Wednesday, February 12, 2020
BUSHMEAT AND ZOONOSIS
Bats for sale at Indonesia's wildlife market despite virus warning
AFP Wednesday, February 12, 2020
TOMOHON, INDONESIA -- Bats, rats and snakes are still being sold at an Indonesian market known for its wildlife offerings, despite a government request to take them off the menu over fears of a link to the deadly coronavirus.
Vendors at the Tomohon Extreme Meat market on Sulawesi island say business is booming and curious tourists keep arriving to check out exotic fare that enrages animal rights activists.
But scientists are debating how the new virus, which has killed more than 1,100 people in China and spread to dozens of countries around the world, was transmitted to humans.
A wildlife market in Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, is thought to be ground zero and there is suspicion it could have originated in bats.
The possible link wasn't on many radar screens at the Indonesian market, however.
Its grubby stalls feature a dizzying array of animals including giant snakes, rats impaled on sticks and charred dogs with their hair seared off by blowtorches -- a gory scene described by some critics as "like walking through hell".
Bat seller Stenly Timbuleng says he's still moving his fare for as much as 60,000 rupiah ($4.40) a kilogram to buyers in the area, where bats are a specialty in local cuisine.
"I'm selling between 40 and 60 kilograms every day," the 45-year-old told AFP.
"The virus hasn't affected sales. My customers still keep coming."
Restaurateur Lince Rengkuan -- who serves bats including their heads and wings stewed in coconut milk and spices -- says the secret is preparation.
"If you don't cook the bat well then of course it can be dangerous," she said.
"We cook it thoroughly and so far the number of customers hasn't gone down at all."
This despite a request from the local government and the health agency to take bats and other wildlife out of circulation -- a call that has been all but ignored.
"We're also urging people not to consume meat from animals suspected to be carriers of a fatal disease," said Ruddy Lengkong, head of the area's government trade and industry agency.
Indonesia has not yet reported a confirmed case of the virus.
In the capital Jakarta, vendors selling skinned snakes and cobra blood on a recent Saturday night didn't have any trouble finding takers.
"It's good for you, sir," said one vendor of his slithering fare.
"Cures and prevents all diseases."
Full coverage CTVNews.ca/Coronavirus
Jump in fatal coronavirus cases as WHO warns 'too early' to predict end of outbreak
Two more Canadians diagnosed with COVID-19 on cruise ship
Experts skeptical of report suggesting some coronavirus patients don't show symptoms for 24 days
Cruise ship turned away in other ports anchors off Cambodia
Exiled Uighurs fear spread of coronavirus in China camps
The coronavirus causing panic around the world has a new name
U.K. coronavirus 'super-spreader' says he has recovered
Global experts study promising drugs, vaccines for new virus
Businesses struggle to fix supply chains disrupted by virus
Coronavirus crisis hits global flows of letters, parcels
Bats for sale at Indonesia's wildlife market despite virus warning
AFP Wednesday, February 12, 2020
TOMOHON, INDONESIA -- Bats, rats and snakes are still being sold at an Indonesian market known for its wildlife offerings, despite a government request to take them off the menu over fears of a link to the deadly coronavirus.
Vendors at the Tomohon Extreme Meat market on Sulawesi island say business is booming and curious tourists keep arriving to check out exotic fare that enrages animal rights activists.
But scientists are debating how the new virus, which has killed more than 1,100 people in China and spread to dozens of countries around the world, was transmitted to humans.
A wildlife market in Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, is thought to be ground zero and there is suspicion it could have originated in bats.
The possible link wasn't on many radar screens at the Indonesian market, however.
Its grubby stalls feature a dizzying array of animals including giant snakes, rats impaled on sticks and charred dogs with their hair seared off by blowtorches -- a gory scene described by some critics as "like walking through hell".
Bat seller Stenly Timbuleng says he's still moving his fare for as much as 60,000 rupiah ($4.40) a kilogram to buyers in the area, where bats are a specialty in local cuisine.
"I'm selling between 40 and 60 kilograms every day," the 45-year-old told AFP.
"The virus hasn't affected sales. My customers still keep coming."
Restaurateur Lince Rengkuan -- who serves bats including their heads and wings stewed in coconut milk and spices -- says the secret is preparation.
"If you don't cook the bat well then of course it can be dangerous," she said.
"We cook it thoroughly and so far the number of customers hasn't gone down at all."
This despite a request from the local government and the health agency to take bats and other wildlife out of circulation -- a call that has been all but ignored.
"We're also urging people not to consume meat from animals suspected to be carriers of a fatal disease," said Ruddy Lengkong, head of the area's government trade and industry agency.
Indonesia has not yet reported a confirmed case of the virus.
In the capital Jakarta, vendors selling skinned snakes and cobra blood on a recent Saturday night didn't have any trouble finding takers.
"It's good for you, sir," said one vendor of his slithering fare.
"Cures and prevents all diseases."
Full coverage CTVNews.ca/Coronavirus
Jump in fatal coronavirus cases as WHO warns 'too early' to predict end of outbreak
Two more Canadians diagnosed with COVID-19 on cruise ship
Experts skeptical of report suggesting some coronavirus patients don't show symptoms for 24 days
Cruise ship turned away in other ports anchors off Cambodia
Exiled Uighurs fear spread of coronavirus in China camps
The coronavirus causing panic around the world has a new name
U.K. coronavirus 'super-spreader' says he has recovered
Global experts study promising drugs, vaccines for new virus
Businesses struggle to fix supply chains disrupted by virus
Coronavirus crisis hits global flows of letters, parcels
Assembly of First Nations launches class action lawsuit against federal government
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Assembly of First Nations Chief Perry
OTTAWA -- The Assembly of First Nations has filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government, seeking damages for First Nations children who it says have been discriminated against by the government's child welfare system.
The lawsuit was first reported by APTN's Brett Forester on Friday, and was confirmed in a release from the AFN on Wednesday.
It alleges that Canada, through "discriminatory" funding, created an incentive to remove First Nations children from their families and failed to account for different needs among First Nations communities across the country. It also claims the funding for First Nations children on-reserve fell far short of what was allotted to children off-reserve.
“Year after year, generation after generation, Canada systemically discriminated against First Nations children and families simply because they were First Nations,” said AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde in a press release.
“It did so by underfunding preventive care, perpetuating the historical disadvantage resulting from the residential schools. Canada breached its responsibility to our children and families, infringed on their Charter rights, and caused them real harm and suffering. We will always stand up for our children.”
The suit goes beyond the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling in January 2016, which found the government was systemically discriminating against First Nations children on-reserve and in the Yukon through its provision of services.
Canada was ordered to pay $40,000 to First Nations children and their families who were denied services or wrongly apprehended.
The AFN's lawsuit is seeking compensation for an even larger group, broadening it to all those harmed by the system, including those not covered in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal’s decision. Speaking to host Evan Solomon during an episode of CTV’s Power Play on Wednesday, Bellegarde explained that this was the main purpose of the new lawsuit.
"From 1991 until 2005, the CHRT's decision didn't deal with [that] group of individuals and children that went through the system. So our class action suit was comprehensive to deal with that group of people," Bellegarde said.
The government has already spent upwards of $8 million in legal fees in its efforts to fight the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling, according to the Canadian Press.
The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society's Cindy Blackstock, who originally filed the human rights complaint, obtained the documents through the Access to Information Act.
Vanessa Adams, a spokesperson for Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, told CTVNews.ca in an emailed statement that the government "fully” agrees that First Nations children who were harmed by government Child and Family Service policies must be compensated.
