‘It’s inhumane’: Life at Stony Point 25 Years after the Ipperwash Crisis

Over 100 unexploded ordinances lie on Stony Point First Nation reserve, the remnants of military occupation. Cristina Howorun with why the potentially explosive devices are still on the land that at the centre of the Ipperwash Crisis 25 years ago.

By CRISTINA HOWORUN

“Its easy to look at this place and not love it. To let go of it, if you don’t know it,” Isaiah Thomas says while driving along a dirt road, passing signs warning of deadly unexploded ordinances.

“But if you live here and experience it, its hard to let go of it.”

Thomas is one of about 60 people living on a land most commonly known as Stony Point, but whose original name is Aazhoodena.

On the shores of Lake Huron, filled with lush bush, beautiful sand dunes and inland lakes, it’s a land of harsh contrasts — former army barracks crumbling from age, dozens of broken down trucks and trailers, and military signs everywhere reminding the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point that their land was once taken by, and occupied by the military.

“I care about my community, when it comes to my community, I had no limitations,” Thomas says after spending the early evening picking up litter from the side of the road.

Although Stony Point is part of the Kettle and Stony Point reserve, Thomas views his community as the residents who live on Stony Point — a community made up primarily of people who were involved in the land reclamation efforts of 1993-1995.

In 1942, the Canadian government tried to purchase the 2,240-acre parcel of land from the First Nation. When they refused, the government seized it under the War Measures Act, for use as a military training camp. The residents were forced to leave, and the government promised to return the land once the war was over. It didn’t.

After 50 years of inaction, a small group of “land defenders,” as they’ve come to be known, set up camp on the outskirts of the army base. Over the next two years, they co-existed, primarily peacefully and in 1995, with some level of force, the indigenous protestors reclaimed the camp. Shortly after, a group of unarmed indigenous protestors moved to the adjacent former Ipperwash Provincial Park, where an ancestral burial ground was located. A tense standoff with the Ontario Provincial Police ensued, leading to the brutal police beating of a council member, the police shooting of a 15-year-old boy and the shooting and killing of Anthony Dudley George.

“I know there are unexploded ammunition, but that doesn’t scare me from going in the bush.”

Twenty-five years later it still looks more like a battlefield than a place to call home.

Thomas is one of only a handful of children that grew up here- a place without playgrounds, or recreation centres, and where jungle gyms are old military training grounds.

“Most of the time I (would) go into the bush and travelling, you know, to the tanks or in the grenade range,” Thomas explains of his time as a child. “I know there are unexploded ammunition, but that doesn’t scare me from going in the bush.”

The dangers in the bush are very real. According to the Department of National Defence, 116 unexploded ordinances have been found on the site. Of those, 85 have been classified as “catastrophic,” meaning they could result in the loss of life, and 27 classified as “major”- likely to result in “multiple disabling injuries.”

Although a Final Settlement Agreement was reached with the First Nation in 2016, the former Ipperwash army camp is still under military jurisdiction. It will only be officially returned to its rightful owners once the land is cleared of environmental contaminants and UXOs- a process that could take another 20 years.

Clearing is happening parcel-by-parcel, but areas of profound significance have not been cleared at all. Interviewing Isaiah Thomas in “Dudley’s camp,” an inland area where Dudley George often stayed and where community members frequently go to meditate in its forest settings, we located several mid-twentieth century bullets.

“How do you not clear an area that’s so important to the community?” Lacey George says in anger. “This should be one of the first places. Everybody knows how sacred it is.”

“If (the Department of National Defence) were serious, there would be combat engineers here, staying here, going through that area with all of their machinery, making sure they done a good cleaning job,” former longstanding Chief of Kettle and Stony Point, Tom Bressette, says.

“They sent nothing here yet. They send the few people we got, brushing through real quick.”

Bressette negotiated and signed the FSA, ensuring that some of the UXO clearance work would go to his community, but he expected the military to act much faster than it has.

“Why can’t they break some ground and fill a few pipes and we can get clean water?”

Cleanup efforts for 2020 only began on August 17, approximately four months into the clearance season. Frozen ground prevents UXO work from occurring.

More photos from the Stony Point area in the gallery below

Living surrounded by hidden explosives isn’t the only problem that plagues residents of Stony Point. Just a few kilometres away from million-dollar cottages in Grand Bend, they live in crumbling homes with lead paints, asbestos, black mold and unpotable water.

