Arrested for carrying a Canadian flag (redux)

The fight for justice in Caledonia has cost him at least $40,000 and an incalculable toll on his health but even now, at 76 and with the cancer in his bones, Merlyn Kinrade is unrepentant and without regret.

An exchange with an OPP officer a couple of years ago tells the tale.

At the time, Kinrade was suffering the terrible pain of shingles. "I was just desperate to sit down," he says with a grin.

Instead, he stayed on his feet, stubbornly blocking a road on a frigid day, for 40 minutes.

An officer approached him and said, "Merlyn, go home and get some rest; you look terrible."

And Kinrade spat back: "I don't look as bad as you," meaning, of course, the performance of the OPP throughout the native occupation that began here in early 2006.

The police wouldn't arrest him that day back in December of 2007, though they arrested others. Kinrade, a veteran of the Canadian navy (he served with the first United Nations peacekeeping mission during the Suez crisis), was too respected a local figure.

But last month, Kinrade finally became a criminal, as he delightedly calls himself: He and seven others were charged with trespassing for walking on a public road in the former Douglas Creek Estates subdivision in this pretty town south of Hamilton.

It was this site that was first occupied almost six years ago by protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve and their supporters.

As construction stopped, the OPP didn't lift a finger to remove the protesters for almost two months, then launched a raid that backfired and saw police flee the site with tails between their legs.

In the weeks that followed, lawlessness led to acts of egregious violence — including the destruction of a hydro tower, the burning of a wooden bridge and the hijacking of a police vehicle — and daily acts of intimidation against ordinary non-native citizens who simply had the bad luck to live nearby.

The OPP, for the most part, rarely interfered, except to videotape events.

Later that summer, the Ontario government bought the land from the developers, and ever since, the site has remained a no-go zone for police (unless they beg permission first from the natives) and anyone who isn't either aboriginal or approved by aboriginals.

The entire long-running episode remains the greatest shame of the Dalton McGuinty government and a significant blot on the reputation of the OPP.

Surrey Street, the road where Kinrade was finally arrested on Dec. 3 last year, is like others on Douglas Creek Estates, actually still owned and maintained by Haldimand County, and the protest ringleader, Gary McHale, had all the documents to prove it, and that he and Kinrade et al. weren't trespassing.

McHale, notorious for daring to resist the OPP's novel way of policing, even had the OPP read aloud to him an Ontario government letter setting out the new rules about which people are allowed on the site — among them, "land-claim protesters."

The description doesn't say "native land-claim protesters," and so suits Kinrade and McHale as well as it does anyone from Six Nations.

They got nowhere, of course.

With a couple of other regular faces, Mark Vandermaas and Jeff Parkinson, Kinrade was bundled into a paddy wagon.

McHale, who wasn't handcuffed, was taken away separately.

Parkinson went into the van first. Kinrade was next, and as the police started to handcuff him, he told them about his separated shoulder and asked them to be careful.

A sergeant then told the officers to cuff him in the front.

- Christie Blatchford

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Gary McHale
• Michael Coren
• Caledonia
• Haldimand tract
• Mark Vandermaas
• Victims
• Project

[canuckflyboy]

Gary Mchale, like the occupy protesters should start doing something productive with his life instead of marching around protesting something that no one would otherwise really give a shit about.

[SDAMatt2a]

@canuckflyboy That's right: who gives a flying about the rule of law, a whole community being terrorized, and a man who was beaten to within an inch of his life.

[SlyFox70100]

I would carry the Maple Leaf wherever I went and all be damned!

[thebearjewkiller1976]

WELL THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU HAVE A LIBERAL WAY OF LIFE IN A COUNTRY WHERE LIBERALISM LEADS TO SOCIALISM THAT LEADS TO COMMUNISM THAT LEADS TO A DICTATORSHIP ITS REALLY HARD TO WATCH THIS SORT OF THING HAPPEN I MEAN HELL LOOK AT HOW WELL SOCIALISM WORKED FOR PRE 1990 SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC LOL ANY WAYS WE NEED SMALLER GOVERNMENT AND LESS CONTROL BY THEM AND THAT WILL BE THE ONLY WAYS TO TRUE FREEDOM SO YEA FOR CAPITALISM AND THANKS REAGAN FOR BALANCING THE BUDGET AND NOT BILL CLINTON

[SpoonHysteria]

As a Liberal, this is upsetting. I live in Hamilton, which is north of Caledonia. I drive along Highway 6 past/through the reserve often and I remember when they blocked all the roads, which they still do. It's ridiculous. I'm ashamed of the McGuinty government on this issue, among others, and hopefully they stop trying to be political correct and get this settled. Regardless of your political leaning, we can agree this is just wrong.

One of the many reasons I stopped voting for McGuinty.

[NoIslamThx]

Thank God for Sun News TV at least. The free world needs people like Coren, Lilley, Levant... :)