Protests blocking rail lines across Canada now include a blockade of Canadian Pacific tracks near Kamloops, British Columbia, while protesters near Montreal have ignored an injunction served Thursday evening ordering them to clear a Canadian National line.
The blockades protesting a pipeline in British Columbia, and police action to clear protesters there, are entering their third week. They have led to a shutdown of much of VIA Rail Canada’s service, layoffs of VIA and CN employees, and are leading to shortages of propane and other commodities in Canada’s Atlantic provinces.
The blockade east of Kamloops — unusual for targeting CP rather than CN — began about 9 a.m. Thursday, CTV News reported. In a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted on CP’s website, railroad CEO Keith Creel said the railroad is “severely impacted by the ongoing blockades,” which is “creating critical safety and security concerns.”
While Creel said the railroad fully understands the frustration of indigenous groups and supports their desire for a quick resolution, he also said, “the time for rhetoric has long since passed. Resolution requires action now.”
At St. Lambert, Quebec, protesters were served with an injunction Thursday evening telling them their blockade of CN tracks is illegal, but the protesters remained in place as of late Thursday night and said in a statement that “the rails are blocked until further notice.” The Montreal Gazette reported that a CN spokesman said the railroad would work with local law enforcement to enforce the order, but the local police would not answer questions about the blockade, which continues to disrupt Exo commuter trains as well as CN traffic.
Meanwhile, the CBC reports that businesses in Nova Scotia are struggling to cope with the shortage of commodities created by the blockade, with one propane firm saying it is just days from going out of business, and a shipping firm reassigning its trucks assigned to the Port of Halifax. The company is picking up some additional trucking business, but says the current situation is not sustainable.
VIA resumed some service on Thursday, but routes including Montreal-Quebec City, Toronto-Ottawa, and Toronto-Montreal remain shut down. Current status of service is available on the VIA website.
You are absolutely correct John, there was not a happy times before the Euro’s arrived. But that was several generations ago, and just like the past generations of Euros we didn’t get along well either.
Living in a community where we have a lot of FN people and beside a reservation, you get a closer understanding of the issues. Watched it first hand.
Time for law enforcement to uphold the law but I’m not so sure they will in Ontario because of their hands off approach to these matters.
I always find it interesting that everyone is so well versed in what happened between Euro’s, their descendants and the Native Americans. But no one is very informed on what happened between the natives before the Euro’s arrived. If you think it was all gentle and peaceful, I have another stereotype to sell you.
The protests stopped being “civil disobedience” when the judge ruled against them. It then became criminal.
Law enforcement should do just that, enforce.
Charles, do you now about LNG, all I know is it goes off with a real big bang
Not sure Walter, all I know at this time it’s not allowed, especially in large volumes,I believe there is a move afoot to do something at the regulatory level but we all know how that works.
I think the issue is around how it evaporates and then what happens if there is a source of ignition.
Jim what’s the problem with hauling LNG ? Railroads already haul LPG, acids, chlorine, an a lot of other things that are dangerous.
Not this time Russel, it’s for LNG and currently not allowed to be on the railroad. I’m not so sure from what little I know I would want to be near a railway line transporting LNG, especially with all the problems we’ve seen with oil trains.
And when the pipeline is built and complete the railroad lost more business.
GOOD NEWS, the blockade near Montreal have came down!
British Columbia where this all started is still over 90% First Nation Lands, never been Crown Land. It is First Nations land. The hereditary chiefs wanted the LNG pipeline to follow the transportation corridor where existing pipelines, rail lines, and the highway run, all on indigenous land. The pipeline company did not want to do this, 87 extra kilometres and another billion dollars. This pipeline is part of a total project cost of 40 billion. The FN has been warning of the consequences for years, to bad this happened, already cost the economy well over billions.
Hopefully today more blockades will come down.
Thanks John, I wasn’t 100% sure on that, answers the question raised earlier about the RR loosing out on business since you don’t transport NG in a tank car.
It’s a natural gas pipeline it will become liquid natural gas at kitimat bc to be loaded for export to Asia to be used to replace coal better for the environment
JOHN ADORJAN – I have never understood why Native Americans feel so picked on. Seems to me that naming sports teams etc. after them, far from ridicule, is a tribute. Also when USA was segregated Indians would sometimes find themselves on the right side of the color bar, serving in “white” units of the military and playing major league baseball when black Americans could not.
It’s not as if everything has been wonderful for minorities in America. Japanese, Jewish and Afro American families all have felt discrimination. Over the generations this nation has done everything possible to heal itself.
In my state, Indians (Oneida, Menomonee) have all the rights of any other state resident while picking and choosing which state laws to obey. For example, smoking is allowed in Indian casinos, strictly illegal for businesses owned by any other ethnicity.
In this week’s state election, Menomonee County (coterminous with an Indian reservation of the same name) there were 99 votes, fewer than a small precinct in my county. Take some responsibility, folks. Fix yourselves.
Do you think maybe they were meeting and deciding which transportation mode to block? A shame rail has proved to be such a patsy but apparently they chose well.
