Outside the Sechelt RCMP detachment, around 50 people held a peaceful protest on Aug. 23 to demand the RCMP stand down at the Fairy Creek blockade, on Vancouver Island.
The event was one of 13 in B.C., and joined by other protests in Toronto and New Zealand, Shirley Samples, the event organizer, told Coast Reporter.
The Sunshine Coast event had drumming, singing and bagpipes as vehicles drove by on the highway. People of all ages attended, and were asked to sign their names on a letter to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, among others, calling for an immediate inquiry into police conduct at Fairy Creek.
Samples, a Roberts Creek resident, said she organized the event after seeing videos of how the police have interacted “with such disrespect and so much violence” toward the forest protectors of Fairy Creek. Videos circulated online over the weekend of police pepper-spraying a crowd of protesters who refused orders to disperse at an industry gate at Pacific Marine and Gordon Main logging roads.
The RCMP had arrested 740 people as of Saturday, Aug. 21, while enforcing a court injunction to clear the way for Teal Jones Group, the company that holds logging rights in the blockade area.
“I don't see the justification,” Samples said at the Sechelt protest. “I can’t stand back and let it just happen. I believe that the RCMP have to be called out on this.
“I’m really happy with the turnout today. I know that coming out in front of the RCMP is a bit of an edgier event, but we’re not in normal times. I respect that our society needs the RCMP, we need law and order, but when that law and order establishment goes beyond what they’re mandated to do, then we have to stand up and say, ‘No,’” she said.
The letter to the commissioner questions why the RCMP are not adhering to a recent court ruling that determined exclusion zones and media restrictions are unlawful.
“All of this responsibility rests at his feet,” Samples said of Premier John Horgan, “because we’ve been trying to tell him that people in this province want to protect old growth forests.”
The latest event follows several protests on the Sunshine Coast in recent months supporting the Fairy Creek Blockade and calling for a stop to old growth logging.
“I think it resonates here, because we have had clear-cut forests,” Samples said, as well as concerns about logging near watersheds.
– with files from Regan Elliott/Times Colonist
