Blatchford’s Helpless: Gross inaccuracies presented as fact

The Brantford Expositor–Editorial

http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2875560

I am getting very sick of reading Toronto columnists and mainstream media types perpetuating the grossly inaccurate perceptions of the Caledonia/Six Nations situation at told by Christie Blatchford in her book Helpless.

Since its release, others are going viral with these half-truths and fabrications.

Unlike Blatchford, who admits to not really knowing much about the situation before the Dave Brown/Dana Chatwell trial, I was there, on the ground, during the time frame Blatchford describes and afterwards.

Now, in his list of native atrocities in Caledonia, another arms-length author refers to arson attacks. Yes, there were — but they were all directed against the natives by non-native extremists and not the other way around as implied. In fact, there were four such attacks, two of which could easily have resulted in fatalities.

Any of us who were there know that the barricades came down a long time ago, the tire fires went out hours after they were lit on April 20, 2006, following the armed attack on a handful of sleeping natives and non-native supporters. There were no firearms allowed on the site even at the tensest of times, no crazed warriors running through people’s homes carrying AK-47’s with Russian insignia, and there never was. There were no arms stashes or tunnels under the soil of Douglas Creek, and there never was; Burtch is not being set up as an airfield for clandestine Warrior ops to fly in and out of, and there is no reason to continue with this BS any longer. That is, of course, unless some out-of-town opportunists see money in it.

Jim Windle Brantford

Homebuilder says activist unwelcome at construction site

September 15, 2007 Saturday

Homebuilder says activist unwelcome at construction site

BYLINE: Michael-Allan Marion, the expositor

SECTION: LOCAL NEWS; Pg. A3

LENGTH: 441 words

A city homebuilder is livid that activist Gary McHale brought his protests against native actions at housing developments to his stalled construction site on Grand River Avenue.

McHale, of Richmond Hill, is known for his high-profile protests against an ongoing Confederacy occupation of the former Douglas Creek Estates subdivision in Caledonia.

McHale showed up with seven cohorts bearing Canadian flags and placards on Friday afternoon at the site of a townhouse development being undertaken by Mayberry Homes, owned by Mike Quattrociocchi.

They protested for a while, then left.

Quattrociocchi has already made clear his discomfort over his project having been made the latest target of Confederacy members protesting or temporarily occupying building projects in Haldimand County, Brant County and Brantford to bring attention to unresolved land claims.

But when he learned of McHale’s action, he immediately got on the phone to local politicians and the media to angrily insist he told the activist beforehand not to come to Brantford.

“I told him in no uncertain terms to stay away from my site,” the builder and former city councillor recounted in an interview.

“I said, ‘I don’t need your help.'”

Quattrociocchi said he had also e-mailed city police to inform them he didn’t want McHale on the property and made sure the unwanted activist knew that.

“So what does he do? He shows up anyway,” Quattrociocchi said.

“I want nothing to do with McHale. All he’s trying to do is continue his natives-against-non-natives thing. Nobody needs this. I don’t want to fight anyone. Fighting’s too easy.”

McHale did not return phone calls for comment on Quattrociocchi’s statements.

During the action by the McHale entourage, Shari Manto of nearby Hilda Street walked over to the site. She told McHale she was not impressed that he was disrupting the neighbourhood and walked away.

Quattrociocchi said that while he’s angry at the inaction of the federal and provincial governments in the growing land claims dispute, he’s trying as hard as he can to keep the action at his site from exploding into violence.

“For the first time in a long time in my life I’m scared. I don’t want people to get hurt and I’m afraid they will.”

Mayor Mike Hancock was also unhappy about McHale’s protest.

“I don’t think it’s in the best interests of the city, the developer or anyone else for that matter to inflame an already difficult situation,” he said.

“This kind of thing doesn’t help when you’re trying to find solutions.”

“For the first time in a long time in my life I’m scared. I don’t want people to get hurt and I’m afraid they will.”

