Helpless: Caledonia's Nightmare of Fear and Anarchy, and How the Law Failed All of Us - Softcover

Blatchford, Christie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385670400 ISBN 13: 9780385670401

Publisher: Anchor Canada, 2011

Synopsis

It officially began on February 28, 2006, when a handful of protesters from the nearby Six Nations reserve walked onto Douglas Creek Estates, then a residential subdivision under construction, and blocked workers from entering. Over the course of the spring and summer of that first year, the criminal actions of the occupiers included throwing a vehicle over an overpass, the burning down of a hydro transformer which caused a three-day blackout, the torching of a bridge and the hijacking of a police vehicle. During the very worst period, ordinary residents living near the site had to pass through native barricades, show native-issued "passports", and were occasionally threatened with body searches and routinely subjected to threats. Much of this lawless conduct occurred under the noses of the Ontario Provincial Police, who, often against their own best instincts, stood by and watched: They too had been intimidated. Arrests, where they were made, weren't made contemporaneously, but weeks or monthlater. The result was to embolden the occupiers and render non-native citizens vulnerable and afraid. Eighteen months after the occupation began, a home builder named Sam Gualtieri, working on the house he was giving his daughter as a wedding present, was attacked by protesters and beaten so badly he will never fully recover from his injuries. The occupation is now in its fifth year. Throughout, Christie Blatchford has been observing, interviewing, and investigating with the tenacity that has made her both the doyen of Canadian crime reporters and a social commentator beloved for her uncompromising sense of right and wrong.
 
In Helpless she tells the full story for the first time - a story that no part of the press or media in Canada has been prepared to tackle with the unflinching objectivity that Christie Blatchford displays on every page. This is a book whose many revelations, never before reported, will shock and appall. But the last word should go to the author:
 
"This book is not about aboriginal land claims. The book is not about the wholesale removal of seven generations of indigenous youngsters from their reserves and families - this was by dint of federal government policy - or the abuse dished out to many of them at the residential schools into which they were arbitrarily placed or the devastating effects that haunt so many today. This book is not about the dubious merits of the reserve system which may better serve those who wish to see native people fail than those who want desperately for them to succeed. I do not in any way make light of these issues, and they are one way or another in the background of everything that occurred in Caledonia.
 
"What Helpless is about is the failure of government to govern and to protect all its citizens equally."

About this title

About the Author:

CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD has been a high-profile Canadian journalist for over 25 years, with columns covering sports, lifestyle, current affairs, and crime. She started working for The Globe and Mail in 1972 while still studying at Ryerson, and has since worked for the Toronto Star, the Toronto Sun and the National Post. She returned to The Globe and Mail in 2002. She is a winner of the National Newspaper Award for column writing.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Friday, June 9, 2006
 
 
By June 9, the worst of the occupation seemed to be over.
 
The mayor had just called an end to the state of emergency imposed after the riotous Victoria Day long weekend, when native occupiers destroyed a Hydro One transformer, plunging much of the county into darkness. The Argyle Street barricade, which for thirty-three days blocked traffic on Caledonia’s main drag, had been down for almost two weeks, the financial assistance office set up by the provincial government for businesses affected by the blockade was open, and a fragile calm appeared to have been restored. The situation wasn’t normal by any stretch, even by Caledonia’s deteriorating standards, but there was reason to hope.
 
In fact, on June 8, Michael Pullen, the Haldimand County tourism manager, sent out a giddy email announcing that the province had approved the final chunk of money for a $210,000 media campaign for the beleaguered town and burbling cheerfully about “some outstanding fishing photos” that had been taken for the print ads. “Caledonia: Close By, But A World Away” was the slogan of a publicity offensive designed to highlight the area’s bucolic charms and improve the town’s image. It was the classic government response to trouble: in the absence of actually fixing the problem, mount a public relations operation.
 
