In Summer 1989 the Provincial Gov't (Liberal Party) decided to open up the
Temagami region of northern Ontario to clear-cut logging. The indigenous
people of the region (at that time known as the Teme-Augama Anishnabai,
T-AA) had never ceded this land and opposed the logging. They were in the
midst of a land claim at the time and had had a ban against all
development since 1973.
The gov't got a court to ok logging as the trees would grow back, but this
is in fact some of the last old growth red and white pine on the
continent.
The T-AA started a blockade of the logging road that was being built into
the region that summer. A court injunction brought this to an end by the
fall and environmentalists organized by a group called the Temagami
Wilderness Society continued the blockade, which saw almost 300 (including
the soon to be NDP premier of the province) arrested.
In Kingston we started local civil disobedience tactics aimed at our
member of provincial parliament (also a Liberal). By the following
February we had had almsot 30 local arrests at his office, some after a
weekend long occupation.
February 22nd 1990 we placed the attached notices in peoples mailboxes and
tagged pretty much every sizable tree on boulevards and in parks. The
media coverage had such excellent quotes as: "People were irate. They
certainly got a response. It raised the consciousness of people" and "now
I know how those people in Temagami feel." Some had begun to organize
neighbourhood committees to fight the cutting. The phone number was, of
course, for the local MPP. We staged a sit-in in his office while the
phones rang off the hook.
The provincial campaign was responsible for booting the Liberals out and
getting the social democratic New Democratic Party in at the next
election. This was stated by media pundits and the Liberal leader
himself! It also won a cessation of the logging and serious negotiations
on the land claim.
Unfortunately, the most recent election put a reactionary Progressive
Conservative gov't in power provincially amd they have opened up the
region again. This time to mining as well. We did a similar posting (the
one shown below) in Sept 1996, but this time it was done province-wide all
on the same day. The number was that of the Minister in charge of Natural
Resources - they hired on extra staff til the media had finally dispelled
the "rumour."
We followed it up with a pretty militant occupation of the Ministry of
Natural resources HQ. A few folks were pepper sprayed and arrested. The
campaign and the logging seems both to have stalled since then.