I'm always amused at all the posturing and name-calling that surrounds the controversy about land claims, native's rights, blockades, and the like.
While not everyone likes the methods he uses, Gary McHale, and the website he started, CaledoniaWakeUpCall.com, is still a very effective tool for exposing the government's one-sided racially motivated handling of the situation. It matters not what side you sit on, or who you think is right or wrong, the facts speak for themselves, and have been for over two years now. Without a doubt there is a double standard being exercised by the government and the OPP when it comes to fairness, the rule of law, and the appropriate response to trouble.
A great number of people in Caledonia and the surrounding areas would love nothing more than to see this all go away. They'd like to bury their heads in the sand, forget the names, forget the faces, turn the clocks back a couple of years and pretend that all is well. That same attitude was prevalent in the late '60's when the likes of a couple of guys named King and Lennon were making people uncomfortable with their messages of peaceful protest and equal rights. Their messages don't seem so crazy now, do they?
I don't for one moment think that Mr. McHale is in the same league, but someone has to try and keep the torches burning, and he has managed to do that. For that he deserves a lot of credit, as does Merlyn Kinrade, Mark Vandermaas, and the rest of that group.
At every corner the powers-that-be have been trying desperately to silence the complainers, or expose them in a manner that brings criticism and ridicule from government leaders, the media, and from the very people they're trying to protect. At every corner they have turned a blind eye to the law-breaking of one group, based on racial profiling, and tried to enforce the full weight of the law on others.
Is it any wonder that they are now being called before the Human Rights Commission to explain their two-tiered methods? Is it any wonder that the small group that continues to try and stop the government from sweeping Caledonia under the carpet, as they have done to Ipperwash, has to resort to human rights complaints to have their voices heard?
When the traditional protectors of our rights, the police and the government, openly refuse to uphold the law and protect those rights, who else can you turn to? Should the people of Caledonia start filing complaints with the United Nations, as the natives have?
All is not well in this province, and in this country for that matter, but no one seems to be noticing.
Somewhere, at some time, governments have become unaccountable to the people that have elected them, especially in this post-9/11 world we've been kidnapped by. Somehow they've managed to throw away the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the very fabric that used to make our society the greatest in the world, exchanging it for the heavy-handedness of the taser, the pepper spray, the SWAT team. More and more they tell us what we will do, not what they'd like us to do, regardless of the wishes of the majority. Somehow they've become dictatorial and refuse to listen. Their new agenda has become the furthest thing from democracy as one can get.
When will it end? What do we still have to look forward to? What do we tell our kids?
Mark Delio, Caledonia