"We maintain focused on delivering fair and equitable compensation and hope the parties can work together so that we can continue advancing towards our shared goal of compensating children negatively affected by government policies," Adams said.
"We made a commitment and nothing about our commitment changes. We will continue to work with all relevant parties to ensure we make this right."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Assembly of First Nations Chief Perry
Bellegarde participates in the signing of the Assembly of First Nations
-Canada Memorandum of Understanding on Joint Priorities on
Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, June 12, 2017.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
OTTAWA -- The Assembly of First Nations has filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government, seeking damages for First Nations children who it says have been discriminated against by the government's child welfare system.
The lawsuit was first reported by APTN's Brett Forester on Friday, and was confirmed in a release from the AFN on Wednesday.
It alleges that Canada, through "discriminatory" funding, created an incentive to remove First Nations children from their families and failed to account for different needs among First Nations communities across the country. It also claims the funding for First Nations children on-reserve fell far short of what was allotted to children off-reserve.
“Year after year, generation after generation, Canada systemically discriminated against First Nations children and families simply because they were First Nations,” said AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde in a press release.
“It did so by underfunding preventive care, perpetuating the historical disadvantage resulting from the residential schools. Canada breached its responsibility to our children and families, infringed on their Charter rights, and caused them real harm and suffering. We will always stand up for our children.”
The suit goes beyond the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling in January 2016, which found the government was systemically discriminating against First Nations children on-reserve and in the Yukon through its provision of services.
Canada was ordered to pay $40,000 to First Nations children and their families who were denied services or wrongly apprehended.
The AFN's lawsuit is seeking compensation for an even larger group, broadening it to all those harmed by the system, including those not covered in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal’s decision. Speaking to host Evan Solomon during an episode of CTV’s Power Play on Wednesday, Bellegarde explained that this was the main purpose of the new lawsuit.
"From 1991 until 2005, the CHRT's decision didn't deal with [that] group of individuals and children that went through the system. So our class action suit was comprehensive to deal with that group of people," Bellegarde said.
The government has already spent upwards of $8 million in legal fees in its efforts to fight the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling, according to the Canadian Press.
The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society's Cindy Blackstock, who originally filed the human rights complaint, obtained the documents through the Access to Information Act.
Vanessa Adams, a spokesperson for Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, told CTVNews.ca in an emailed statement that the government "fully” agrees that First Nations children who were harmed by government Child and Family Service policies must be compensated.
"We maintain focused on delivering fair and equitable compensation and hope the parties can work together so that we can continue advancing towards our shared goal of compensating children negatively affected by government policies," Adams said.
"We made a commitment and nothing about our commitment changes. We will continue to work with all relevant parties to ensure we make this right."
Related Stories
Ottawa spent at least $8 million on First Nations child welfare case: documents
'We want this to happen:' First Nation moves on own child welfare law
'Kids will fall through the cracks': Advocates critical of child-welfare changes
Feds' motion requesting stay of First Nations child welfare compensation ruling denied
First Nations child welfare advocate accuses feds of 'shopping around courts'
More First Nations kids deserve child-welfare compensation, federal lawyers argue
Ottawa spent at least $8 million on First Nations child welfare case: documents
'We want this to happen:' First Nation moves on own child welfare law
'Kids will fall through the cracks': Advocates critical of child-welfare changes
Feds' motion requesting stay of First Nations child welfare compensation ruling denied
First Nations child welfare advocate accuses feds of 'shopping around courts'
More First Nations kids deserve child-welfare compensation, federal lawyers argue
Two Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs head to court over pipeline
Michelle McQuiggeThe Canadian Press
Michelle McQuiggeThe Canadian Press
Published Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Two hereditary chiefs from a British Columbia First Nation at the heart of a wave of national protests launched a constitutional challenge of fossil fuel projects on Wednesday as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for demonstrators to observe the rule of law.
The challenge calls on the Federal Court to declare that Canada is constitutionally obliged to meet international climate change targets, which the chiefs contend would cancel approvals for a natural gas pipeline that runs through traditional Wet'suwet'en territory in northern B.C.
"If Canada is allowed to continue approving infrastructure for fracked gas projects on a 40-year timeline, our territories will become a wasteland before the project licenses expire," Chief Lho'imggin, who also goes by Alphonse Gagnon, said in a statement.
Related Stories
Pipeline protesters block Freeland from Halifax meeting, tell her to call police
Via Rail says service could take days to resume if blockades lift
Journalists say RCMP blocked efforts to cover police raids on Wet'suwet'en camps
"As house chief it is my responsibility to protect our house territory. We're asking the court to get Canada to act before it is too late."
The challenge came as protesters continued to blockade major ports and rail lines in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, scuttling freight and passenger service and prompting growing calls for federal government intervention.
Speaking in Senegal on Wednesday, Trudeau called on all sides to resolve their differences but insisted that protesters must honour Canadian law.
"We recognize the important democratic right -- and will always defend it -- of peaceful protest," Trudeau said during a news conference with Senegal President Macky Sall. "But we are also a country of the rule of law, and we need to make sure those laws are respected."
Trudeau's remarks, echoed by Canada's transportation and finance ministers throughout the day, drew scorn from Indigenous protesters backing the Wet'suet'en hereditary chiefs.
Herb Varley, who helped organize a blockade at the Port of Vancouver, accused Trudeau of "mindlessly parroting" the term rule of law, which he said is empty rhetoric.
If his elders had followed the rule of law, he said their language would have died out.
"If my Nisga'a grandmothers, grandfathers, aunties and uncles had followed the rule of law, we wouldn't know we were Nisga'a," he said outside the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, where he and other protesters announced they were challenging an injunction served against them over the weekend.
Blockade organizers across Canada have said they're acting in solidarity with those opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project that crosses the traditional territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation near Houston, B.C.
The blockades were erected after the RCMP enforced a court injunction last week against Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs and their supporters, who had been blocking construction of the pipeline, a key part of a $40-billion LNG Canada liquefied natural gas export project.
Another group of supporters took to the streets in Ottawa on Wednesday morning, moving from the office of the federal justice minister into a major intersection near the Supreme Court of Canada. The crowd caused a traffic jam that backed up vehicles for blocks, but the delay was cleared in less than an hour as protesters dispersed.
Similar protests in Vancouver tied up traffic at different points of the city throughout the day.
B.C. Premier John Horgan said anti-pipeline demonstrators who prevented people from entering the legislature for his government's throne speech on Tuesday need to respect the rights of others.
"Peaceful demonstration is fundamental to our success as a democracy," he told a news conference in Victoria on Wednesday. "But to have a group of people say to others you are illegitimate, you are not allowed in here, you are somehow a sellout to the values of Canadians is just plain wrong, and I want to underline that."
The economic impact of the demonstrations has started to crystallize: Canadian National Railway Co. warned Tuesday that it would have to close "significant" parts of its network unless blockades on its rail lines were removed.
Passenger rail services have also been affected in Ontario, Quebec and B.C., with Via Rail cancelling service on its Montreal-Toronto and Ottawa-Toronto routes until at least the end of the day on Friday because of a blockade near Belleville, Ont. It had previously cancelled service on those routes until the end of the day on Thursday.
Via has also said a blockade near New Hazelton, B.C., means normal rail service is being interrupted between Prince Rupert and Prince George.
In Manitoba, Premier Brian Pallister said the Justice Department will seek an injunction to end a rail blockade west of Winnipeg and have it enforced within a few days.
"As much as we will always respect the right of protesters to have a voice, they don't have a veto and ... they don't have the right to put their rights ahead of everyone else and to disregard the laws of our province and country," he said in an interview.