At the start of the season that Environment Canada was later to declare southern Ontario’s “Goldilocks summer” because of its just-right amounts of sun and rain, this day dawned cool and overcast. Before 1 p.m., three of the most alarming episodes of the entire occupation, each more violent than the last, occurred within two hours. All took place off the occupied site and well beyond any legitimacy arguably afforded the occupiers by the disputed land claim. These incidents happened instead on a public road, in a busy parking lot and in a pleasant subdivision, in front of citizens left disbelieving, enraged or weeping. In all three events, OPP officers were not only present, but also tantalizingly close to the action, well positioned to intervene.
 
Yet, with one exception, the police did nothing.
 
They failed to assist six of the eight victims, including one of their own, a fellow OPP constable. They made no arrests. They chased no perpetrator. They prevented no crime, and in one instance, either outright enabled (by handing over the keys) or allowed the theft of a car.
 
It all began when Kathe and Guenter Golke, then 68 and 66 respectively, decided to go for what Mr. Golke calls a fun drive. Both retired, they live in Simcoe, a country town spread low and thin, as though there isn’t enough of it to fill the space, about forty klicks southwest of Caledonia in the neighbouring county of Norfolk. The couple was heading towards Hamilton when, at the last minute, instead of hopping onto the Highway 6 bypass that skirts the town, they turned right onto Argyle Street, the main street through Caledonia.
 
“It occurred to me, after hearing so much about that Indian problem there, I wanted to see what it’s all about, what this property is all about,” Mr. Golke says.
 
He slowed their cream-coloured Ford Taurus as they pulled even with Douglas Creek Estates, and had a good, long gander at the site across the street. Suddenly, a motorcycle came flying up towards them. “Why are they driving so fast?” he thought to himself, as he pulled over to the shoulder and stopped to let the bike pass. But it drew up to his window, so he rolled it partway down. A furious woman in motorcycle leathers said, “Is there a problem?” and then let fly a torrent of verbal abuse, accusing them of coming to “look at the bad Indians.”
 
“This I don’t need,” Mr. Golke snapped, and floored it. “The minute I stepped on the gas, all hell broke loose,” he says. “From the ditches, a whole pile of First Nations came out, trying to stop us.” But the car was already moving—in fact, some of the natives were so close he was afraid he’d hit somebody—and he high-tailed it into Caledonia.
 
At the Canadian Tire parking lot just up the road, he spotted an OPP cruiser, drove right to it and was trying to explain to the officer inside what was going on when two pickup trucks and some cars materialized beside them. From these vehicles, more than a dozen people, some in camouflage-patterned gear, came running, surrounded the car and began jumping on the hood, whooping. Quickly, the crowd around them grew to about twenty.
 
“They were trying to bang on the windows, open her [Kathe’s] door, but it was all locked, fortunately,” Mr. Golke says. Then one of the men made a move for the steering wheel through his half-open window. As he was trying to roll it up, he saw that the officer had grabbed the man’s arm and was holding him back.
 
The officer somehow got them out of the Taurus and into his cruiser. By about noon, they were taken to the police substation a few blocks away. Minutes after arriving there, the police called for an ambulance for Mr. Golke. A diabetic who’d already had two heart attacks, his heart was now pounding and he was grey. He spent about twelve hours in hospital, diagnosed with heart fibrillation, an abnormal rhythm that, untreated, can lead to heart failure or stroke. The couple remain grateful to the officer who rescued them—as Mrs. Golke says, “I win the lottery, I send him off to a nice vacation”—and completely untheatrical about the entire incident. They were just happy to get their car back—damaged to the tune of three thousand dollars, but their insurance covered it—a couple of days later.
 
The Golkes had no idea that their attackers had merrily driven away in their beloved Taurus, having either been actually handed the keys by a member of the OPP’s Aboriginal Relations Team (known as the ART), as some officers believe, or having hot-wired and stolen it in front of a gaggle of cops. Certainly, although seven occupiers were later charged with a variety of offences in relation to the two events that day in the parking lot, no one was ever charged with theft of a motor vehicle.
 
