Douglas Creek Estates.That was the day Mr. Brown, watching from his house, realized that he and his family were on their own, that, as he says, “When the sun goes down behind my home, I don’t live in Canada, I live in Beirut.”
Please read the whole column very carefully. Read about the terrifying night that Mr. Brown, after having missed the native-imposed “curfew”, was desperately concerned for the safety of his wife and so drove towards his home anyway. Read how he ended up in a cell overnight with his wife left alone.
Read how he discovered a video camera hidden in their kitchen and aimed at the table.
Read how their house was trashed and obscenities scrawled on the walls.
Read how the natives set fire to bales of hay near their home and threatened to burn it down, while an OPP officer (allegedly) watched and did nothing.
Christie notes that Dave Brown feels this whole situation has been mismanaged from the start:
…lawlessness has beget lawlessness. Each victory – routing the OPP, the government buying the land and allowing the natives to continue to occupy it, the state’s failure to proceed with contempt orders etc. – has emboldened the natives who are his neighbour.
Meanwhile, the Leadership debate organizers felt that the question of Caledonia was considered inappropriate for a debate forum.
Cowards.
Please don’t shrug off this story. If it happened here in Caledonia, it could happen anywhere in Ontario.
It could even happen to you.
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Update: John Tory paid a surprise visit to Caledonia this morning.(Thanks to an anonymous reader in this thread for the tip).
Meanwhile, George Smitherman accuses Tory of ‘stirring the pot‘.
He says the Liberal party’s focus is on maintaining their fragile majority peace, and that John Tory is jeopardizing those efforts.
Star- Tory vows stiffer protest laws:
Local resident Anne Marie Vansickle, who hosted an earlier visit by Tory, said she feels abandoned by the Liberal government and isolated by measures the provincial police have taken to ensure the safety of residents.“I believe that Premier McGuinty would like the people of Ontario to believe that this has been a peaceful protest and continues to be peaceful,” she said.
“And everybody’s aware of all the incidents that’s going on – the hijackings, attempted murders, break-and-enters, tire fires, verbal and physical assaults . . . this is the environment that we send our children to every day at school.”
Ms. Vansickle! You don’t know what you speak of. Everything is perfect in Lemming-land.
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From April 28/08
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