Sometimes without warning you stumble into one of the ugly gullies that stretch back into Canadian history. That happened to me last week while I was visiting Cape Breton Island to watch the national championships of the Canadian Amateur Boxing Association. The bouts were being held just outside Sydney in the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre. Membertou runs along a high ridge topping the steep hillside that slopes down to the Sydney River valley, about a mile away. Membertou used to be down by the river, where local Mi’kmaq Indians had fished for centuries. What was then called the Kings Road Reserve was set up for them in 1882. Then in 1916 the residents were ordered to move.
The campaign to oust the nations began soon after, when their presence on desirable land came to be seen as impeding commercial development. The leading proponent of ejection was a local politician and newspaper owner. His battle was successful, his chosen battlefield the chamber of the Exchequer Court of Canada. In his judgment Justice L.A. Audette picked up on the racially laced proposition that “No one wished to live in the immediate proximity of the Indians.” The judge’s view was that “the racial inequalities of the Indian as compared with the white men, check to a great extent any move towards social development.” He made clear he had no hesitation concluding, “that the removal of the Indians from the reserve is in the interests of the public” – to which, presumably, the aboriginals did not belong. It took until 1924 before the tribe was moved up the hill to a patch of swampy, rocky land. There was no access to the water on which they had previously fished. Indeed, they were not even hooked up to the Sydney water line until the mid 1950s.
These details came to my attention as I strolled along a corridor flanking the high ceilinged hall where boxing was in progress. The corridor featured cabinets displaying tribal handcrafts and posters outlining the band’s history. What I learned came as no surprise. Forty years ago a friend of mine studying law at Dalhousie University spent one summer studying the history of what he came to call Nova Scotia’s incredible shrinking reserves. Actually, the new Membertou site was much larger than the old Kings Road reserve, but choice was not involved in the forced move to moose pasture after what was apparently the first time Canadian courts were used to force natives off their land.
As I read Justice Audette’s smug assertion of white racial superiority I recalled something else – a recent newspaper column (National Post, Jan. 2) by a Toronto writer grouching about what is sometimes termed the “native discount” in criminal court sentencing. This is an attempt to deal with the sociological mess Canada’s treatment of its native population has left. The column was discussing the sentencing of a native involved in violence associated with another land dispute. Columnist Christie Blatchford was also offended that the accused’s “supporters” did not stand up in court as the judge entered and departed, and complained that nobody seemed to tell them they should. Compelled respect is none and all, and perhaps if these “supporters” were natives they did not feel any. Reading Justice Audette’s words in the Membertou decision certainly does nothing to promote respect for Canadian jurists.
St. Albert writer David Haas spent many years in the enforced respect settings of Canada’s military and the courts.
