Unlikely Radicals by Charlie Angus

Author:Charlie Angus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Between the Lines
Published: 2013-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

As people gathered in the field, Brenda Gold led the discussion. The meeting held a cross-section of ages and backgrounds. Seventy-five-year-old Lloyd Wilson, a stalwart of the New Liskeard Presbyterian Church, stood beside Oka veteran Kevin Stanger. The discussion was short and to the point. If the trains were stopped, arrests were almost guaranteed. And then, if the leadership was arrested, how would the resistance continue? No one had an answer. We were facing the abyss, but this was the moment people had been psychologically preparing for for months—in some cases, for years.

The coalition had tried to build a disciplined army of northerners. And so, protesters fell in line behind a parade of four flag-bearers carrying the flags of Canada, Ontario, Quebec, and Timiskaming First Nation. The makeshift parade marched down the road to the rail crossing. Stopping a train isn’t an easy thing to do, and no one knew what to expect. Just before the group stepped on the tracks, an Englehart farmer asked everyone to pause. He had never spoken up before at a rally, and there was a slight tremor of emotion in his voice.

“I just want to say,” he stammered, “like, whatever happens next, there’s a story I thought people should hear.” And then, like a kid at Bible class, he began to relate the story of Moses and Joshua in the fight against King Amalek. As long as Moses held his arm in the air, the battle went their way. When Moses became tired and the arm started to slip, the battle turned against them. “So the people held up Moses’ arm,” he said. “And that’s how they won the battle.” Then he paused. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

And with that the protesters stepped onto the railbed and walked north along the tracks. Almost immediately we ran into an ONR maintenance vehicle. Barry Story stepped forward and informed them that the Ontario Northland rail line was now closed. A few straw bales were symbolically placed at the intersection of the road and rail. An initial team of volunteers including Joseph Gold, Bob Wolfe, Leigh Muething, and Fran Patterson sat on the tracks and waited for arrest. As word spread that the trains had been stopped, more people began arriving from across the district.

As the day wore on, tents began to pop up. Members from Timiskaming First Nation set up tents and a large communal fire. Kirkland Lakers Shirley Dorsey, Anne Dmytruk, Jacqueline Fortier, and Joyce McEwen began hauling in cooking supplies. Volunteers showed up with a wonderful array of homemade cabbage rolls, lasagna, and beans.

In the late afternoon, a truck pulled up to the barricade and a team of volunteers from Ville-Marie, Quebec, jumped out. They brought with them fifty pounds of fresh fish from Lake Timiskaming that they had loaded up as soon as they heard the news that the train line was shut down. An eagle circled over the tracks—a very good omen for the Algonquin protesters.

There were now over a hundred people on the railbed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.