Mike Quattrociocchi, Brantford homebuilder

Six Nations Solidarity Network, Brantford, Eagle Place

Floyd Montour (left) of Six Nations shares some of the ordeals he’s gone through while taking part in protests at developments where the property is under a land claim. He was speaking at a gathering Sunday afternoon at Kanata Village where people met to deliver information pamphlets about development in the Eagles Nest tract, and a public meeting on March 28th at Bellview School.

From the Brantford Expositor, March 15

Anything Eagle Place residents want to know about an unresolved native land claim that bears the name of their neighbourhood and developers’ plans for massive subdivisions, they can learn at a public information meeting at Bellview School gym on March 28, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

About 30 social activists from native, non-native and union groups gathered at Kanata Iroquois Village for a strategy session on Sunday, then hit the pavement of most streets in Eagle Place, distributing flyers advertising the event.

The Brantford-based peace group TRUE -True Row Understanding through Education -is mounting the event to educate the public about the 200-year-old Eagle’s Nest Tract claim that is at the heart of a dispute that is pitting Six Nations Haudenosaunee activists, the city and builders against one another in occupations, work stoppages, arrests and stymied development.

The organizers also want to ensure the neighbourhood is aware of peaceful native intentions, and the extent of plans by a group of developers to bring nearly 1,200 homes to the area, despite the claim.

The southern part of Eagle Place is also a key area of concern in a waterfront master plan that a council and consulting team has been working on for the past nine months, which could curtail development in the area.

“We stand by the principle that there is a legitimate claim, it should be respected and it should be negotiated,” said Steve Watson, national representative for the Canadian Auto Workers, who was at the head of 15 activist union members.

“The rights of the claimants should not be ignored. Unions have to fight to get respect for their rights. We have a convergence of interests.”

Seven times the city has tried to run a water and sewer line across Erie Avenue to service a 99-home subdivision by Birkett Lane that is still stalled. Each time, activists have been there to stop them.

The developers believe they have clear title to the land, and show deeds from the land registry system tracing ownership back to the original person they claimed acquired it legally.

Tom Keefer, with the Canadian Union of Public Employees and co-ordinator with the First Nations Solidarity Working Group, which brought eight activists, said that organization has been supporting Six Nations since the occupation of a housing project in Caledonia four years ago.

He hopes the educational exercise over the Eagle’s Nest Tract claim will head off the angst that has engulfed Caledonia.
“This is an expression of union solidarity with indigenous struggles,” he said. “We see a lot of similarities in this case as elsewhere. The government breaks treaties like employers break collective agreements.”

Bill Squire, with the Mohawk Nation, complained that organization is not allowed at the table in negotiations since Caledonia that have yielded no result.

“We are on the outside, not able to participate in the negotiations,” he said, while expressing his gratitude over the arrival of non-native, union and other groups.
“Development in Brantford has been running amok,” Jim Windle, head of TRUE, told the gathering.

“The problem has been that is on land under claim that has never been surrendered. Negotiations have been going on, and while that is happening, development has been taking place anyway.
“As a human being, I can’t sit and watch this continue to happen. There is an injustice here and we’re trying to bring the truth out.”
– – –

BY THE NUMBERS
The Erie Avenue-Birkett Lane area is a green stretch of contested, mostly floodplain, territory on the south end of Brantford. It also is where developers have filed plans of subdivision to build a total of nearly 1,200 housing unit:

West of Erie Avenue and north of Birkett Lance -428 unit subdivision plan submitted by Harry and Helga Noderer in 1992, conditions not yet fulfilled.

Northwest corner of Erie and Birkett -99-house subdivision by Cambridge Heritage Management Corp. approved, but repeatedly stalled by native protests.

147 Birkett -219-unit subdivision planned by Stirling Bridge Ltd., application in progress.

339 Erie -60-unit townhouse complex by Multani Homes, application in progress.

Dover Avenue -38-unit townhouse complex by Multani Homes, application in progress.

