You have to visit Caledonia to understand just how brutally long the past two years have been for those beleaguered residents caught in the on-going stand-off with aboriginal protesters.
People like Maria and Dieter Rauscher are retiring, and would like to sell their home in what was once a desirable area.
Sadly, though, only three words count in real estate: Location, location, location. The Rauschers' home is near the disputed land. They're innocent victims caught in the middle of the dispute between two levels of government and native protesters from the Six Nations reserve.
Like other elderly couples, the Rauschers would like to downsize.
They don't concern themselves with the dispute, Maria says. They are not concerned with politics.
"Someone else has to sort that out," she says of the stand-off. "It's been two years now, and it's not my problem."
What is her problem is that her investment, the equity the couple has built up in their home over the years, has evaporated.
They first put their home on the market a year ago for $449,000. The price was dropped to $380,000 last May. And last week, they dropped the price again to $299,000. Even at that rock bottom price not one prospective buyer has come to look at it.
The four-bedroom, two-storey house is simply too big for two people. "We just want to do what other people do. Maybe go to Florida in the wintertime for a bit,"Maria said.
The Rauschers are just two of the people whose lives have been devastated by the stand-off.
A Six Nations development institute is demanding development fees from builders in the area. This week, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant said he would not stop them from doing so.
He said developers "didn't just fall off a turnip truck.
"They know very well what the rules are and the laws are. The only fees that need to be paid are paid to municipalities. That is the law," he said.
He suggested developers who feel ripped off could contact police.
Well, nice try. But cops have been remarkably reluctant to crack down on lawlessness over the past two years. What are the chances they'll get tough now?
Bryant kept repeating last week that Mr. Justice Sidney Linden's report on the 1995 shooting of native protester Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park warns against using violence to resolve native stand-offs.
That's true.
All the same, I'm not sure the Linden report said any time an aboriginal group takes it upon itself to use lawlessness to achieve its ends, that it's a cue for the aboriginal affairs minister to roll over and have them tickle his tummy.
PC leader John Tory met with developers last week. He said 10 of them, with clear title to their land, were paying $7,000 each in fees to a so-called development institute.
"Apparently in Dalton McGuinty's Ontario, extortion and intimidation are acceptable forms of negotiation," Tory told a news conference last week.
Meanwhile, Bryant appeared in a bizarre series of YouTube clips. In one he says, "nothing is happening" in Caledonia, which he apparently thinks is a good thing.
And from the point of view that no one is being dragged from their cars and beaten, no tires are burning and no more hydro towers have been toppled, yes things are quiet.
I'm not sure that's something to brag about, but I guess every little bit helps.
People like the Rauschers, though, who are law-abiding, who pay taxes and want nothing more than to live their lives in peace and dignity, have the right to expect something to happen.
This isn't a tinpot dictatorship. We have the right to expect the rule of law to be enforced. Premier Dalton McGuinty can't get off the hook by saying it's a federal issue. Law enforcement is up to the province. And his government bought the land. They own it. Now they should make sure the law is respected on it.
Or is that too much too ask?
Christine Blizzard is a columnist for Sun Media.