The Alberta wheat and barley commissions said rail disruptions of just a few days will cause economic loss for farmers, who have faced difficult harvest conditions.
"Delays will result in farmers being unable to deliver their grain, meaning they can't be paid at least until service resumes," said Dave Bishop, chair of the barley commission. "We are still recovering from the harvest from hell and need reliable grain movement in order to get back on track."
Mohawks at a barricade that has disrupted rail traffic near Montreal said they'll remain in place as long as the RCMP is present on Wet'suwet'en territory.
Tekarontake, a Kahnawake Mohawk, said the conflict is the result of a failure by governments and others to accept that the land belongs to the people who continue to adhere to the ways of their ancestors.
"That's whose land this is, we have never disconnected ourselves from our mother. This land is our mother," he said. "We haven't abandoned her, we still love her, we care for her and we will defend her to the best of our ability."
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan said Transport Minister Marc Garneau is "seized" with the blockades affecting railways.
"Our economy really relies on our ability to safely transport goods across the country," he said.
Asked how he could assure industry that natural resource projects can proceed in Canada, O'Regan said there will always be differing opinions.
"As we work toward net zero (emissions) by 2050 and considering we are an economy that relies heavily on natural resources and natural resource development, there's always going to be that friction. There will always be that tension."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2020.
Two hereditary chiefs from a British Columbia First Nation at the heart of a wave of national protests launched a constitutional challenge of fossil fuel projects on Wednesday as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for demonstrators to observe the rule of law.
The challenge calls on the Federal Court to declare that Canada is constitutionally obliged to meet international climate change targets, which the chiefs contend would cancel approvals for a natural gas pipeline that runs through traditional Wet'suwet'en territory in northern B.C.
"If Canada is allowed to continue approving infrastructure for fracked gas projects on a 40-year timeline, our territories will become a wasteland before the project licenses expire," Chief Lho'imggin, who also goes by Alphonse Gagnon, said in a statement.
Related Stories
Pipeline protesters block Freeland from Halifax meeting, tell her to call police
Via Rail says service could take days to resume if blockades lift
Journalists say RCMP blocked efforts to cover police raids on Wet'suwet'en camps
"As house chief it is my responsibility to protect our house territory. We're asking the court to get Canada to act before it is too late."
The challenge came as protesters continued to blockade major ports and rail lines in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, scuttling freight and passenger service and prompting growing calls for federal government intervention.
Speaking in Senegal on Wednesday, Trudeau called on all sides to resolve their differences but insisted that protesters must honour Canadian law.
"We recognize the important democratic right -- and will always defend it -- of peaceful protest," Trudeau said during a news conference with Senegal President Macky Sall. "But we are also a country of the rule of law, and we need to make sure those laws are respected."
Trudeau's remarks, echoed by Canada's transportation and finance ministers throughout the day, drew scorn from Indigenous protesters backing the Wet'suet'en hereditary chiefs.
Herb Varley, who helped organize a blockade at the Port of Vancouver, accused Trudeau of "mindlessly parroting" the term rule of law, which he said is empty rhetoric.
If his elders had followed the rule of law, he said their language would have died out.
"If my Nisga'a grandmothers, grandfathers, aunties and uncles had followed the rule of law, we wouldn't know we were Nisga'a," he said outside the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, where he and other protesters announced they were challenging an injunction served against them over the weekend.
Blockade organizers across Canada have said they're acting in solidarity with those opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project that crosses the traditional territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation near Houston, B.C.
The blockades were erected after the RCMP enforced a court injunction last week against Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs and their supporters, who had been blocking construction of the pipeline, a key part of a $40-billion LNG Canada liquefied natural gas export project.
Another group of supporters took to the streets in Ottawa on Wednesday morning, moving from the office of the federal justice minister into a major intersection near the Supreme Court of Canada. The crowd caused a traffic jam that backed up vehicles for blocks, but the delay was cleared in less than an hour as protesters dispersed.
Similar protests in Vancouver tied up traffic at different points of the city throughout the day.
B.C. Premier John Horgan said anti-pipeline demonstrators who prevented people from entering the legislature for his government's throne speech on Tuesday need to respect the rights of others.
"Peaceful demonstration is fundamental to our success as a democracy," he told a news conference in Victoria on Wednesday. "But to have a group of people say to others you are illegitimate, you are not allowed in here, you are somehow a sellout to the values of Canadians is just plain wrong, and I want to underline that."
The economic impact of the demonstrations has started to crystallize: Canadian National Railway Co. warned Tuesday that it would have to close "significant" parts of its network unless blockades on its rail lines were removed.
Passenger rail services have also been affected in Ontario, Quebec and B.C., with Via Rail cancelling service on its Montreal-Toronto and Ottawa-Toronto routes until at least the end of the day on Friday because of a blockade near Belleville, Ont. It had previously cancelled service on those routes until the end of the day on Thursday.
Via has also said a blockade near New Hazelton, B.C., means normal rail service is being interrupted between Prince Rupert and Prince George.
In Manitoba, Premier Brian Pallister said the Justice Department will seek an injunction to end a rail blockade west of Winnipeg and have it enforced within a few days.
"As much as we will always respect the right of protesters to have a voice, they don't have a veto and ... they don't have the right to put their rights ahead of everyone else and to disregard the laws of our province and country," he said in an interview.
The Alberta wheat and barley commissions said rail disruptions of just a few days will cause economic loss for farmers, who have faced difficult harvest conditions.
"Delays will result in farmers being unable to deliver their grain, meaning they can't be paid at least until service resumes," said Dave Bishop, chair of the barley commission. "We are still recovering from the harvest from hell and need reliable grain movement in order to get back on track."
Mohawks at a barricade that has disrupted rail traffic near Montreal said they'll remain in place as long as the RCMP is present on Wet'suwet'en territory.
Tekarontake, a Kahnawake Mohawk, said the conflict is the result of a failure by governments and others to accept that the land belongs to the people who continue to adhere to the ways of their ancestors.
"That's whose land this is, we have never disconnected ourselves from our mother. This land is our mother," he said. "We haven't abandoned her, we still love her, we care for her and we will defend her to the best of our ability."
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan said Transport Minister Marc Garneau is "seized" with the blockades affecting railways.
"Our economy really relies on our ability to safely transport goods across the country," he said.
Asked how he could assure industry that natural resource projects can proceed in Canada, O'Regan said there will always be differing opinions.
"As we work toward net zero (emissions) by 2050 and considering we are an economy that relies heavily on natural resources and natural resource development, there's always going to be that friction. There will always be that tension."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2020.
Pipeline standoff
CTV National NEWS VIDEO
Protesters continued to block roads, train tracks and marched on government offices all in support of the Wet'suwet'en Hereditary chiefs.
One of Canada’s busiest rail corridors is paralyzed as demonstrators show support for the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs. AnnieClaireBO has more:
Protesters continued to block roads, train tracks and marched on government offices all in support of the Wet'suwet'en Hereditary chiefs.
CTV National News: Demonstration domino effect
Solidarity blockades have echoed across Canada in support of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. MelaneNagy explains how it’s impacting travel and freight.
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Cenovus Energy reports $113M fourth-quarter profit, total production up
WITH NARY A THANKS TO ALBERTA TAXPAYERS FOR THE TAX CREDIT KENNEY GAVE THEM
Cenovus Energy Inc. reported a fourth-quarter profit of $113 million compared with a loss of nearly $1.36 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.
The oilsands company says the profit amounted to nine cents per share for the quarter ended Dec. 31 compared with a loss of $1.10 per share in the fourth quarter of 2018. Total production from continuing operations amounted to 467,448 barrels of oil equivalent per day, up from 432,713 in the last three months of 2018.
