Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons
by Zoe Blunt The barricade at the end of the road is decorated with freshly-planted poinsettias in a mound of earth. Yellow plastic sunflowers, two graffitied TV sets and an oversize truck tire line a meter-wide trench just past the pavement’s end.
They mark the boundary between the city and a protest camp occupied by a new generation of Canadian environmental protestors: the Raccoons.
The Raccoons are a ragtag mob of irregulars holding back a major
highway interchange project designed to service Bear Mountain, a
sprawling golf resort in Langford, just west of Victoria, B.C. A few
dozen dumpster-diving, trash-talking, anti-authoritarians with a
passion for undisturbed natural places have built a camp in the path of
the new highway. The proposed interchange cuts through a pocket of
forest packed with natural and cultural rarities: a sacred First
Nations cave, a seasonal pond, garry oak meadows, arbutus bluffs,
red-legged frogs and chocolate lilies.
Right now the Bear
Mountain Tree Sit looks like a gloomy, swampy hobo camp, dotted with
tents, tree forts at dizzying heights overhead, and a giant teepee
covered with tarps. “A tarpee,” notes one of the campers.
“This
is the only example of eco-anarchist action in Canada right now,” says
Ingmar Lee, a Victoria environmentalist and camp supporter. “This is
the grassroots, and it’s a totally different kind of protest.” Hundreds
of people in the community directly support the camp with donations of
food, camping gear, and funds for legal defense.
Almost all
the Raccoons are under 25, and some are veterans of the Cathedral Grove
treesit protest, which lasted two years and ultimately defeated a B.C.
Parks plan to cut down giant trees to build a parking lot. Here, the
first platform went up in April. Five more followed, and they are
staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Kicking the protest
camp off public property is a sticky legal issue, and so far no one has
moved to start a court case. But Stewart Young, the gung-ho
pro-development mayor of Langford, is ramping up his criticism. The
mayor’s rumblings peaked with Young accusing the campers of poaching
deer and rabbits at the site.
Young said bylaw officers found
a deer carcass near the camp in the woods.
“We’ve respected their right
to protest, but killing deer and rabbits is absolutely disgusting,”
Young told the Goldstream News Gazette in December.
The city directed
the RCMP and conservation officers to investigate and lay charges if
they find out who is responsible. No one has been charged.
Two
neighbors who live adjacent to the forest said it’s not the campers who
are killing animals.
“There’s been poaching in this area for decades,”
said an elderly neighbor on Goldstream Avenue who declined to give his
name.
“We’ve called the conservation officers about deer
carcasses a couple times a year ever since I’ve lived here,” said Ron
Rayner, a long-time resident who lives just north of the camp and the
TransCanada Highway. “It’s an ongoing problem.”
Langford resident Bob Partridge is “skeptical” about the mayor’s claims. He writes,
“[J]ust
now, as construction is supposed to begin on the Spencer Road
Interchange, the protesters/activists who have previously been
requesting donations of whole grains, have apparently suddenly become
carnivores, slaughtering innocent animals in the woods of Langford?”
“Are we certain they are also not sleeping on duvets stuffed with spotted owl feathers?” Partridge asked sarcastically.
Some
of the campers admit they eat deer, rabbits and even raccoons but
they insist they are not hunting . The meat is road kill collected from
the TransCanada Highway, one tree sitter told A Channel News. Another
pointed out the hypocrisy of building a highway that will mangle more
animals, while simultaneously trying to cast the environmentalists as
bunny killers. A third wondered aloud if Stewart Young was vegan.
RCMP
and bylaw enforcement officers tell us the Raccoons are “guests of the
city of Langford,” and they even allow them to have a campfire without
a permit. Back in April, Young huffed to reporters, “They are on
provincial land right now and it’s going to be a year or so before we
get to the point of having to go there, so they can sit there as long
as they want.” The protestors took him at his word and set up a
kitchen, where they cook raccoon stew, venison steaks, and bunny
burgers.
No doubt the tree sit gives Young a royal pain in the
ass, but the blustery mayor has bigger fish to fry. Langford City
Council, in a “special” meeting convened two days after Christmas, made
the unusual move of adopting two new bylaws, rather than just giving
them first reading. One bylaw authorizes borrowing $25 million to build
the interchange, while the second exempts the process from the usual
counter-petition process, which gives citizens the right to challenge a
decision.
The community’s response is a roar of outrage. Many
residents of Langford, it seems, are more irate about the apparent
abuse of process than about the imminent loss of green space, wetlands,
and rare species. Dozens of volunteers are joining forces to canvass
the city with a (non-binding) petition to reject the bylaws.
Steven
Hurdle of Langford is organizing the petition drive. “While Langford
may have found a legal loophole in declaring the interchange a ‘Local
Service Area’ to let them avoid the referendum, we can still win the
political war,” he writes. “Langford council might find this an
albatross that’s unexpectedly hanging around their neck as this issue
drags on.”
Back at the camp, tree sitters and visitors are
critiquing the City of Langford’s annual levee tour. Every New Year’s,
politicos across the region open up their offices to the public, with
free booze and food for all.
Well, not quite all. “They only
had bag lunches for like 25 people,” one complains. “I got there at the
end and there was no more food. So I took all the tea bags that were
left.”
Another camper pipes up, “That punch was weak.”
“Yeah, the punch was watered down, so we had to drink more of it to get a buzz.”
“Yeah, that’s why we brought our own cups. We did it up proper with the cups.”
“We
asked if we could take their poinsettias with us, but they said no.
Then after a while, they gave us the poinsettias just so we would
leave.”
Zoe Blunt is an Earth First! contact in western Canada.
She also writes for Guerrilla News Network and Lowbagger. She can be
reached at zoeblunt@gmail.com
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