The Ipperwash Crisis was a dispute over
Indigenous
Indigenous may refer to:
*Indigenous peoples
*Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention
*Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band
*Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...
land that took place in
Ipperwash Provincial Park
Ipperwash Provincial Park is a former provincial park on the shores of southern Lake Huron in Lambton County, Ontario, Canada.
Located near Grand Bend, the park was established in 1936. It contains a long sandy beach on the lakeshore, as well ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...
, in 1995. Several members of the Stoney Point
Ojibway
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
band occupied the park to assert
claim to nearby land which had been expropriated from them during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
. During a violent confrontation, the
Ontario Provincial Police
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is the provincial police service of Ontario, Canada. Under its provincial mandate, the OPP patrols provincial highways and waterways, protects provincial government buildings and officials, patrols unincorp ...
(OPP) killed protester Dudley George. George was armed with a stick when OPP officer Ken Deane shot him. George subsequently died from his injuries. Ken Deane later claimed that George had a firearm. Deane was found guilty of criminal negligence.
It was later alleged that the violent confrontation and eventual death of Dudley George came a day after newly elected
Ontario Premier Mike Harris
Michael Deane Harris (born January 23, 1945) is a Canadian retired politician who served as the 22nd premier of Ontario from 1995 to 2002 and leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (PC Party) from 1990 to 2002. During his time ...
was alleged to have said to the OPP "I want the fucking Indians out of the park", according to a former attorney general. However, eight other present witnesses deny this allegation.
The ensuing controversy was a major event in Canadian politics. In 2003 a provincial inquiry, the
Ipperwash Inquiry
The Ipperwash Inquiry was a two-year public judicial inquiry funded by the Government of Ontario, led by Sidney B. Linden, and established under the ''Ontario Public Inquiries Act'' (1990), which culminated in a four volume 1,533-page Ipperwash I ...
, was started after a change in government. Former Ontario Chief Justice
Sidney B. Linden led the investigation of events, which was completed in the fall of 2006.
Background
In 1936, the province of Ontario created Ipperwash Provincial Park.
In 1942 during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
, the
Government of Canada
The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown ...
wanted reserve land from the
Stoney Point Band to use as a base for military training and offered to buy it for $15 per acre. They also promised to return the land after the war ended. The band rejected the offer, however, under the
''War Measures Act'', the federal government expropriated the lands from the Stoney Point Reserve and established
Military Camp Ipperwash. The
First Nations
First Nations or first peoples may refer to:
* Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area.
Indigenous groups
*First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including:
**First Natio ...
claim that the grounds contain a
burial site. As of 2010, archaeological surveys have established that such a site does indeed exist. As early as 1993, while Camp Ipperwash was still being used as a summer training centre for the
Royal Canadian Army Cadets, band members had occupied portions of the camp and the adjacent piece of land. After the summer of 1993, the government moved the cadet camp to
CFB Borden
Canadian Forces Base Borden (also CFB Borden, French: Base des Forces canadiennes Borden or BFC Borden), formerly RCAF Station Borden, is a large Canadian Forces base located in Ontario. The historic birthplace of the Royal Canadian Air Force, C ...
. There was growing tension about the base at Camp Ipperwash.
Occupation of the park
On
Labour Day Monday, September 4, 1995, a group of people started a protest in Ipperwash Provincial Park to draw attention to the decades-old land claims. After the park closed at 6:00 p.m., protestors cut back a fence and by 7:30 had moved vehicles into the park. About thirty-five protestors occupied the park. The protestors had been threatening occupation since the spring. The original police strategy was to co-occupy the park peacefully with the First Nations. But when a protester from the group smashed the window of a police cruiser, the OPP pulled back from the park.
In anticipation of the move on the park by the Stoney Point First Nations, the OPP had prepared a contingency plan named Project Maple. The plan stressed "a peaceful resolution" and called for a team of two negotiators to be on call around the clock.
Progressive Conservative member of Provincial Parliament (MPP)
Marcel Beaubien
Marcel Beaubien (born ) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1995 to 2003 and unsuccessfully sought election to the House of Commons of Canada as the C ...
was in contact with the police the following day, and Beaubien also contacted the office of Premier Harris, in an attempt to put pressure on the government to intervene.
On September 5, 1995, the premier and several government officials met to discuss the Ipperwash protest. The meeting notes concluded that "the province will take steps to remove the occupiers as soon as possible."
Killing of Dudley George
On Wednesday, the OPP became concerned about a group of protesters who had wandered outside the park and into the Sandy Park lot area adjacent to the cottages. The group were allegedly carrying bats and sticks in their hands. The number of protesters has been debated, although police reports indicate a group of up to eight.
