Deseronto Mayor, Lions and Legion want McHale and group to stay away

No room for inflammatory rhetoric

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Belleville Intelligencer

Municipal and Canadian Legion officials in Deseronto have wisely headed off, for now, a potentially ugly confrontation between antagonists in the non-native community intent on stirring up passions over the Deseronto quarry occupation and Mohawks who insist the land is theirs.As reported in The Intelligencer this week, Mark Vandermaas, editor of the Voice of Canada Internet weblog, and others had planned to come to Deseronto to hold a public meeting about "the rule of law" and a "two-tiered justice system" that his organization claims allows violence to prevail in native land claim protests.But first the Deseronto Lions Hall, then the Royal Canadian Legion in the town denied them meeting space."What's really frightening is it's shutting down free speech with people who have never committed a crime and never instigated hatred," said Vandermaas, a London-based real estate broker who also compiled the Ipperwash Papers, a compilation he said represented an account of what residents experienced in the Ipperwash conflict.Vandermaas and Gary McHale, of Richmond Hill, owner of the website Caledonia Wake Up Call, were arrested in December for hanging Canadian flags across from the protest site in Caledonia. They have also been involved in lawsuits and countersuits with the Ontario Provincial Police, who they say have been ineffective in protecting the rights of non-natives. McHale's website has also posted wanted posters with pictures of individual officers.Municipal official Brian Brooks, who books the Lions Hall, said none of Vandermaas' and McHale's past shenanigans influenced his decision.The hall, he said, is mainly used by community groups who already have arrangements through to the end of this month.Regardless, he said, it was clear the planned "public meeting" was likely aimed at drawing the spotlight on Deseronto for other reasons than public education."I don't believe it was an educational process. I think that they had further intent. But the grounds we turned them down on was that it's a facility for community associations," said Brooks.Mayor Clarence Zieman, too, was understandably reluctant to see his municipality play host to an anti-policing rally.Vandermaas and McHale are quite clearly on record as vocally and litigiously critical of the manner in which Ontario Provincial Police are handling native protests."We're trying to deal with this situation the best we can," Zieman said."From what I understand, the meeting would have been to berate what they call a two-tier system of policing. We're quite happy with what the OPP are doing."Zieman, Brooks and the Legion officials who told Vandermaas, essentially, to find another arena for his protest made the right decisions.As the experience has shown at Caledonia - where Vandermaas and McHale were arrested for their actions - tempers are hot on both sides of the native land claim issue.The climate in Deseronto, while tense, has not yet reached a fever pitch as it has, on occasion, in Caledonia.Municipal officials there would do well to keep a lid on such gathering, as best as they control them.Vandermaas, for his part, vows to perhaps hold a meeting in a park or other public area in Deseronto.Residents would do well, too, to take a pass on his rhetoric as it serves no purpose in helping resolve the situation over the Culbertson Land Tract negotiations or the occupation at the disputed quarry.