Cenovus says it successfully ramped up its crude-by-rail shipping capacity in 2019 and topped its target in December with average rail loading volumes of nearly 106,000 barrels per day.
OIL BY RAIL IS SOMETHING KENNEY AND UCP OPPOSE
Last month, oilsands producer Cenovus Energy Inc. said it will aim to achieve "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It added it will reduce its emissions per barrel by 30 per cent by 2030, while keeping its total emissions flat.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 12, 2020. Related Stories Read more: CTV News
Freeland, Blocked
Pipeline protesters block Freeland from Halifax meeting, tell her to call police
Source CTV News VIDEO HERE
Pipeline protesters linked arms to physically block Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland from entering a meeting at Halifax City Hall.
Deputy PM Freeland physically blocked by demonstrators ahead of meeting with Halifax mayor
Blockades have been occurring across Canada in support of Wet’suwet’en First Nation's fight against the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which crosses their traditional, unceded territory.
Source Globalnews.ca 13.2.2020
“I absolutely respect the right of Canadians across the country to exercise their right to peaceful protest,” Chrystia Freeland said after being physically confronted by Wet'suwet'en solidarity protesters in Halifax .
Blockades have been occurring across Canada in support of Wet’suwet’en First Nation's fight against the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which crosses their traditional, unceded territory.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was physically blocked from entering Halifax City Hall on Wednesday by demonstrators supporting the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in northern B.C.
Freeland was scheduled to meet with Halifax Mayor Mike Savage, but was confronted by several demonstrators who blocked her entrance to City Hall. She was eventually able to squeeze through the doors.
“I absolutely respect the right of Canadians across the country to exercise their right to peaceful protest,” Freeland told reporters.
“The protesters did express the view that they wanted to prevent me from having this meeting with the mayor and his team. “Respectfully, that was not a view I was prepared to agree with.”
Freeland added that it’s important for all people in Canada to “go about their legitimate and rightful business, even as other Canadians are expressing their right to peaceful protest.”
“Having that balance, having that mutual respect of each other is very important,” she said.
Earlier in the day, the deputy prime minister met with Nova Scotia premier Stephen McNeil at One Government Place, where she was also met by about 30 demonstrators.
Pipeline protesters block Freeland from Halifax meeting, tell her to call police
Source CTV News VIDEO HERE
Pipeline protesters linked arms to physically block Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland from entering a meeting at Halifax City Hall.
Freeland planned to meet with Halifax Mayor Mike Savage on Wednesday, but a group of protesters standing in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in British Columbia blocked the front door of the building.
“No thank you, no thank you,” a protester told Freeland, adding that she may need to call the police to remove the group. “This will not happen. This meeting is not happening.”
Freeland was eventually able to get into the building and attend the meeting.
Protesters across Canada have disrupted travel for several days in a show of solidarity for the Wet'suwet'en Nation, whose hereditary chiefs oppose the construction of a 670-kilometre natural gas pipeline through northern B.C. Clashes began last week between RCMP and protesters in Wet’suwet’en territory after officers began to move in to enforce a court-ordered injunction requiring protesters to stop blocking roads.
Blockades around the country have now halted railway service for five days. Via Rail said that 223 trains will have been cancelled by Thursday, affecting at least 34, 200 passengers.
In Ontario, a demonstration in Belleville has blocked train travel on the busy corridors between Toronto and Montreal and Toronto and Ottawa. Service from Toronto to Southwestern Ontario, between Montreal-Ottawa and Montreal-Quebec is unaffected, Via Rail said.
Airlines and bus companies have both reported an uptick in travellers.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he recognized the “important democratic right” of peaceful protests and encouraged “all parties to dialogue to resolve this as quickly as possible.” “This is an important part of our democracy in Canada, but we are also a country of the rule of law and we need to make sure those laws are respected,” Trudeau said at a press conference in Senegal on Wednesday.
Deputy PM Freeland physically blocked by demonstrators ahead of meeting with Halifax mayor
Blockades have been occurring across Canada in support of Wet’suwet’en First Nation's fight against the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which crosses their traditional, unceded territory.
Source Globalnews.ca 13.2.2020
“I absolutely respect the right of Canadians across the country to exercise their right to peaceful protest,” Chrystia Freeland said after being physically confronted by Wet'suwet'en solidarity protesters in Halifax .
Blockades have been occurring across Canada in support of Wet’suwet’en First Nation's fight against the Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which crosses their traditional, unceded territory.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was physically blocked from entering Halifax City Hall on Wednesday by demonstrators supporting the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in northern B.C.
Freeland was scheduled to meet with Halifax Mayor Mike Savage, but was confronted by several demonstrators who blocked her entrance to City Hall. She was eventually able to squeeze through the doors.
“I absolutely respect the right of Canadians across the country to exercise their right to peaceful protest,” Freeland told reporters.
“The protesters did express the view that they wanted to prevent me from having this meeting with the mayor and his team. “Respectfully, that was not a view I was prepared to agree with.”
Freeland added that it’s important for all people in Canada to “go about their legitimate and rightful business, even as other Canadians are expressing their right to peaceful protest.”
“Having that balance, having that mutual respect of each other is very important,” she said.
Earlier in the day, the deputy prime minister met with Nova Scotia premier Stephen McNeil at One Government Place, where she was also met by about 30 demonstrators.
Coastal GasLink pipeline dispute is a nation-to-nation matter
Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs from left, Rob Alfred, John Ridsdale and Antoinette Austin, take part in a rally in Smithers, B.C., in January 2020 against the Coastal GasLink project. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
Phillip addresses a news conference in Vancouver
Authors
Stepan Wood
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Law, Society & Sustainability, University of British Columbia
Gordon Christie
Professor of Law, University of British Columbia
Jocelyn Stacey
Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
Disclosure statement
Jocelyn Stacey receives funding from the Law Foundation of British Columbia and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is the President of the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation.
Gordon Christie and Stepan Wood do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Partners
University of British Columbia provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.
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Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs from left, Rob Alfred, John Ridsdale and Antoinette Austin, take part in a rally in Smithers, B.C., in January 2020 against the Coastal GasLink project. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
February 6, 2020 7.59pm GMT
There have been two encouraging recent developments in the longstanding conflict over the proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline on the territory of the Wet’suwet’en nation in northern British Columbia, though matters are on very shaky ground.
The $6.2 billion pipeline would transport natural gas from northeastern B.C. to an export terminal at Kitimat. Its route crosses the unceded territory of the Wet'suwet'en nation.
The pipeline was approved by the provincial government and the elected band councils of 20 First Nations along its route, including five in Wet'suwet'en territory. But the project has been opposed steadfastly by Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs. There have been protests, blockades, court injunctions, police roadblocks and arrests.
There have been two encouraging recent developments in the longstanding conflict over the proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline on the territory of the Wet’suwet’en nation in northern British Columbia, though matters are on very shaky ground.
The $6.2 billion pipeline would transport natural gas from northeastern B.C. to an export terminal at Kitimat. Its route crosses the unceded territory of the Wet'suwet'en nation.
The pipeline was approved by the provincial government and the elected band councils of 20 First Nations along its route, including five in Wet'suwet'en territory. But the project has been opposed steadfastly by Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs. There have been protests, blockades, court injunctions, police roadblocks and arrests.
Cullen is seen in the House of Commons in
this 2017 photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Recently, the province appointed former NDP MP Nathan Cullen as liaison to the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs. Most recently, the hereditary chiefs agreed to sit down with the province for talks, though those talks are currently in limbo.
