Kingston Whig Standard
Mar 20, 2008
The Queen's University lecturer who is becoming the central figure in the battle against a proposed uranium mine north of Kingston said his time behind bars hasn't weakened his resolve to keep fighting.
"My only regret is that I should have started earlier and worked harder," Ardoch Algonquin community leader Bob Lovelace said from a Lindsay jail.
Lovelace is serving a six-month sentence for refusing to stop opposing uranium prospecting efforts near Sharbot Lake by Oakville-based Frontenac Ventures. He has now been behind bars in the Central East Correctional Centre for five weeks.
One of the province's new super jails, the correctional centre is a harsh mix of steel and concrete where the inmates sleep two to an approximately three-metre-by-two-metre cell in ranges of 30 men or more and wear identical orange uniforms. They get out of their cells three times a day for a total of 7.5 hours.
"It's not a great place to spend time," Lovelace said Tuesday. "Personally, right now, I'd rather be out playing with my kids and finishing my courses."
Nonetheless, he said, he's doing OK.
It helps that he is familiar with life behind bars as a result of running a regular aboriginal sweat lodge at Kingston Penitentiary from 1984 to 1992.
"I understand a little about ... how to get along," he said.
To stave off the constant push of boredom, Lovelace writes letters to supporters, designs a house he hopes to build with his Algonquin friend Harold Perry, and reads whatever he can get his hands on.
"I got Scientific American in my canteen on Sunday and I was so hard up for good reading material that I read it in about three and-a-half hours - every word, including the ads," he said.
Lovelace understands he could get out of prison within a few weeks, if he was willing to follow a judge's order to stop blocking Frontenac Ventures from working at the prospecting site on Highway 509.
But that's not going to happen, he said.
"This is really the front line of the greening of Ontario and a better relationship between aboriginal people and the government," he said. "We've just got to keep at it until the politicians wake up and start talking because right now they seem to be fast asleep."
Sharbot Lake isn't the only frontier where aboriginals are going to jail for fighting mining interests.
On Monday, a judge in Thunder Bay sentenced six members of the remote northwestern Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation, including its chief, to six months in jail for obstructing an exploration company's access to lands near the local reserve.
Lovelace was sad to hear they had received the same maximum sentence for contempt of court that he received, but he hadn't heard the OPP have just charged six more people at the Sharbot Lake-area site for being inside a 200-metre no-go zone.
It's hard to get news in jail, he said.
He can receive only two visits per week and can only call people collect from a payphone he shares on the prison range with more than 30 other men.
He said he's been trying to reach Ardoch Algonquin lawyer Chris Reid for more than a week without luck.
Reid, who is defending the Ardochs for hunting meat, has had his hands full. He is also defending the KI First Nation.
Incidentally, Frontenac Ventures lawyer Neal Smitheman is also representing Platinex, the exploration company drilling in Thunder Bay.
After returning from the northern town Monday, a frustrated Reid joked with the Whig-Standard that all his clients are being locked away.
Unbeknownst to him, Lovelace was supposed to appear in court Tuesday, but Smitheman failed to arrange his transport order.
Lovelace said Tuesday afternoon that he didn't know what was going on.
"I'm sort of in the dark right now," he said.
He isn't the only person who has been found in contempt of court in relation to protests against mining exploration north of Sharbot Lake.
Ardoch Algonquin co-Chief Paula Sherman, Elder Harold Perry, and members of the Shabot Obaadjiwan were found in contempt of an earlier interim injunction issued by another judge.
The Shabot Obaadjiwan have opted out of the struggle, claiming their real dispute is with the provincial and federal governments.
On Tuesday, they entered into a second undertaking promising to try to discourage other members of their community and other organizations from interfering.
Perry and Sherman have entered into similar undertakings, but they still received fines. Sherman was fined $15,000, the Ardochs were fined $10,000 and Lovelace was fined $25,000, with a provision for additional fines of $2,000 a day for any future violations.
They all still face prosecution on the charges arising from a second judge's injunction.