There was also misinformation about damage that had been done to a band councillor's car by this group of protesters. The damage to the councillor's car was from a rock thrown by one of the protesters who took exception to an article the councillor had written disapproving of the occupation. A rumour started that the protesters smashed up the vehicle of a female driver with baseball bats, a report that was later found by Justice Sidney Linden to be false and misleading.
Out of public safety concerns, the OPP decided to deploy the crowd management unit (CMU) to force the protesters back into the park. The CMU was a riot squad armed with steel batons, shields and helmets. The CMU was backed up by a
tactical response unit (TRU). The OPP intended a show of force to move the protesters back inside the park.
On Wednesday evening, police riot squads marched down to the Sandy Parking Lot to confront the protesters. As the CMU advanced, the protesters initially retreated and the CMU responded by also retreating. One protester, Cecil Bernard George, approached the police (peacefully according to the protesters, violently according to police reports). George was taken down and surrounded by police and arrested. Protesters attempted to rescue George from the arrest by the police units. This resulted in a riot.
A car and a school bus driven by protesters started out of the park to assist the protesters in their fight against police. According to police officers, there was gunfire from these vehicles, but First Nations protesters have insisted they had no weapons in the park that night. The OPP TRU teams opened fire on the vehicles, resulting in the wounding of two Native protesters and the death of Dudley George, an Ojibwa protestor. Among the TRU members was Acting Sergeant Ken "Tex" Deane, a senior officer in charge of a four-man sharpshooter team with the job of escorting the force's crowd management unit. Deane was near the park entrance and fired three shots at Dudley George, who was about fifteen feet from the park entrance,
and was hit and badly injured.
George's sister Carolyn and brother Pierre attempted to take him to the local hospital for treatment but were arrested and delayed by the OPP for over an hour. George was declared dead at 12:20 a.m. on September 7, 1995, at nearby Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital, in
Strathroy, Ontario. Anthony O'Brien George (March 17, 1957 – September 7, 1995), nicknamed "Dudley", was the eighth of ten children born to Geneviève ("Jenny") Pauline Rogers George and Reg "Nug" (Reginald Ransford) George.
Consequences
Criminal investigation
Acting Sergeant Ken Deane (October 1961 – February 25, 2006) was convicted of
criminal negligence
In criminal law, criminal negligence is a surrogate state of mind required to constitute a ''conventional'' (as opposed to ''strictly liable'') offense. It is not, strictly speaking, a (Law Latin for "guilty mind") because it refers to an ob ...
causing death.
Deane's defence was that he had believed that Dudley George was carrying a rifle. The judge rejected Deane's claim, stating that he had invented it "in an ill-fated attempt to disguise the fact that an unarmed man had been shot".
He sentenced Deane to a
conditional sentence
Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is ''con ...
of two years less a day to be served in the community, and 180 hours of
community service
Community service is unpaid work performed by a person or group of people for the benefit and betterment of their community without any form of compensation. Community service can be distinct from volunteering, since it is not always performe ...
.
Deane unsuccessfully appealed the verdict to the Ontario Court of Appeal
The Court of Appeal for Ontario (frequently referred to as the Ontario Court of Appeal or ONCA) is the appellate court for the province of Ontario, Canada. The seat of the court is Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto, also the seat of the Law Socie ...
and the Supreme Court of Canada. In September 2001, he pled guilty to discreditable conduct under the ''Police Services Act'' and in January 2002 was ordered to resign.[ He later worked in security at an ]Ontario Hydro
Ontario Hydro, established in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, was a publicly owned electricity utility in the Province of Ontario. It was formed to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity g ...
nuclear station. On February 25, 2006, he died in a car accident when his vehicle collided with a semi-truck near Prescott. He died at the scene. He was to testify at the Ipperwash inquiry in a few weeks.[
]
Inquiry
The George family repeatedly called on the Ontario and federal governments to launch an inquiry into the events at Ipperwash. A public inquiry was launched on November 12, 2003, after the Ontario Conservatives lost power to Dalton McGuinty's Ontario Liberal Party
The Ontario Liberal Party (OLP; french: Parti libéral de l'Ontario, PLO) is a political party in the province of Ontario, Canada. The party has been led by interim leader John Fraser since August 2022.
The party espouses the principles of li ...
in the 2003 election.
