Kananaskis ho!

by RENÉ BIBERSTEIN

As he hitchhikes toward Kananaskis, Alberta, for June’s G8 Summit and protest, René Biberstein, former editor of Concordia’s student paper the Link, takes a look at the state of the country. The first in a series of dispatches…

Our trip begins at the highway onramp in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. Myself and fellow Montrealer Soo Koelbli are headed for what will likely be the biggest anti-globalization protest in Canada since Quebec City. As many as 10,000 people—activists and ordinary folks alike—are set to converge in Alberta. Thousands more plan to protest in Ottawa and across the country.

When Jean Chrétien and seven of the world’s most powerful leaders meet this summer, they’ll find a country facing crisis-level attacks on minorities and the poor, social services, small businesses, farmers, communities and any kind of public dissent.

“When the globalization comes, we’ll be ready for it,” says Dan, the born-again Christian trucker who picks us up at the Ontario border. The bearded man with a Bible on his dashboard drives a gas rig around eastern Ontario. He preaches to us for nearly an hour on the way to Brockville, as we sit piled up in the seat beside him, trying to be polite. Comparing corporate globalization to the Apocalypse and making references to the Book of Revelations, which says that in the Last Days people will be enslaved, you can’t say that Dan doesn’t have an unusual perspective on politics. He supports the far-right militia movement, which he claims has nine-million armed members in the U.S. and three-million in Canada.

Brockville

It’s hard to imagine such a beautiful town full of 19th-century stone buildings and shady parks to be dead downtown, but it is. Bobbie Jordan, chairperson of the Brockville chapter of the Council of Canadians, says she had no problem finding a storefront to use as headquarters for her group’s campaign to save public medicare. She looked at more than 10 empty buildings on King Street; she says the former inhabitants had been driven out of business by the chain stores in Brockville’s two suburban shopping malls. Even the county court house, once the centre of downtown activity, now sits empty and abandoned.
Jordan, who is hoping to get to Kananaskis herself, calls the Tory government in Ontario “a bunch of ideologues.” She says that governments are slowly starving the town’s two hospitals of funding and forcing people to go elsewhere to get treatment.

Gananoque

We get soaked by rain again on the way west to Gananoque; it takes us three rides to get barely 50 kilometres down the road, including one from a guy with an almost incomprehensible country drawl who seems mainly interested in finding drugs. He cracks open a can of beer, which he swears is his first one.

Gananoque is about as empty as Brockville. We sleep in the cheapest motel we can find, hanging up our clothes and sleeping bags in the room so that they can dry off. In the morning, we chat over coffee with the Swiss couple who own the place. Edwin, with long, grey hair and a yin-yang earring, was an anti-nuclear activist in Switzerland when he was young. But the couple say that since they came to Canada seven years ago, they’ve felt shut out of the political process in this country, which they call undemocratic. In Switzerland, governments are elected by proportional representation and must hold referenda on all major policies before they can be implemented. Even smaller matters, like where a school or hospital should be built, require a local referendum.

Kingston

In Kingston, we check out the museum at the penitentiary, where convicts have been housed for well over 100 years. In it, there’s an example of the first cells, which were considered “humanitarian” at the time. They were eight feet long and two feet wide. In another room, there was a water torture device imported from American prisons in the 19th century. It was eventually discontinued, a plaque read, when it was found to have “fatal effects.”

We camp in the forest outside of Kingston and the next day head for Adolphustown to take the ferry to Prince Edward County. But when we reach Bath, we discover that the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) strike has shut down the ferries. So instead, we catch a ride to Napanee with Kristy, the waitress who had served us coffee in Bath’s Last Chance Diner. Her common-law husband is a prison guard in Napanee, and was also on strike with OPSEU. Kristy says that he’ll be voting against the proposed settlement, which he thinks is a bad deal—offering cash in exchange for job security. But a few days later, we hear that workers approved the settlement, ending the eight-week strike.

From there, we head to Toronto, which is always brewing with local political initiatives and projects. In our first days in the city, we see pro-medicare banners and campaign offices everywhere. It seems that all across the country, there’s a feeling of anger and dissatisfaction with our bungling governments. :

Contact: biberstein@wildmail.com