McHale And Vandermaas Get New Gig

Gary McHale, Mark Vandermaas, and co. have declared victory in Caledonia.  They've decided there's no point in hassling Indians anymore and moved on to greener pastures.  More particularly, London Ont., where they've been hassling...well, try and guess who they've been hassling. So far, though, the only people they've managed to get a rise out of come from the local business community:

Yesterday, a property owner asked me to move from in front of her business location. I know it’s not great to have a protest near your business, so I agreed to rotate my chosen place each day in order to try to accommodate her wishes, which I did.

Today, a second business owner came out to ask me to move my protest to the other side of the street.... I wasn’t even standing in front of his office, I was standing in front of a neighbouring building. He told me he was concerned that people would drive by and think someone was protesting against his business. I suggested all he had to do is tell his customers, ’By the way…the protest outside has nothing to do with me.’ When I reminded him that I wasn’t in front of his business, and suggested that no one was going to associate a guy wearing a blue beret and a UN flag with a protest against him, he told me my sign was too small and people driving by couldn’t read it, so they might think it was about him. It was all I could do to read his sign from the sidewalk, so I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. I told him I was rotating positions, and that free speech was why we live in Canada, but he wasn’t happy.

I’m not naming the business owners because I don’t want to focus on them, but the lesson (also learned in Caledonia, BTW) is unmistakable: when push comes to shove, don’t count on too many business owners to lead the charge to defend your Charter rights.


OK.  If you can't guess, go here.

The Tories "Controversial" Candidate For Vaughan

Conservatives Against Fantino rallies today outside of Julian's campaign HQ in Vaughan. They've managed to pick up a surprising amount of media coverage, and while some have criticized them for their lack of ties to either Vaughan or the CPoC (their leader, Gary McHale ran as an indy in Haldimand Norfolk, I believe, and lost badly), their allegations of Fantino's having established a two-tier justice system around Caledonia in the wake of the First Nations/non-aboriginal standoff there seems to have struck a chord with the Tory base.

In other words, we have a Tory candidate that alot of Tories dislike.

Whether Joe and Jane voter care is another story. I doubt they will, but certainly its clear that Mr. Fantino's campaign is off to something of a rough start.

In related news (related because she is clearly one of Julian Fantino's right-wing non-fans) the ARA managed to get three activists on stage before Christie Blatchford was to address a handful of geezers re her new book on the Caledonia Crisis, and prevent her from speaking.

Maybe not worth the candle, given the number of empty seats.

Tory Turmoil In Vaughan

Looks like a number of Ontario Conservatives have come out against Julian Fantino's soon-to-be-announced run for Tory MP in the upcoming Vaughan by-election. Their beef--his actions(or lack thereof) in regards to Caledonia and the ongoing clashes between non-natives and natives in the area:

Julian Fantino is a symbol of the Race-Based Policing practices in Caledonia that saw innocent property owners victimized with illegal occupations while OPP officers stood guard for those committing the crimes. His candidacy for the Conservative Party would symbolize that the party has fully embraced racialized policing and the dangerous ideology that innocent victims should be controlled, silenced and targeted for arrest as an alternative to enforcing the law against extremist groups. Julian Fantino has shown scarcely believable bias in favour of native criminals all the while using the full weight of his office to try to intimidate peaceful, law-abiding non-natives into compliance.

The two founders of Conservatives Against Fantino are Gary McHale and Mark Vandermaas. McHale especially is a rabble rouser as much as an activist--several members of the Neo-Nazi Northern Alliance appeared at one of their rallies, and his followers have occasionally described themselves as a militia. Although, that said, he has managed to win several small legal victories against the OPP.

Vandermaas writes a blog devoted the ongoing Caledonia standoff. I don't know what if any previous connection to the CPoC these two might have had before launching their website.

My opinion is that Fantino was in tough in Caledonia, and nothing he could have done would have been beyond criticism. He'll also almost certainly take the seat whatever these two guys get up to. But what the heck. My job here is to upset Conservatives.

Caledonian MilitiaMan Wins In Court

Gary McHale's name comes up a lot when you're reading about the on-going troubles between native and non-native in Caledonia, usually in a negative context, as for example when Northern Alliance Members show up at his rallies. But one of the tactics that McHale and his followers have employed--laying private charges against native protesters, and against OPP officers who have allegedly failed to arrest or in fact aided native protesters--seems to have borne fruit. The full ruling is here, and the money passage below:

Now, my early morning pre-coffee reading of this ruling suggests it is fairly limited in scope. The police have been telling McHale and co. that, look, these charges are just going to get stayed, so we won't let you lay them in the first place. The judge is saying "no", these are two separate events, and the 2nd (where the charges get stayed) follows the 1st only after a certain amount of processing by the justice system.

So, while the charges McHale files will still get tossed eventually, he will be able to use the justice system to lay a hassle on the police and natives on the other side of the barricades.