Conflict heated up
The conflict escalated after a court issued an injunction in late December 2019 prohibiting opponents from obstructing the project.
The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs then issued an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink. The RCMP established an access control checkpoint and initiated aerial surveillance. Protests and arrests spread to the provincial capital.
Recently, the province appointed former NDP MP Nathan Cullen as liaison to the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs. Most recently, the hereditary chiefs agreed to sit down with the province for talks, though those talks are currently in limbo.
Conflict heated up
The conflict escalated after a court issued an injunction in late December 2019 prohibiting opponents from obstructing the project.
The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs then issued an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink. The RCMP established an access control checkpoint and initiated aerial surveillance. Protests and arrests spread to the provincial capital.
Indigenous young people occupy the B.C. Energy and Mines Ministry
office in Victoria on Jan. 21, 2020, in solidarity with Wet'suwet'en
hereditary chiefs. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Ta'Kaiya Blaney
Indigenous and human rights groups have expressed concern that Indigenous rights, including the right to free, prior and informed consent to resource development, are being infringed in Wet’suwet’en territory.
‘Rule of law’ argument
In the midst of these developments, B.C. Premier John Horgan announced that the “rule of law” must prevail. He argued that the project “has every right to proceed,” it will be built and “British Columbia is moving on.”
The appointment of the provincial liaison and the hereditary chiefs’ agreement to sit down for talks are welcome steps. But they will have lasting value only if they pave the way for direct leader-to-leader meetings between the hereditary chiefs, Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs have repeatedly requested such meetings. As one of them reiterated recently, they want “face-to-face meetings with fellow decision-makers.”
Horgan has declined these requests, even during a recent tour of northern B.C. For his part, Trudeau considers the dispute a provincial matter.
Leader-to-leader talks urgently needed
Fundamentally, this is not a dispute between Coastal GasLink and the Wet’suwet’en, nor between hereditary chiefs and Indian Act band councils. It goes to the core of the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous and human rights groups have expressed concern that Indigenous rights, including the right to free, prior and informed consent to resource development, are being infringed in Wet’suwet’en territory.
‘Rule of law’ argument
In the midst of these developments, B.C. Premier John Horgan announced that the “rule of law” must prevail. He argued that the project “has every right to proceed,” it will be built and “British Columbia is moving on.”
The appointment of the provincial liaison and the hereditary chiefs’ agreement to sit down for talks are welcome steps. But they will have lasting value only if they pave the way for direct leader-to-leader meetings between the hereditary chiefs, Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs have repeatedly requested such meetings. As one of them reiterated recently, they want “face-to-face meetings with fellow decision-makers.”
Horgan has declined these requests, even during a recent tour of northern B.C. For his part, Trudeau considers the dispute a provincial matter.
Leader-to-leader talks urgently needed
Fundamentally, this is not a dispute between Coastal GasLink and the Wet’suwet’en, nor between hereditary chiefs and Indian Act band councils. It goes to the core of the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples.
Indigenous youth show support for the Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs
at the B.C. legislature. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Dirk Meissner
There is a tendency to dismiss the hereditary chiefs as just a group of opponents, in contrast to the 20 First Nations that have approved the pipeline. This is deeply misleading.
The plaintiffs in the landmark Delgamuukw case before the Supreme Court were the hereditary chiefs, not the band councils. The court accepted detailed evidence of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary governance system and confirmed that the Wet’suwet’en never surrendered title to their ancestral lands.
The hereditary chiefs are not merely a group of disgruntled opponents; they represent the Wet’suwet’en system of law and governance.
The fact that band councils created under the Indian Act endorsed the project and signed agreements with Coastal GasLink cannot justify ignoring Indigenous law or the Crown’s obligation to meet with the hereditary chiefs. Nor can the dispute be resolved by meetings between Coastal GasLink and the hereditary chiefs.
The law is clear
The Supreme Court has been clear: The Crown must engage directly with the Indigenous group whose rights are at stake. This obligation cannot be fulfilled by third parties with vested interests in the project’s success.
Horgan’s insistence on the “rule of law” fails to acknowledge that the relevant law includes not just the injunction order and regulatory approvals but the Constitution, Supreme Court decisions, and — crucially — Wet’suwet’en laws and institutions.
The hereditary chiefs embody those laws and institutions and enjoy an authority that predates the arrival of the British and the creation of the Canadian state. This authority is entitled to respect.
In an age of truth and reconciliation, respect for the rule of law must include respect for the authority of Indigenous law and a commitment to work out a just and sustainable relationship between Indigenous and settler Canadian legal systems.
Undermining reconciliation
The failure of Horgan and Trudeau to meet with the hereditary chiefs risks undermining Canada’s collective effort to achieve reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
Trudeau meets with Horgan after a First
There is a tendency to dismiss the hereditary chiefs as just a group of opponents, in contrast to the 20 First Nations that have approved the pipeline. This is deeply misleading.
The plaintiffs in the landmark Delgamuukw case before the Supreme Court were the hereditary chiefs, not the band councils. The court accepted detailed evidence of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary governance system and confirmed that the Wet’suwet’en never surrendered title to their ancestral lands.
The hereditary chiefs are not merely a group of disgruntled opponents; they represent the Wet’suwet’en system of law and governance.
The fact that band councils created under the Indian Act endorsed the project and signed agreements with Coastal GasLink cannot justify ignoring Indigenous law or the Crown’s obligation to meet with the hereditary chiefs. Nor can the dispute be resolved by meetings between Coastal GasLink and the hereditary chiefs.
The law is clear
The Supreme Court has been clear: The Crown must engage directly with the Indigenous group whose rights are at stake. This obligation cannot be fulfilled by third parties with vested interests in the project’s success.
Horgan’s insistence on the “rule of law” fails to acknowledge that the relevant law includes not just the injunction order and regulatory approvals but the Constitution, Supreme Court decisions, and — crucially — Wet’suwet’en laws and institutions.
The hereditary chiefs embody those laws and institutions and enjoy an authority that predates the arrival of the British and the creation of the Canadian state. This authority is entitled to respect.
In an age of truth and reconciliation, respect for the rule of law must include respect for the authority of Indigenous law and a commitment to work out a just and sustainable relationship between Indigenous and settler Canadian legal systems.
Undermining reconciliation
The failure of Horgan and Trudeau to meet with the hereditary chiefs risks undermining Canada’s collective effort to achieve reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
Trudeau meets with Horgan after a First
Ministers conference in December 2018
in Montreal.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Canadians are just beginning to confront our colonial past and present and to address the longstanding wrongs inflicted on Indigenous Peoples. Initial positive steps in this direction, including Canada’s promises to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ring hollow if provincial and federal leaders refuse to honour the hereditary chiefs’ request for a meeting, let alone recognize and respect Wet’suwet’en law.
Read more: Tsilhqot’in blockade points to failures of justice impeding reconciliation in Canada
Reconciliation and justice cannot be achieved by the brute force of the RCMP or the self-interests of energy companies.
This is why, on Jan. 22, 2020, we signed a letter, along with more than three dozen legal academics and professionals from across the country, urging Horgan and Trudeau to immediately sit down with the hereditary chiefs.
We’ve demanded they commit to resolving this issue by recognizing the authority of Indigenous laws and governance institutions, implementing Indigenous Peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent, fulfilling the Crown’s constitutional obligations and upholding the honour of the Crown.
Canadians are just beginning to confront our colonial past and present and to address the longstanding wrongs inflicted on Indigenous Peoples. Initial positive steps in this direction, including Canada’s promises to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ring hollow if provincial and federal leaders refuse to honour the hereditary chiefs’ request for a meeting, let alone recognize and respect Wet’suwet’en law.