Sounds like Canadian law enforcement needs to start using live ammunition to convince these yahoos to stop blockading the rail lines as the courts have ordered. I get that the aborigines (or whatever they want to be called) don’t want the pipeline built across their land, but they are harming parties (the railroads) who have nothing to do with the pipeline. There are appropriate ways for the aborigines to make their objections known, but blockading rail lines is not.
For the most part the below is off-topic and inane.
Agree with Robert Ray. The elite US Army Special Forces (Green Berets) branch insignia is crossed arrows and the shoulder patch is an arrowhead in honor of the Indian Scouts. The US Army has named a number of its aircraft after Native American Tribes: Apache, Blackhawk, Cayuse, Cheyenne, Chinook, Creek, Huron, Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota and Sioux.
Jim Norton, it is not a wasteland, it is their land. It is no different than a corporation arbitrarily coming onto your property and doing something you don’t want.
Daryl, there is no way the CN or CP police could handle this, not enough of them.
Mr Millers comment about where are the CP and CN police. If there is no government support or backing there is no way that there are enough of them to handle the problem.
It appears this is all about a pipeline be being built across a wasteland. No houses, roads or railways built by these indigenous groups will have to be torn down or relocated. Reason….there are none.
ROBERT – Wounded Knee was far from the only ethnic cleansing atrocity in our world, nor was it the worst. We all know that Nazi Germany engaged in horrible acts of ethnic cleansing. Less known, though should be known, Stalin was a bad. Least known perhaps is the forcible expulsion of ethnic Germans after World War II from eastern Europe, no more justified than the forcible relocation of North America’s First Nations. The trains carrying Germans from areas annexed into Poland weren’t any better than the trains a year or two earlier carrying Jews to Auschwitz.
The ethnic German refugees mostly settled into the western zones and lived their lives. I’ve never heard of a single case of whining from the generations to follow, western Germans that claiming their ancestors were thrown out of their homes in what had always before been Germany, therefore the subsequent generations are victims. Instead they settled in and assimilated into what soon became a peaceful and prosperous nation.
In North America, First Nations aren’t confined to the Reserves. They have the same rights as any other Canadian or American. They can live wherever they want to live within the countries, get whatever job they qualify for, send their kids to any public school, and get in-state tuition at state universities. It’s no more difficult for them than it is for anyone else.
Canada is a nation of immigrants and refugees, as is America (which is why my grandparents came here). Many Canadians are the descendants of USA Afros fleeing north for their freedom and their lives. Did their enslaved ancestors have it any better than the First Nations? No, they had it equally as bad.
Following up to Arthur, in the mid 90’s there was the Ipperwash issue with the FN locals, an innocence protester was shot by the OPP, He was unarmed. An inquiry was held and the results of the inquiry are pretty well the basis of how the OPP conduct themselves today. The incident was centred around an army base that was on land taken from the FN people. Another flare up took place in 2006 in Caledonia, again the OPP were hands off, nothing to do with the feds.
You have to remember, in Ontario a lot of land rights were established before confederation as a result of the FN people’s involvement in the war of 1812.
Regardless of opinion, in Canada, the FN people own rights to lot of land and their laws apply, not ours. A lot of railroad goes through their land.
It’s a delicate balancing act and it has been going on long before current PM was born.
And yes, they should not be blocking the railroad
PM Trudeau also without getting too deep also made note of the eco terrorists infiltration into these blockades.
Actually the U.S. Army had some sympathy for the Indians they had to fight. The real problems were civilians anxious to grab Indian land and the government officers and agents who were supposed to help the Indians with food and supplies but instead were far more interested in stealing the money appropriated for food for the Indians.
Sums it up pretty well Arthur.
This afternoon Pm Trudeau said enough, time to remove the blockades…..by the provincial police. We’ll have to see what happens.
The RCMP are the provincial police west of Ontario and to a large part east of Quebec. Be interesting to see what goes on now, the provincial government’s will now have to step up to the plate and in the case of Ontario, they haven’t since the mid 90’s.
I have posted this sentiment previously, but will repeat it with some additional details.
The Canadian and provincial governments have long been cowed by First Nations’ groups threats and demands. Some 30 years ago, when I was spending a fair amount of time in Ontario, part of my circle of friends included a number of Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) senior constables (“officers” here in the US). Back then, First Nations peoples were occasionally blocking highways, cutting telephone wires, vandalizing gas transmission lines, and occasionally disrupting rail traffic.
In the mid-1980s, First Nations’ law enforcement agencies were totally limp-wrested. Injunctions were not worth the parchment on which they were written. And OPP officers were prevented by the provincial leaders from providing any sort of backup enforcement to tribal agencies. It looks as if little has changed.
In summary, what we are seeing now in the way of blockades — and other civil disobedience that is not making the US news — are the result of decades of our Canadian friends failures to maintain peace and good order.
I forecast it gets worse before it gets better.
(PS: Wondering what is left of both CP and CN railroad police departments. Bet they were gutted by Hunter and his disciples.)
Mr Landey – same goes for references to solutions used by questionable figures in American history! As a subscriber to this magazine I am going to encourage Trains Mgmt to eliminate this comment section as in current times these only attract the worst of people/the worst kind of people. I think many who would like to contribute avoid it due to the rantings of a minority who seem to monopolize the site.