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GTA rail blockade supports B.C. pipeline protest

Published

5 years ago

February 15, 2020

Protesters gathered at a rail yard in Vaughan, Ont., on Saturday, vowing to continue the pop-up protests in solidarity with the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en who oppose a natural gas pipeline to be built across their traditional territory in northern B.C.

With the blockade on Tyendinaga Mohawk territory near Belleville, Ont., in its 10th day, the Vaughan protest was one of several similar blockades across the country that have cut both passenger and freight rail services, with pressure mounting on the federal government to end them.

There were also protesters gathered in downtown Toronto and some blocking rail tracks carrying GO trains in northwest Toronto.

“We are going after Canada where it hurts the most,” Vanessa Gray, an environmental and Anishinaabe activist from Aamjiwnaang First Nation in southwestern Ontario told CBC News.

“There are many groups, many networks organizing. This is across the nation, across the world. We’re working apart but together in solidarity for the Wet’suwet’en land defenders.”

Saturday’s protest coincided with a meeting between the federal Indigenous Services minister Marc Miller and representatives of the Mohawk Nation to discuss the Belleville blockade.

Vanessa Gray, an environmental and Anishinaabe activist, talks about expectations from Saturday’s protest. 1:04

The blockades support efforts by the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in B.C., who have been protesting the Coastal GasLink pipeline scheduled to be built across their land. Armed RCMP officers have moved in on the protesters and arrested several in an attempt to clear the way for pipeline construction.

“I hope the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs’ demands are met, that the RCMP leave the Wet’suwet’en territory immediately, and I would like to see all those cops who were involved, who are involved, see consequences for their actions,” Gray said.

Vanessa Gray, an environmental and Anishinaabe activist from Aamjiwnaang First Nation, is one of the protest organizers. (CBC)

“We are just standing up and fighting back for our sovereign Indigenous right to be on our own territory without a military police raid or response.

“Canada’s relationship to the oil industry is the deepest relationship that they have and we’re here today to talk about the deep relationship Wet’suwet’en people have with their water. The urgency to protect that is dire right now. This is an emergency,” Gray added.

‘Settlers need to stop and listen’

Sarah Rotz, a professor at York University who’s been supporting and helping to organize the protests, said “it’s important that settlers consider and take seriously” what’s going on across Canada.

She said using terms like “the rule of law” to justify the crackdown in Wet’suwet’en territory is not helping.

“When we use terms like the rule of law, we’re ignoring Indigenous legal systems and we’re assuming that the colonial legal system is the only legal system, so really undermining Indigenous legal systems,” Rotz told CBC News.

Rotz said she is “standing in solidarity” with Indigenous peoples and nations who are defending their land and their legal system and trying to educate settlers about their traditional governance systems and cultures and ways of being.

“Settlers need to stop and listen,” Rotz said.

Sarah Rotz, a professor at York University, says it’s not up to the Canadian government to decide for Indigenous peoples what kind of resource allocations and proposals should be approved on Indigenous lands. (CBC)

The York professor said it is not up to the Canadian government to decide for Indigenous peoples what kind of resource allocations and proposals should be approved on Indigenous lands.

“You can talk about reconciliation as much as you want and use really kind, nice words, but how are you going to actually change your mechanisms, your systems of governance? You can’t talk about reconciliation and then impose your system of governance on Indigenous peoples and then approve or deny a corporate proposal to build a pipeline on Indigenous lands,” Rotz added.

A group of protesters at the Bloor and Spadina intersection in downtown Toronto on Saturday. (Sarah-Émilie Bouchard/CBC)

At another protest at the Bloor and Spadina intersection in downtown Toronto, a group of noisy protesters shouted, “How do you spell racist? RCMP,” and “It’s not their land, not then, not now. Coastal GasLink, shut the f–k down.”

Natali Euale Montilla, who was at the downtown protest, said the government does not respect hereditary chiefs or colonial law.

“The Canadian government has no jurisdiction over their lands, it is the hereditary chiefs who have rule of law in those territories,” Montilla told CBC News.

“What Canada is doing is totally unlawful and they’re violating the right to live and the right to survive that the folks out there have, and all over what we now call Canada.”

Shortly before 3 p.m. (ET) on Saturday, Anne Marie Aikins, spokesperson for Metrolinx, said there were approximately 80 people on the GO tracks north of York University GO Station on the Barrie corridor.

“We have to cancel some trains and modify others. Our priority is to ensure everyone near [the] tracks remains safe,” Aikins wrote in an email to CBC News.

Metrolinx is a government transportation agency that manages and integrates road and public transport in Ontario, including GO Transit.

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Whitehead becomes 1st CHL player to verbally commit to playing NCAA hockey

Published

2 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

Braxton Whitehead said Friday he has verbally committed to Arizona State, making him the first member of a Canadian Hockey League team to attempt to play the sport at the Division I U.S. college level since a lawsuit was filed challenging the NCAA’s longstanding ban on players it deems to be professionals.

Whitehead posted on social media he plans to play for the Sun Devils beginning in the 2025-26 season.

An Arizona State spokesperson said the school could not comment on verbal commitments, citing NCAA rules. A message left with the CHL was not immediately returned.

A class-action lawsuit filed Aug. 13 in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, New York, could change the landscape for players from the CHL’s Western Hockey League, Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. NCAA bylaws consider them professional leagues and bar players from there from the college ranks.

Online court records show the NCAA has not made any response to the lawsuit since it was filed.