The public inquiry was funded by the Government of Ontario but conducted by a neutral third party, Sidney B. Linden, pursuant to his powers as commissioner established under the ''Ontario Public Inquiries Act''. The inquiry's mandate was to inquire and report on events surrounding the death of Dudley George. The inquiry was also asked to make recommendations that would avoid violence in similar circumstances in the future. The inquiry was neither a civil nor criminal trial.
During the inquiry, a 17-minute tape recording surfaced that cast new light on the events at Ipperwash. The tape records a conversation between OPP Inspector Ron Fox and Inspector John Carson, the OPP commander overseeing the standoff at Ipperwash, prior to George's death. They discussed Premier Mike Harris's view that the government has "tried to pacify and pander to these people far too long" and to use "swift affirmative action" to remove them from the park.
Other testimony has further put the Harris government in a bad light. In particular, former Harris aide Deb Hutton repeatedly testified in November, 2005 that she couldn't remember any specific conversations. This led Julian Falconer, acting as counsel for Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto, to pointedly remark on cross-examination that Hutton had used phrases to the effect of "I don't recall" on 134 separate occasions in her in-chief testimony. Former Ontario Attorney General Charles Harnick
Charles Alan Harnick, (born October 14, 1950) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1999, and served as a senior cabinet minister in the gover ...
also testified that Harris shouted, "I want the fucking Indians out of the park." Later witnesses denied Harnick's evidence, but the Ipperwash Inquiry concluded that Harnick's testimony was credible and that Premier Harris did in fact make the remarks (Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry, Vol.1, p. 363).
Harris appeared before the inquiry on February 14, 2006. He testified that he had never said the statement attributed to him by Harnick. Justice Linden "found the statements were made and they were racist, whether intended or not".
The evidentiary hearings of the inquiry ended on June 28, 2006. Justice Linden's final report and findings of the inquiry were released on May 31, 2007.
Return of land
On December 20, 2007, the Ontario government announced its intention to return the 56-hectare Ipperwash Provincial Park to its original owners, the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation. The decision did not take immediate effect, as the land will be "co-managed" by the province and the Chippewas, with consultation from the surrounding community, for the time being. According to Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant, the land will be fully returned over an unspecified period of time, until the Chippewas have full control.
On Thursday May 28, 2009, Ontario Aboriginal Affairs Minister Brad Duguid
Brad Duguid (born July 9, 1962) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 2003 to 2018 who represented the riding of Scarborough Centre in Toronto. He served as a cabinet min ...
formally signed over control of Ipperwash Park["Ipperwash park to re-open in 2010"](_blank)
''London Free Press'' to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation.
The settlement was finalized on April 14, 2016. Along with a $95 million payment, the land was signed over to the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation by Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan
Harjit Singh Sajjan (, ; born September 6, 1970) is a Canadian politician who has served as the minister of international development since October 26, 2021. A member of the Liberal Party, Sajjan represents the British Columbia (BC) riding ...
and Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett. Chief Thomas Bressette signed the agreement on behalf of the band.
See also
*'' One Dead Indian''
*Oka Crisis
The Oka Crisis (french: links=no, Crise d'Oka), also known as the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance (), was a land dispute between a group of Mohawk people and the town of Oka, Quebec, Canada, which began on July 11, 1990, and lasted 78 days until Septe ...
*Burnt Church Crisis
The Burnt Church Crisis was a conflict in Canada between the Mi'kmaq people of the Burnt Church First Nations ( Esgenoôpetitj) and non-Aboriginal fisheries in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia between 1999 and 2002.
Supreme Court ruling
As Indigenous ...
*Gustafsen Lake Standoff
The Gustafsen Lake standoff was a land dispute that led to a confrontation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Indigenous occupiers (Ts'peten Defenders) in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, at Gustafsen Lake (known ...
*Caledonia Land Dispute
The Grand River land dispute, also known as the Caledonia land dispute, is an ongoing dispute between the Six Nations of the Grand River and the Government of Canada. It is focussed on lands along the length of the Grand River in Ontario known ...
References
Sources
*
External links
Indepth: Ipperwash
from CBC News
CBC News is a division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC.ca ...
Ipperwash Inquiry homepage
*Hedican, Edward J.
"The Ipperwash Inquiry and the Tragic Death of Dudley George"
Canadian Journal of Native Studies 28:1 (2008)
{{Discrimination against Indigenous peoples in Canada
Indigenous conflicts in Canada
Ontario political scandals
Protest-related deaths
1995 in Canada
1995 in Ontario
Indigenous peoples in Ontario
1996 in Ontario
Conflicts in 1995
Canadian commissions and inquiries