Fires on the tracks, which the police dared not put out

National Post, 25 February 2020

Massed police — even if only for crowd control — can be a fearsome sight. Watching the police impassively watching the incendiary vandalizing of the national railway is fearful in a different way.

TYENDINAGA MOHAWK TERRITORY, ONT. — “Anyone over there want to talk?”

That was the plaintive cry from the north side of the tracks, where the Ontario Provincial Police were standing by, to the south side of the tracks, where some Tyendinaga Mohawks had put a burning tire on the Canadian National Railway tracks.

There was no response at first, as the protesters/blockaders were having what looked like a cigarette break, keeping warm around a fire in an old oil drum. The police officers, keeping a respectful distance from the other side, then retreated into the blackness of the early night. The protesters seemed then to take notice, and threw a half dozen more tires on the tracks.

That would be no; no one wanted to talk. The acrid cloud of burning rubber had a whiff of environmental pollution to it.

Such is what I saw at about 6:45 p.m. on Monday evening from the railway overpass on County Road 49, just south of Highway 401 near Marysville, Ont. I was accompanied on the overpass by a few television cameramen, doing their best to get video in the darkness. And we had three OPP officers with us, armed with smartphones, recording the setting of the track alight. The cameramen appeared more vigorous and engaged than the OPP officers.

So it was that the first train passed the two-week blockade of the nation’s rail network. I was on the road myself, my Via Rail train cancelled, as Via Rail gently put it, “following an advisory from the infrastructure owner that they are unable to support our operations across their network.” Was it an earthquake? A labour dispute? A sudden decision to get out of the infrastructure support business?

Hard to tell what the mysterious cause of the cancellation was, just as so much reporting on the blockades seemed eager to avoid describing just exactly what was going on. So driving back to Kingston from Toronto rather than taking the train, I thought I would stop off and have a look for myself.

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