Self-sufficient German immigrants (Mr. Golke arrived in Canada in 1961 with twenty-four dollars to his name and, when the customs official remarked upon his lack of funds, he smartly replied, “I came here not to bring it; I came to make it”), the couple claim no lasting ill effects but for the way Mrs. Golke starts at the sound of a motorcycle. Still, Mr. Golke says, “You picture this happening in Third World countries, but you don’t think Canada can be like that.” Canada is still “No. 1 for Germans,” he says, and their friends back in the old country “couldn’t believe it happened in Canada.”
 
——
 
The Golkes didn’t know the half of it.
 
About the time they were being surrounded by what can only be described as a mob, Ken MacKay and Nick Garbutt were at CHCH-TV in Hamilton, about fifteen minutes from Caledonia, when someone on the news desk heard over the police scanner that something was happening there.
 
Something was always going on in Caledonia—CH crews had been there almost daily and knew the atmosphere was highly charged—so when MacKay drew the short straw, he decided, “I’m only going if someone else comes with me.” Mostly, he wanted the comfort of knowing someone had his back—holding the camera means the operator can’t see much on his right side. Earlier that week, a couple of cameramen had been confronted by hostile occupiers, “and we just felt it wasn’t safe to go up there by ourselves anymore,” MacKay says.
 
Nick Garbutt was the next guy up in the rotation, so in two separate trucks, they headed for the Canadian Tire lot. They pulled into the north end and could see something was going on at the south, but not what exactly it was. As the Golkes never saw the CH crew, so Garbutt never clamped eyes on the Golkes’ car, let alone on the couple themselves. But MacKay, the shooter, says he could tell the crowd was around a car and that police were in there with them, talking to them.
 
“My story was to show here’s natives around the vehicle, here’s the police standing, over here . . . and nothing’s being done.”
 
MacKay grabbed his camera, Garbutt following, and as they got closer, an OPP officer—whom Garbutt assumed was in charge and refers to as the sergeant—raised his hands for them to stop.
 
“Ken and I realized we’re sort of a distance away from the scene,” Garbutt says, “so I said I’d go back and get the tripod.” They set up by a white tradesman’s van, and MacKay started shooting. What they could see was the crowd milling about and a group of uniformed OPP officers standing, spread out in a makeshift line.
 
The natives spotted them. “Three or four of them start approaching us,” Garbutt says. The natives walked right past the officer who had waved to the news crew to stop. “They walk quickly past the sergeant,” he says. “The sergeant’s eyeballing me. I sense trouble and I put my hands up to the sergeant to go, meaning ‘What’s going on here?’ My thoughts are, ‘A little help here?’ Because I sense trouble.”
 
“Here they come,” he told MacKay.
 
“I see them,” MacKay replied, taking the camera off the tripod and sort of backing up.
 
“They were telling us, ‘Stop taping, put the camera away!’” Garbutt says. “So Ken says yeah.”
 
Garbutt stood his ground, but the natives were running now, and the first guy shouldered past him, spinning him around, and began wrestling with MacKay, trying to get the camera.
 
“Give me the fucking tape, give me the camera,” the man told MacKay. “I said, ‘I’m not doing that, not doing that.’ So I’m stalling, hoping that these guys—the cops—are going to come and help us.”
 
By this time, there were six natives around MacKay, who was trying to protect the camera and using the tripod as a guard. When someone managed to grab his arm, it was Garbutt’s cue to step in and help. He hooked onto the lead assailant by the elbow, trying to spin him away from MacKay.
 
“They grab Nick,” MacKay says, “and they put their arm across his throat and throw him up against the van and put him in a headlock, and they punch him.” MacKay saw “there’s cops right there, three of them . . . and I turn around and I yelled, ‘Do something! Do something!’ And they just looked at me.”
 
Garbutt was briefly released, or so he thinks now, and saw that MacKay was still in a struggle over the camera, while other officers stood right there.
 
