Thursday, May 17, 2007

Blocked

If I block my neighbour's driveway and claim that his house is sitting on land that's rightfully mine based on a story that my great-great-great grandfather used it and never actually got around to deeding it over to anyone else, or didn't really know what deeding it over actually meant, I'd be lucky to get away with just an injunction to take the sawhorses down.

If I threatened to make even further trouble, I might find myself behind bars before long.

Indian land claim protesters, however, seem to be able to make these threats with impunity:

Court injunctions barring blockades on rail lines will do little to deter frustrated First Nations residents from staging similar demonstrations across the country, an aboriginal protester who led an eastern Ontario blockade said Thursday.

"I don't believe that an injunction changes the circumstances that people live in across this country," protest leader Shawn Brant said outside court Thursday. "I don't believe it serves to resolve those issues."

Shawn Brant's comments came after Ontario Superior Court Justice Colin Campbell temporarily upheld an injunction Thursday barring further blockades on the lines operated by Canadian National Railway.

Campbell granted the injunction last month after Brant and a group of protesters, members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation, set up a 30-hour rail blockade near Deseronto, Ont., some 30 kilometres west of Kingston.

"This injunction or these proceedings, in fact, will bring about a reaction, and maybe an unintended reaction, that CN wasn't looking for," Brant said outside the court.


Is that so, Mr. Brant?

Perhaps his bravado will diminish after a night in a holding cell for contempt of court.

Regardless of what one might think about native land claims--and the history of conquest shows that they've been given much more consideration to their claims than most conquered peoples centuries after the fact--letting them get away with blockades only encourages more of the same, and worse.

Things got mighty quiet around Oka after the Mohawk Warriors got the point that the army could take them down.

Around Caledonia, the OPP's inaction has just kept the matter dragging and dragging on.

What will it take to show the blockaders that they'll be dealt with like any other law breakers?

Source: Toronto Star

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's get this straight here: we own Canada because we came here and stole it from the natives. Then lawyers invent a system whereby people who cheat to make more money get to buy all the land. But those same cheaters claim that the holy lands belong to Israel because their forefathers happened to live there thousands of years ago? What part of this that smacks of hypocrisy anyways... err all of it.

Anonymous said...

If the OPP won't enforce the laws and we have to live under the threat of the so-called natives - then we'll have to take matters into our own hands - starting with the OPP and ending with the so-called natives. Then there won't be any further need for land discussions. Problem solved

Anonymous said...

The aboriginal people in Canada have had more than 200 years to find jobs and live normal lives.
Why would anyone want to stay on a reservation and live under deplorable living conditions? The "welfare for life" program should be abolished, and aboriginal people should be required to work for a living.
Is that asking too much?

Anonymous said...

I hope that the planned June 29th terrorist activities by aboriginal people goes ahead as planned. I hope they block every major highway in Canada. I hope every Canadian is effected in some way by the June 29th weekend attacks.
This is what is needed for the Canadian government to be forced into brining in the military. Also, Fantino has to go. I don't know how he can show his face in public.

LOYALIST said...

Friday, July 07, 2006
Behind Bars, Before The Bar
Believe it or not, even the Bar has some standards for joining it. Something about not bringing the profession into disrepute.

Stop snickering.

Even the Quebec Bar didn't want this guy, but may be forced to take him:

He left the country after being repeatedly denied enrolment in the Quebec bar admission course because he stabbed his mother to death when he was younger. But Sébastien Brousseau has finally prevailed in his decade-long campaign for the right to become a lawyer.

The Quebec bar says it will not appeal a decision this spring by a panel of judges who ruled that Mr. Brousseau is sufficiently rehabilitated that he can practise law without hurting the reputation of the legal profession.

....

Mr. Brousseau was 21 when he killed his mother, Micheline Sévigny, in their home near Montreal, stabbing her 40 times. According to psychiatric assessments cited in court documents, his parents had separated and he lived with his mother, often feuding with her.

The night of Nov. 16, 1990, according to his account to a psychiatrist, Mr. Brousseau got into an argument with his mother and she swung at him with a baseball bat.

He said he remembered defending himself with a kitchen knife but did not recall how often he stabbed her. He said that she was in agony when he came to his senses, so he slit her throat to end her suffering.

Despite the lurid details of the slaying, the ruling noted that the Crown changed the indictment against him from murder to manslaughter, on the advice of psychiatric experts.

After being paroled in 1992, Mr. Brousseau attended law school. By the time of his fourth attempt to register in the bar exam school in 2001, he had obtained a pardon.



A pardon may wipe away a criminal record and all of the usual consequences of having one, but it cannot undo a man's past.

The absence of a criminal record is neither sufficient nor necessary proof of good character, according to just about any Bar.

Had Brousseau's past offences been fraud or any other breach of trust, the Bar would never have given him a chance. Even if he had only faced civil judgments for same, and never any criminal indictments.

Had his crime been drunk driving, the Bar wouldn't have cared as long as he hadn't killed or maimed anyone.

In any event, his may be a hollow victory yet. The Bar can close ranks against anyone with a firmness and discipline even the Mob would envy. He may have to be admitted to bar school, but no firm is obligated to hire him for articles, without which he cannot be called.

And even if he should find and complete articles, he will still have to demonstrate that he is of good character, to the Bar's satisfaction, again.

And it will find any excuse to keep him out, now.

But even if, despite all this, he is admitted, no firm in Quebec will obligated to hire him, nor the Bar help him hang out his own shingle.

When the Bar wants you out, it will move heaven and earth to keep you out.

Source: Globe and Mail
Posted by Loyalist at 7:10 AM
67 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I will try to prove you wrong. By the way, I already did my exams and have a job.

Sebastien Brousseau.
7/11/2006 11:57 PM