104 River Rd.-Eight-house subdivision by Jack, Ruth and Ross Shrum, plan of subdivision conditions not yet fulfilled.

Brantford Expositor coverage

[Fleming points out that white supremacists need not apply and that he “despises” their beliefs, but-as mentioned elsewhere-he needs to face the elephant in the room: why do these actions attract such company?  McHale and Fleming can talk until they’re blue in the face about how much they despise such ideologies of hate, but the simple truth is that their rallies, marches, and now possibly militias, draw out a certain crowd like bees to honey]

Call us ‘Peacekeepers’

Posted By MICHAEL-ALLAN MARION

June 24, 2009

This town became Caledonia for an evening as two bitterly opposed groups faced off Tuesday night with insults and warring news releases at the Lions Club Hall.

Inside the hall, about 30 people in a group that was holding a first organizational meeting of the Caledonia Peacekeepers. A couple of weeks ago the group started by calling itself the Caledonia Militia.

Caledonia protest personality Gary McHale and Doug Fleming, the Peacekeepers founding leader, launched a critique of the OPP’s “race-based policing” that they say goes easy on crimes committed by First Nations people.

They also explained how the new group would monitor and report on crime in Caledonia, be prepared to make citizen’s arrests and carry out an information program to educate people about “what is really going on” in the name of the native land claims dispute.

Above all, Fleming and McHale emphasized that the Peacekeepers would not tolerate anyone in its membership who expresses racist views.

“I’m going to be very blunt, here,” said Fleming.

“My grandfather’s generation fought a war against Nazi Germany to combat that type of thinking. If any of you here have bought into this racist doctrine, I just want you to know this: I despise your beliefs. I couldn’t disagree with you more, and this is not the group for you.”

Outside the hall and across the street, about 100 demonstrators had bused in from various southern Ontario communities to condemn the new group in speeches, signs and literature as racist neo-Nazis, or people who “definitely” had leanings and connections to more prominent organizations of the same ilk.

The protesters, from Kitchener, Waterloo, Guelph, Hamilton and Toronto, were bused in by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 3903, First Nations Solidarity Working Group.

They took full advantage of the new Caledonia group’s early choice of “militia” in its name, as they carried signs reading “Canadians Don’t Want Anti-Native Vigilantes,” “Klan Meeting in Progress,” “Militia Go Home,” and ” Stormfront.org,” the website of a reputed white supremacist organization.

“I’m not saying that Gary McHale and Doug Fleming are neo-Nazi,” but their motives are questionable, one spokesman, Davin Charney, insisted to the media, while police were moving the protesters across the street as they descended from the bus.

Questioned further, Charney said that McHale and Fleming were at least “guilty by association.”

“We oppose the threat of violence and escalation of the problem,” said Niki Thorne, a York University graduate student and member of the First Nations Solidarity Working Group.

“This is a bigger issue. This is not just about Caledonia. We need to settle all land claims in a crisp, peaceful and fair manner.”

Fleming and McHale both said they first decided to call their group a “militia” to get the media’s attention.

McHale said that there has been a native militia in Caledonia for three years.

“Whether they call themselves the Mohawk Warriors, or the Men’s Fire, or the Protectors, or whatever name they want to use, they have been acting an armed militia, using baseball bats and other weapons to intimidate people,” he said.

With the OPP unwilling to enforce the law, the Peacekeepers are dedicated to the “restoration of law and order,” he said.

The new group’s meeting was held in Cayuga, partly because McHale is forbidden by a court order from carrying on his activities in Caledonia.

Tuesday’s confrontation is the latest incident in a re-escalation of tension in Caledonia, more than three years after the occupation of a former housing development by Six Nations Haudenosaunee activists, which they call a “reclamation.”

Last Thursday, the fledgling group staged a silent march past the site, with an equal number of Haudenosaunee activists standing quietly at the entrance.

The march, against the OPP, was a response to the arrest of Fleming’s brother, Randy, about a week earlier for trying to walk down the same road with a Canadian flag.

Source: http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1626509