Oliver Moore
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Mar. 23, 2010 3:07PM EDT Last updated on Wednesday, Mar. 24, 2010 4:38AM EDT
It was Valentine's Day and Agathe Rich and her husband were drinking with friends on the reserve. Back at their home, six young children huddled for warmth around an electric hotplate.
The curtains somehow caught fire that night in 1992 and a drunken Ms. Rich said she came rushing back to a harrowing sight.
"I see the flames in the windows of my house and the kids crying and shouting for help," she said Tuesday from Natuashish, shortly after a public meeting where she ended her self-imposed seclusion and spoke out strongly against lifting the local alcohol ban.
After a meeting that drew hundreds and was marked by arrests, a vote on the deeply contentious issue was set for Friday.
"I don't want to see my people to get hurt and to not look after the children," Ms. Rich said in a telephone interview from the remote Innu community in Northern Labrador. "I'm the one who lost the kids in the fire, because of alcohol abuse. And I don't want to see it happen to another person in my community."
Five of Ms. Rich's children died that night in 1992, along with a nephew. The youngest was six months and the eldest nine years old. Along with gas-sniffing videos that surfaced the following year, the incident brought international attention to Davis Inlet and helped convince the government to move residents to nearby Natuashish.
Ms. Rich said she continued to drink in the years after the fire. Finally, disgusted with the damage she was doing herself, she stopped three years ago. But the pain of what happened that night has never left. And she's worried about what will happen in the community if alcohol becomes more freely available again.
Alcohol is currently banned in the community of about 725. In the face of continuing social problems following the move in December, 2002, residents voted narrowly two years ago to go dry. Police and advocates of the ban say that crime has since gone down and school attendance has increased.
But Simeon Tshakapesh was recently elected chief on a platform that included revisiting the ban. Suggesting that people are afraid to report crime now that they might be charged with breaking the drinking bylaw, he said that statistics don't reflect the whole picture. And he notes that bootleg booze has continued to flow into the community.
In the aftermath of his election he said bluntly that the ban "doesn't exist."
That was rejected by police, who said he had to follow proper procedure for changing the law. Undaunted, Mr. Tshakapesh called Tuesday's public meeting to start the process.
The turnout, which exceeded participation in the recent band council elections, suggested just how deep feelings go on either side of the issue. The meeting ran more than four hours and laid bare the rancour dividing the Northern Labrador community.
"It was very loud, there were some words exchanged," according to Mr. Tshakapesh, who says he is being encouraged by residents to overturn the ban.
He acknowledged that several people appeared drunk at the meeting, which was held in the school gym. Former chief Prote Poker, who helped spearhead the ban, said that a few people had been taken into custody for drunkenness. Police confirmed that there had been arrests but could not immediately provide details.
"It was a chaotic meeting, people were shouting back and forth," Mr. Poker said. "People were drunk. At the meeting some people were stepping to the microphone, screaming and shouting the way drunk people do."
After hours of sometimes nasty exchanges a vote was set for Friday.
"On March 26 they're going to have another plebiscite," Mr. Tshakapesh said. "It's really up to the members now."