“We’re pleased that Arizona State has made this decision, and we’re hopeful that our case will result in many other Division I programs following suit and the NCAA eliminating its ban on CHL players,” Stephen Lagos, one of the lawyers who launched the lawsuit, told The Associated Press in an email.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Riley Masterson, of Fort Erie, Ontario, who lost his college eligibility two years ago when, at 16, he appeared in two exhibition games for the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires. And it lists 10 Division 1 hockey programs, which were selected to show they follow the NCAA’s bylaws in barring current or former CHL players.

CHL players receive a stipend of no more than $600 per month for living expenses, which is not considered as income for tax purposes. College players receive scholarships and now can earn money through endorsements and other use of their name, image and likeness (NIL).

The implications of the lawsuit could be far-reaching. If successful, the case could increase competition for college-age talent between North America’s two top producers of NHL draft-eligible players.

“I think that everyone involved in our coaches association is aware of some of the transformational changes that are occurring in collegiate athletics,” Forrest Karr, executive director of American Hockey Coaches Association and Minnesota-Duluth athletic director said last month. “And we are trying to be proactive and trying to learn what we can about those changes.

Karr was not immediately available for comment on Friday.

Earlier this year, Karr established two committees — one each overseeing men’s and women’s hockey — to respond to various questions on eligibility submitted to the group by the NCAA. The men’s committee was scheduled to go over its responses two weeks ago.

Former Minnesota coach and Central Collegiate Hockey Association commissioner Don Lucia said at the time that the lawsuit provides the opportunity for stakeholders to look at the situation.

“I don’t know if it would be necessarily settled through the courts or changes at the NCAA level, but I think the time is certainly fast approaching where some decisions will be made in the near future of what the eligibility will look like for a player that plays in the CHL and NCAA,” Lucia said.

Whitehead, a 20-year-old forward from Alaska who has developed into a point-a-game player, said he plans to play again this season with the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League.

“The WHL has given me an incredible opportunity to develop as a player, and I couldn’t be more excited,” Whitehead posted on Instagram.

His addition is the latest boon for Arizona State hockey, a program that has blossomed in the desert far from traditional places like Massachusetts, Minnesota and Michigan since entering Division I in 2015. It has already produced NHL talent, including Seattle goaltender Joey Daccord and Josh Doan, the son of longtime Coyotes captain Shane Doan, who now plays for Utah after that team moved from the Phoenix area to Salt Lake City.

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AP college sports:

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Calgary Flames sign forward Jakob Pelletier to one-year contract

Published

2 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

CALGARY – The Calgary Flames signed winger Jakob Pelletier to a one-year, two-way contract on Friday.

The contract has an average annual value of US$800,000.

Pelletier, a 23-year-old from Quebec City, split last season with the Flames and American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers.

He produced one goal and two assists in 13 games with the Flames.

Calgary drafted the five-foot-nine, 170-pound forward in the first round, 26th overall, of the 2019 NHL draft.

Pelletier has four goals and six assists in 37 career NHL games.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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Kingston mayor’s call to close care hub after fatal assault ‘misguided’: legal clinic

Published

3 hours ago

September 13, 2024

Anne Joseph

A community legal clinic in Kingston, Ont., is denouncing the mayor’s calls to clear an encampment and close a supervised consumption site in the city following a series of alleged assaults that left two people dead and one seriously injured.

Kingston police said they were called to an encampment near a safe injection site on Thursday morning, where they allege a 47-year-old male suspect wielded an edged or blunt weapon and attacked three people. Police said he was arrested after officers negotiated with him for several hours.

The suspect is now facing two counts of second-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.

In a social media post, Kingston Mayor Bryan Paterson said he was “absolutely horrified” by the situation.

“We need to clear the encampment, close this safe injection site and the (Integrated Care Hub) until we can find a better way to support our most vulnerable residents,” he wrote.

The Kingston Community Legal Clinic called Paterson’s comments “premature and misguided” on Friday, arguing that such moves could lead to a rise in overdoses, fewer shelter beds and more homelessness.

In a phone interview, Paterson said the encampment was built around the Integrated Care Hub and safe injection site about three years ago. He said the encampment has created a “dangerous situation” in the area and has frequently been the site of fires, assaults and other public safety concerns.

“We have to find a way to be able to provide the services that people need, being empathetic and compassionate to those struggling with homelessness and mental health and addictions issues,” said Paterson, noting that the safe injection site and Integrated Care Hub are not operated by the city.

“But we cannot turn a blind eye to the very real public safety issues.”

When asked how encampment residents and people who use the services would be supported if the sites were closed, Paterson said the city would work with community partners to “find the best way forward” and introduce short-term and long-term changes.

Keeping the status quo “would be a terrible failure,” he argued.

John Done, executive director of the Kingston Community Legal Clinic, criticized the mayor’s comments and said many of the people residing in the encampment may be particularly vulnerable to overdoses and death. The safe injection site and Integrated Care Hub saves lives, he said.

Taking away those services, he said, would be “irresponsible.”

Done said the legal clinic represented several residents of the encampment when the City of Kingston made a court application last summer to clear the encampment. The court found such an injunction would be unconstitutional, he said.

Done added there’s “no reason” to attach blame while the investigation into Thursday’s attacks is ongoing. The two people who died have been identified as 38-year-old Taylor Wilkinson and 41-year-old John Hood.

“There isn’t going to be a quick, easy solution for the fact of homelessness, drug addictions in Kingston,” Done said. “So I would ask the mayor to do what he’s trained to do, which is to simply pause until we have more information.”

The concern surrounding the safe injection site in Kingston follows a recent shift in Ontario’s approach to the overdose crisis.

Last month, the province announced that it would close 10 supervised consumption sites because they’re too close to schools and daycares, and prohibit any new ones from opening as it moves to an abstinence-based treatment model.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.

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