Read more: Tsilhqot’in blockade points to failures of justice impeding reconciliation in Canada
Reconciliation and justice cannot be achieved by the brute force of the RCMP or the self-interests of energy companies.
This is why, on Jan. 22, 2020, we signed a letter, along with more than three dozen legal academics and professionals from across the country, urging Horgan and Trudeau to immediately sit down with the hereditary chiefs.
We’ve demanded they commit to resolving this issue by recognizing the authority of Indigenous laws and governance institutions, implementing Indigenous Peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent, fulfilling the Crown’s constitutional obligations and upholding the honour of the Crown.
Phillip addresses a news conference in Vancouver
in January 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs recently called on Horgan to “get off his high colonial horse and honour the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs with his personal presence.”
The serious work of reconciliation demands nothing less.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs recently called on Horgan to “get off his high colonial horse and honour the Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs with his personal presence.”
The serious work of reconciliation demands nothing less.
---30---
Authors
Stepan Wood
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Law, Society & Sustainability, University of British Columbia
Gordon Christie
Professor of Law, University of British Columbia
Jocelyn Stacey
Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
Disclosure statement
Jocelyn Stacey receives funding from the Law Foundation of British Columbia and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is the President of the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation.
Gordon Christie and Stepan Wood do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Partners
University of British Columbia provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.
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We believe in the free flow of information
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.Republish this article
Wet'suwet'en Hereditary Chiefs representing all five clans of the Wet'suwet'en ... Coastal Gaslink has violated the Wet'suwet'en law of trespass, and has ... Protection of our yintah (traditional territories) is at the heart of Anuc 'nu'at'en, and we ...
Dec 31, 2019 - described as a matrilineal group of Wet'suwet'en with bloodlines that ... [19] The defendants have used the gates to restrict access beyond the ... by working around the Bridge Blockade, rather than confronting the ... is meaningfully consulting with the Wet'suwet'en nation through its hereditary system.
What you need to know about the Coastal GasLink pipeline ...
https://www.cbc.ca › wet-suwet-en-coastal-gaslink-pipeline-1.5448363
Feb 5, 2020 - The conflict over a natural gas pipeline in northwestern British ... Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs from left, Rob Alfred, John Ridsdale and ... are the leaders of the nation's governance system in place before the ... The conflict is centred on a forest service road that leads into the heart of Wet'suwet'en territory, ...
OBITUARY
Veteran journalist Christie Blatchford was known for her work ethic and wit
From the locker rooms of Canadian sports to the battlefields of Afghanistan, she brought a tenacity and humour to the job
HER POLITICS WERE FROM THE RIGHT WING AS WAS HER HOCKEY COVERAGE
Veteran journalist Christie Blatchford was known for her work ethic and wit
From the locker rooms of Canadian sports to the battlefields of Afghanistan, she brought a tenacity and humour to the job
HER POLITICS WERE FROM THE RIGHT WING AS WAS HER HOCKEY COVERAGE
BUT SHE WAS AN EXCELLENT JOURNALIST/COLUMNIST NONE THE LESS AND SHE BROKE GROUND AS A WOMAN REPORTER IN SEXIST PATRIARCHAL CANADIAN PRESS
IN RESPECT TWO WORDS: FUCK CANCER!
SIMON HOUPT
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2020
Open this photo in gallery
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Christie Blatchford drives her convertible in 2006, when she worked as a columnist for The Globe and Mail.
DEBORAH BAIC/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
In a career that stretched almost five decades and thousands of assignments, from infuriated courtroom coverage to heartbreaking tales from her time embedded in Afghanistan, Christie Blatchford set the template as a model of full-contact reporting from the very beginning.
In August, 1974, only one year into her gig as a cub reporter with The Globe and Mail, she talked her way into the tiny support boat assisting 16-year-old marathon swimmer Cindy Nicholas across Lake Ontario, from Youngstown, N.Y., to Toronto. In a photo of Ms. Blatchford accompanying her rollicking tale about Ms. Nicholas’s feat, The Globe noted that, "a strong swimmer, she dived in herself just to get the feel of things.”
In the final months of her life, as she lay in a Toronto hospital battling cancer, Ms. Blatchford vowed that she would write about that, too, making a point of interviewing visitors.
That final assignment was one of the very few that she’d promised but didn’t file. Ms. Blatchford, a bull-terrier journalist whose career as a reporter and columnist spanned all four major daily newspapers in Toronto, died on Wednesday morning. She was 68.
A passionate runner, she was diagnosed with the illness only last fall, after extreme pain she thought was connected to her running brought her to a series of physicians. Her cancer, which began in her lungs, had metastasized to her spine and hip. She had been covering the Trudeau campaign for the National Post, her home since 2011.
The quotable Christie Blatchford: Snapshots from her decades-long career in journalism
Christie Mary Blatchford was born May 20, 1951, in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., the only daughter of Ross and Kathleen (Kay) Blatchford. When she was 6, her father, who managed the local Eaton’s store, switched careers and took over management of the local recreation centre, which comprised a 2,200-seat hockey arena, six sheets of curling ice, a gymnasium and a shooting range.
It was, Ms. Blatchford later said, a life-changing shift for her. She grew up around the hockey rink – she dedicated her first book to “rink rats everywhere, and especially for my father” – which continued after the family moved to Toronto about five years later, where her father took a job managing the rink at North Toronto Memorial Arena.
But journalism was in her blood: Her grandfather, Andy Lytle, was a sportswriter and editor, and she later said that, as a child, she wrote and published a newspaper that she handed out at the rink.
Ms. Blatchford began her professional career at The Globe as a part-time copy editor while still a journalism student at what was then Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. She won the Joe Perlove Scholarship for graduating first in her class, and joined The Globe the following month, before her 22nd birthday. Soon, she landed the plum assignment of sports columnist.
Open this photo in gallery
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Ms. Blatchford gets some advice from Dick Beddoes, her predecessor as a Globe sports columnist, in 1975.
ERIK CHRISTENSEN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
But if she was one of the first women to hold that position in North America, she didn’t think much about herself as a groundbreaking feminist. “I think she saw herself as a journalist, first and foremost, and feminism came out of that,” said Jim Oreto, her first husband.
“My time at The Globe was most notable for the fleeting attention the sports columnist’s job brought me,” she wrote in a Toronto Sun column from the 1980s that was included in her first collection of columns, Spectator Sports (1986). “As the first woman in recent times to write a lead sports column for a major Canadian paper, I was mentioned in Maclean’s, profiled in Quest, and even appeared on Peter Gzowski’s ill-fated late night TV show. I rather enjoyed all this, and also the job, but it went to my head a little. After three years, I went into a snit when a copy editor dared to mess with my pearls of wisdom, and quit in a huff.”
Spectator Sports and a follow-up collection of columns, Close Encounters (1988), were both nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. The wicked sense of humour may have come as a surprise to readers who followed her from The Globe to the Toronto Star in 1977. A general reporter there, she became, as she later described, “a ghoul with a pen,” covering “accidents, mining disasters, shootings, juicy trials, earthquakes, floods, bus crashes, mass drownings, shootings (including John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan).”
In the days when local newspapers had the budgets for such things, she wrote, “I was sent to Belfast to cover the Irish hunger strikers and Bobby Sands’ death and funeral ... Newfoundland for the seal hunt and the sinking of the oil rig Ocean Ranger, to Cape Breton Island for the coal-mining tragedy, to Italy for the earthquake in 1980.”
