RCMP return to Fairy Creek

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The RCMP returned to Fairy Creek last Friday, October 16. A post on the Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page states 7 cars drove up, and 15 officers wearing blue standard-issue rain gear walked into the Forest Defender Headquarters.

“They were coming and checking out the mountain before they came in full force Monday,” explained ‘Whirly-Bird,’ a Metis Forest Defender.

Many thought that the fight over what has been called the last intact old growth ecosystem in Southern Vancouver Island ended on September 28th. That was when the BC Supreme Court denied Teal Cedar Products application to extent the injunction prohibiting protesters from interfering with their logging operations. Justice Douglas Thompson cited problems with the manner in which the RCMP were enforcing the injunction:

“disquieting lapses in reasonable crowd control”;
“exclusion zones that are more expansive than the law permits”;
removing ‘individual identification”;
and “wearing ‘thin blue line’ patches in contravention of RCMP policy.” (Thompson notes that “‘thin blue line’ patches deeply offend some citizens.”) 
“Moreover, the media’s right of access continues to be improperly constrained.” 

”It goes without saying that unlawful measures imposed by those given authority to enforce the Court’s order does no credit to the rule of law or the Court’s reputation, especially when those measures trench on civil liberties in a substantial way,” he wrote.

However, on October 8, the BC Court of Appeals ordered a stay of the recent decision to not extend Fairy Creek injunction, pending an appeal by Teal Cedar products.

In her reasons for judgement, Madam Justice Stromberg-Stein explained  “Teal Cedar [is] engaging in government-authorized, legal activity, unobstructed by unlawful actions. The status quo is the long‑standing injunction. No matter how unsavoury the protesters find Teal Cedar’s logging, their quarrel is with government policy.There is a stark difference between peaceful protest and unlawful and dangerous interference.”
She added, “In a situation where the criminal law has not been effective, it is in the interests of justice to grant this interim stay to prevent serious prejudice to Teal Cedar.”
The RCMP press release for Monday, October 18th was written in a style not seen for weeks: “Police enforcement of the injunction order in the Fairy Creek Watershed area continued today.”

The stream of posts on the Fairy Creek Blockade Facebook page abruptly stopped at 5 PM Monday, with an article stating the RCMP denied Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones “access to his own land. They said they will arrest him if he passes by them.”

This is presumably a reference to the fact the Fairy Creek watershed is in traditional Pacheedaht territory.

When new photos were finally added to the Facebook page, Wednesday night, they include pictures of Elder Bill Jones sitting defiantly in front of the RCMP.

In the interval, the Forest Defender’s Headquarters has been pushed off the mountain to the highway below.

In the podcast above, Cortes Radio DJ ‘Hiway Hippy’ and ‘Whirly-Bird’ describe the last three days of an intense struggle.

They also explain why this stand is so vitally important to them.

Wednesday’s police press release states, “Since enforcement began, the RCMP have arrested 1128 individuals; 110 of whom were previously arrested with a combined total of 261 times.”

“These forest defenders are not leaving this forest. We are going to keep going back and going back,” said ‘Hiway Hippy.’

Photo credit: Screenshot of Whirly-Bird and Hiway Hippy taken during ZOOM interview