“How can that happen?” Garbutt asks. “It should have ended there. So I go into the melee and I start trying to help Ken out. Again. Then I’m surrounded by three or four natives, who jostle me and start . . . I’m getting jostled and surrounded, and that’s when the actual assault on me takes place.”
 
Garbutt was getting hit from behind on the top of his head; he remembers taking between four and six blows. “And I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this won’t last long.’ All the OPP officers are on scene, this was the first actual physical violence that has happened. This won’t last long, because obviously the officers will step in now because they’ve seen this. They were so close to me.” All of a sudden, Garbutt “felt two hands on my shoulders and someone’s telling me, ‘It’s okay, it’s over, just start walking backwards,’ and I look up, expecting to see an OPP officer in uniform. And it wasn’t an officer in uniform. It was somebody in plain clothes, and I thought, ‘Ah, it’s an officer in plain clothes who’s come to rescue me.’”
 
MacKay was thinking much the same thing. “My whole tactic was to keep stalling,” he says, “because eventually more cops are going to show up and get these guys off of us, because Nick’s actually being hit, and I’m having a forty-thousand-dollar camera taken out of my hands.”
 
Only a few minutes later, as Garbutt profusely thanked the “officer” and asked for his name, did he discover that his rescuer was not a provincial policeman, but a Caledonia civilian named Ken Sullivan. He led Garbutt and MacKay back to their news trucks.
 
“I was still itching to get back in [the fight],” Garbutt says. But now he felt the blood dripping down his face, and allowed himself to be persuaded.
 
MacKay, an ex-CBC employee who was enrolled in teachers’ college at the time and working for CH only for the summer, is now an elementary school teacher not far from his home in Port Dover, on Lake Erie. But the then 46-year-old journalist-turned-teacher had had a third career: he is also a former soldier, a member of the 1st Battalion of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry.
 
“I was in the regular forces way back when, ’78 to ’81,” he says. “There was nothing happening back then. But it teaches pride for the uniform, and that’s what I said to these guys [the police]: ‘How can you guys wear that uniform?’ My buddy’s over there bleeding. And they wouldn’t look. Nick was over to their right, he was on a car, civilians were cleaning him up with towels, and they’re standing there, and they’re covering up their [badge] numbers, so I can’t get names or numbers, and I asked, ‘Who’s the sergeant in charge?’
 
“And they said, ‘We don’t know.’
 
“I said, ‘Give me a break. There has to be a sergeant in charge, with this number of people, there has to be a sergeant in charge; I want to know his name.’ Nobody would answer me.”
 
Finally, MacKay says, an officer wearing gloves took a look at Garbutt, called for an ambulance, and “the cops just disappeared—vapourized.”
 
One officer, furious and embarrassed, climbed into the ambulance to whisper to Garbutt, “You should sue the OPP!” He went to hospital in Hagersville, where he got a tetanus shot and four stitches to the biggest of the cuts on the head. And MacKay, with only a few bruises, quickly got the camera back, minus the videotape inside (the natives refused to give police any of the pictures, as they also refused to be interviewed later).
 
Garbutt and MacKay decided to file formal complaints. They did this on June 27 with the Ontario Civilian Commission on Police Services, which sent the complaints right back to the OPP for investigation, as per the governing legislation. OCCPS may advertise itself to be, and may be perceived to be, an independent agency that investigates citizen complaints against police, but as its spokesman Cathy Boxer succinctly puts it, in practice the agency acts “as a post office” and just forwards the beef to the police force that is the subject of the complaint.
 
The OPP asked the Ottawa Police Service to conduct the actual probe, two sergeants were assigned, and after extensive interviews with thirty OPP officers and about the same number of citizens who had witnessed all or part of the events in the Canadian Tire lot, they reported back to Garbutt and MacKay one month shy of a year after their attack. I have both reports, and while no one could argue that the investigation wasn’t complete, it was also weirdly nitpicking, with an odd passive-aggressive tone, almost as though the investigators set out to minimize what had happened. Where the cameramen co...

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Canada
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0385670400
• ISBN 13: 9780385670401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288