She also showed a self-effacing side in first-person features, such as a series of columns chronicling her struggles to adhere to a seven-day “Banana Diet" that, by Day Three, had prompted her to take up smoking months after she’d quit.
The job, she later noted, was all-consuming. “I usually worked at least 12 hours a day, sometimes staying until 3 or 4 in the morning to babysit one of my stories through assorted editors until I was sure it was going to get the play I thought it deserved – front page.” She added: "I’m not sure my colleagues ever understood that one of the reasons my stories were treated so kindly was that I simply wore the editors down.”
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Ms. Blatchford, left, interviews Montreal Canadians left-winger Steve Shutt after a 1975 game against the Central Red Army team. THE CANADIAN PRESS
The pace took a toll, said Mr. Oreto, whom Ms. Blatchford married in June, 1977. “With Christie, everything was a whirlwind,” he told The Globe on Tuesday evening. “She’d be in town, out of town.” In February, 1982, when the couple was finalizing their divorce, Ms. Blatchford was unable to show up in court for the proceeding: She was covering the Ocean Ranger disaster.
That summer, she moved to the Toronto Sun, partly in hopes of a lifestyle change that might allow her to settle down with a man she had recently met, a budding artist eight years her junior named David Rutherford, whom she referred to in her columns as The Boy. That marriage, too, ended in divorce, although she stayed close with his family. She became a columnist, a wry and canny observer who took on a wide array of targets – yuppies, fashion, careerists, the home computer, modern women, modern men – with what the Ottawa Citizen praised as “Erma Bombeckian wit.” She later returned to news, often focusing on courts coverage.
For someone with a reputation as a hard-bitten newshound, Ms. Blatchford had surprisingly emotional reactions to her stories. She was, as she wrote in her 2016 book Life Sentence: Stories from Four Decades of Court Reporting, or, How I Fell Out of Love With the Canadian Justice System, “an embarrassingly easy crier, and it’s a rare day in the courts – and in life – that I don’t get verklempt at least once. My tendency to weep only gets worse as I grow older.” She offered this as a way of explaining why pages in her notebooks from covering the 1995 Paul Bernardo trial were stuck together: “The glue binding all these pages was the snot that ran from my nose as I cried every day of that case.”
Ms. Blatchford joined the National Post for its 1998 launch as one of its marquee columnists. She moved back to The Globe in 2003.
“We were interested in asset-stripping the National Post, and Christie was the biggest asset the National Post had,” recalled Ed Greenspon, who was then The Globe’s editor-in-chief. “She also, I think, was infuriating us because her stories on subjects that we were covering too, or cases that we were covering too, were so much more compelling. She had a magical connection with readers.
“Christie was tough and in a way she was like a character out of a more modern Ben Hecht film. She was as close as you get to The Front Page in modern journalism.”
Still, Mr. Greenspon added, “she was exceptionally generous to those colleagues who she thought didn’t have rarified airs about them.” And, he said, “she would be exceptionally generous to younger journalists.”
Not just younger ones. Heather Bird, a rival reporter and columnist with the Toronto Sun, said that, although Ms. Blatchford was famously competitive and sharp-elbowed, she was also deeply generous and compassionate. Late one night, she and Ms. Blatchford were the only reporters left in a media room in Halifax covering the crash of Swissair Flight 111 when Ms. Bird’s copy disappeared from the Sun’s computer system and an editor told her she had 20 minutes to rewrite the whole piece. As Ms. Bird began to melt down, “Christie got a chair and came over to me and said, ‘Heather, I’m not leaving until you get this refiled. It’s happened to me before and it’s really awful. And you’re here by yourself and I don’t want to leave you.’ So, yeah, she was pretty nice.”
At The Globe, one of her highest-profile assignments included a stint embedded with the Canadian military in Afghanistan. That led to Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army, which earned her the 2008 Governor-General’s Award for Non-Fiction.
In a photo of her receiving the award from Michaëlle Jean, Ms. Blatchford wears a skeptical smirk. “She has a suspicion of anything pretentious,” chuckled her brother, Leslie, who attended the ceremony with her. “Particularly when it has to do with government.”
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Ms. Blatchford and Globe staff photographer Louie Palu at Kandahar Air Field in 2006.
JIM MACDONALD / CTV
In 2011, Ms. Blatchford moved back to the National Post.
If she spurned pretension, she was also dismissive of many changing social mores. In a chapter of Life Sentence, she pokes some of the sacred cows surrounding the trial of Jian Ghomeshi, which she covered for the Post. One article about the trial, she noted, “came with what was by then, among progressive bloggers, Tweeters and some media, the de rigueur ‘trigger warning,’ telling swoon-prone readers, ‘Some parts of the article below describe instances of violence.’
“Such warnings were all the rage in certain quarters during the trial, but I suspect their day is almost done, and properly so. As my friend Skeeter Jones says, if Holocaust survivors don’t need trigger warnings every time Auschwitz or Nazis are mentioned in news stories, no one should.”
Ms. Blatchford continued to cover courts, crime and politics until she fell ill last fall.
She leaves her brother, Leslie, his wife, Marilyn, and their two children, Lori and Andy (a reporter for Politico), as well as her niece, Jennifer Robinson and nephew, Eric Rutherford.
“Christie always loved to be on the front page,” Mr. Greenspon said. “I’m sure she would love to be on the front page, even as she sadly exits the stage.”
The quotable Christie Blatchford: Snapshots from her decades-long career in journalism
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'We have lost a voice’: From law figures to military members, tributes pour in for Christie Blatchford
SIMON HOUPT
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 12, 2020
Open this photo in gallery
Christie Blatchford drives her convertible in 2006, when she worked as a columnist for The Globe and Mail.
DEBORAH BAIC/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
In a career that stretched almost five decades and thousands of assignments, from infuriated courtroom coverage to heartbreaking tales from her time embedded in Afghanistan, Christie Blatchford set the template as a model of full-contact reporting from the very beginning.
In August, 1974, only one year into her gig as a cub reporter with The Globe and Mail, she talked her way into the tiny support boat assisting 16-year-old marathon swimmer Cindy Nicholas across Lake Ontario, from Youngstown, N.Y., to Toronto. In a photo of Ms. Blatchford accompanying her rollicking tale about Ms. Nicholas’s feat, The Globe noted that, "a strong swimmer, she dived in herself just to get the feel of things.”
In the final months of her life, as she lay in a Toronto hospital battling cancer, Ms. Blatchford vowed that she would write about that, too, making a point of interviewing visitors.
That final assignment was one of the very few that she’d promised but didn’t file. Ms. Blatchford, a bull-terrier journalist whose career as a reporter and columnist spanned all four major daily newspapers in Toronto, died on Wednesday morning. She was 68.
A passionate runner, she was diagnosed with the illness only last fall, after extreme pain she thought was connected to her running brought her to a series of physicians. Her cancer, which began in her lungs, had metastasized to her spine and hip. She had been covering the Trudeau campaign for the National Post, her home since 2011.
The quotable Christie Blatchford: Snapshots from her decades-long career in journalism
Christie Mary Blatchford was born May 20, 1951, in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., the only daughter of Ross and Kathleen (Kay) Blatchford. When she was 6, her father, who managed the local Eaton’s store, switched careers and took over management of the local recreation centre, which comprised a 2,200-seat hockey arena, six sheets of curling ice, a gymnasium and a shooting range.
It was, Ms. Blatchford later said, a life-changing shift for her. She grew up around the hockey rink – she dedicated her first book to “rink rats everywhere, and especially for my father” – which continued after the family moved to Toronto about five years later, where her father took a job managing the rink at North Toronto Memorial Arena.
But journalism was in her blood: Her grandfather, Andy Lytle, was a sportswriter and editor, and she later said that, as a child, she wrote and published a newspaper that she handed out at the rink.
Ms. Blatchford began her professional career at The Globe as a part-time copy editor while still a journalism student at what was then Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. She won the Joe Perlove Scholarship for graduating first in her class, and joined The Globe the following month, before her 22nd birthday. Soon, she landed the plum assignment of sports columnist.
Open this photo in gallery
Ms. Blatchford gets some advice from Dick Beddoes, her predecessor as a Globe sports columnist, in 1975.
ERIK CHRISTENSEN/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
But if she was one of the first women to hold that position in North America, she didn’t think much about herself as a groundbreaking feminist. “I think she saw herself as a journalist, first and foremost, and feminism came out of that,” said Jim Oreto, her first husband.
“My time at The Globe was most notable for the fleeting attention the sports columnist’s job brought me,” she wrote in a Toronto Sun column from the 1980s that was included in her first collection of columns, Spectator Sports (1986). “As the first woman in recent times to write a lead sports column for a major Canadian paper, I was mentioned in Maclean’s, profiled in Quest, and even appeared on Peter Gzowski’s ill-fated late night TV show. I rather enjoyed all this, and also the job, but it went to my head a little. After three years, I went into a snit when a copy editor dared to mess with my pearls of wisdom, and quit in a huff.”
Spectator Sports and a follow-up collection of columns, Close Encounters (1988), were both nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. The wicked sense of humour may have come as a surprise to readers who followed her from The Globe to the Toronto Star in 1977. A general reporter there, she became, as she later described, “a ghoul with a pen,” covering “accidents, mining disasters, shootings, juicy trials, earthquakes, floods, bus crashes, mass drownings, shootings (including John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt on U.S. President Ronald Reagan).”
In the days when local newspapers had the budgets for such things, she wrote, “I was sent to Belfast to cover the Irish hunger strikers and Bobby Sands’ death and funeral ... Newfoundland for the seal hunt and the sinking of the oil rig Ocean Ranger, to Cape Breton Island for the coal-mining tragedy, to Italy for the earthquake in 1980.”
She also showed a self-effacing side in first-person features, such as a series of columns chronicling her struggles to adhere to a seven-day “Banana Diet" that, by Day Three, had prompted her to take up smoking months after she’d quit.
The job, she later noted, was all-consuming. “I usually worked at least 12 hours a day, sometimes staying until 3 or 4 in the morning to babysit one of my stories through assorted editors until I was sure it was going to get the play I thought it deserved – front page.” She added: "I’m not sure my colleagues ever understood that one of the reasons my stories were treated so kindly was that I simply wore the editors down.”
Ms. Blatchford, left, interviews Montreal Canadians left-winger Steve Shutt after a 1975 game against the Central Red Army team. THE CANADIAN PRESS
The pace took a toll, said Mr. Oreto, whom Ms. Blatchford married in June, 1977. “With Christie, everything was a whirlwind,” he told The Globe on Tuesday evening. “She’d be in town, out of town.” In February, 1982, when the couple was finalizing their divorce, Ms. Blatchford was unable to show up in court for the proceeding: She was covering the Ocean Ranger disaster.
That summer, she moved to the Toronto Sun, partly in hopes of a lifestyle change that might allow her to settle down with a man she had recently met, a budding artist eight years her junior named David Rutherford, whom she referred to in her columns as The Boy. That marriage, too, ended in divorce, although she stayed close with his family. She became a columnist, a wry and canny observer who took on a wide array of targets – yuppies, fashion, careerists, the home computer, modern women, modern men – with what the Ottawa Citizen praised as “Erma Bombeckian wit.” She later returned to news, often focusing on courts coverage.
For someone with a reputation as a hard-bitten newshound, Ms. Blatchford had surprisingly emotional reactions to her stories. She was, as she wrote in her 2016 book Life Sentence: Stories from Four Decades of Court Reporting, or, How I Fell Out of Love With the Canadian Justice System, “an embarrassingly easy crier, and it’s a rare day in the courts – and in life – that I don’t get verklempt at least once. My tendency to weep only gets worse as I grow older.” She offered this as a way of explaining why pages in her notebooks from covering the 1995 Paul Bernardo trial were stuck together: “The glue binding all these pages was the snot that ran from my nose as I cried every day of that case.”
Ms. Blatchford joined the National Post for its 1998 launch as one of its marquee columnists. She moved back to The Globe in 2003.
“We were interested in asset-stripping the National Post, and Christie was the biggest asset the National Post had,” recalled Ed Greenspon, who was then The Globe’s editor-in-chief. “She also, I think, was infuriating us because her stories on subjects that we were covering too, or cases that we were covering too, were so much more compelling. She had a magical connection with readers.
“Christie was tough and in a way she was like a character out of a more modern Ben Hecht film. She was as close as you get to The Front Page in modern journalism.”
Still, Mr. Greenspon added, “she was exceptionally generous to those colleagues who she thought didn’t have rarified airs about them.” And, he said, “she would be exceptionally generous to younger journalists.”
Not just younger ones. Heather Bird, a rival reporter and columnist with the Toronto Sun, said that, although Ms. Blatchford was famously competitive and sharp-elbowed, she was also deeply generous and compassionate. Late one night, she and Ms. Blatchford were the only reporters left in a media room in Halifax covering the crash of Swissair Flight 111 when Ms. Bird’s copy disappeared from the Sun’s computer system and an editor told her she had 20 minutes to rewrite the whole piece. As Ms. Bird began to melt down, “Christie got a chair and came over to me and said, ‘Heather, I’m not leaving until you get this refiled. It’s happened to me before and it’s really awful. And you’re here by yourself and I don’t want to leave you.’ So, yeah, she was pretty nice.”
At The Globe, one of her highest-profile assignments included a stint embedded with the Canadian military in Afghanistan. That led to Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army, which earned her the 2008 Governor-General’s Award for Non-Fiction.
In a photo of her receiving the award from Michaëlle Jean, Ms. Blatchford wears a skeptical smirk. “She has a suspicion of anything pretentious,” chuckled her brother, Leslie, who attended the ceremony with her. “Particularly when it has to do with government.”
Ms. Blatchford and Globe staff photographer Louie Palu at Kandahar Air Field in 2006.
JIM MACDONALD / CTV
In 2011, Ms. Blatchford moved back to the National Post.
If she spurned pretension, she was also dismissive of many changing social mores. In a chapter of Life Sentence, she pokes some of the sacred cows surrounding the trial of Jian Ghomeshi, which she covered for the Post. One article about the trial, she noted, “came with what was by then, among progressive bloggers, Tweeters and some media, the de rigueur ‘trigger warning,’ telling swoon-prone readers, ‘Some parts of the article below describe instances of violence.’
“Such warnings were all the rage in certain quarters during the trial, but I suspect their day is almost done, and properly so. As my friend Skeeter Jones says, if Holocaust survivors don’t need trigger warnings every time Auschwitz or Nazis are mentioned in news stories, no one should.”
Ms. Blatchford continued to cover courts, crime and politics until she fell ill last fall.
She leaves her brother, Leslie, his wife, Marilyn, and their two children, Lori and Andy (a reporter for Politico), as well as her niece, Jennifer Robinson and nephew, Eric Rutherford.
“Christie always loved to be on the front page,” Mr. Greenspon said. “I’m sure she would love to be on the front page, even as she sadly exits the stage.”
The quotable Christie Blatchford: Snapshots from her decades-long career in journalism
'We have lost a voice’: From law figures to military members, tributes pour in for Christie Blatchford
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