“We’ve got proper water at the gate house, why can’t they break some ground and fill a few pipes and we can get clean water?” Thomas questions.

The Department of National Defence (DND) provides access to potable water through a single tap located at the gatehouse of the facility. Pipes pump water into the homes, but it isn’t safe to drink.

“Everyone in our community, we have to go to the gatehouse and there’s a little tap that we fill up jugs about this big,” Thomas says indicating a medium sized jug.

“The aging facilities at the Former Camp Ipperwash were designed for military purposes and are not appropriate for use as personal residences. Minimal maintenance has been complete since the former base was vacated,” a spokesperson for DND writes in a statement to CityNews.

“DND maintenance activities focus on due diligence to maintain health and safety responsibilities until those structure and quarters are disposed of from DND’s inventory. Until then, DND is providing minimal site and utility services.”

“They have a tap, I don’t believe its safe right now,” Kettle and Stony Point Chief Jason Henry says. “They have access, I’m not sure that can be piped into their homes safely.”

Across the road from the site are cottages and farms. The water there is safe, and residents and tourists don’t face the same struggles.

“The people here, we’re living in Third World conditions”

Lacey George moved to Stony Point with her children about 13 years ago. Her partner is one of the original land defenders, and was at the park when Dudley George was shot and killed.

“This is my roof and if you look out there, you can actually see outside,” Lacey George says, showing a crumbling ceiling and foot-long holes in her roof. Half of her home- a former army barrack- is unlivable. It now houses appliances her family saved to purchase, that can’t be installed because of delays in getting a natural gas hookup to her home. She’s spent the past 13 years without a proper stove or oven, raising her family on meals she prepares in crockpots, and hot plates.

“It’s inhumane, really. The people here, we’re living in Third World conditions,” she says fighting back tears of anger.

“We’ve been having the promise that (the roof) will get fixed soon, but the longer they put it off, the worse it gets. Its been leaking so bad, you can actually see the black mould and the floors starting to rot.”

“If you can’t fix it yourself, it don’t get done so let’s just make them go broke. Let’s make them sink all kinds of money into appliances they can’t hook up into my house,” she says fighting tears. “You work for a minimum wage job- ugh, so much **cking turmoil and torment down here.”

Lacey works at the gatehouse, a sub-contract employee of the DND, limiting and monitoring access to Stony Point. She also works at a retail store, “Life’s a Beach,” on the Kettle Point side of the reserve. Her partner works full time in property maintenance for the site and yet the repairs her home needs are well outside their means.

“We had them tested and we had them checked,” Bressette says of the former barracks.

“There’s contaminated things, there’s lead paint in there, (the military) used lye for years for washing and cleaning and other things they used inside those buildings bring health hazards to people living in there.”

“We are afraid for our people; we’re concerned for their health and they think that we don’t care for them. It’s not us, the government made them think that.”

“Maybe the public or the government or even the community sees them as, you know, squatters and people taking up the land. It changes the way you think about the people living there,“ Henry says.

“What I know is that the people that are at Stony Point are land defenders and they, on behalf of our community, on behalf of our ancestors and their family members, jumped the fence in 1993, and they defend our land ever since,” Henry explains.

“They were charged by their grandparents or parents to protect the land at all costs… so that’s the understanding you much have to appreciate the people that are there and what they are sacrificing of their own lives and their children’s lives to be on the land.”

“Its not living the dream. Not by any means,” Pierre George, Dudley George’s brother says of life on Stony Point. After years of living in an unheated former fire hall, he built his own small shelter next door.

He has no running water, nor a toilet or shower, and has only one plug of electricity. The 66-year-old man walks using a cane and seems much older than his years; a product of living on Stony Point and years of trauma following his brother’s death at the hands of police. “Other people have good stuff happen to them, but me? No. I gotta go the hard road.”

“I’ve had a lot of my family members ask me, over and over again: ‘Lacey, why don’t you get out of there, find another place, you can rent somewhere’. And I’m like ‘no’- because its exactly what (the DND) wants me to do. They want me to get up and leave, so they don’t have to fix **it around here. So they don’t have to clean up their messes,” Lacey George says outside her home, next to a pile of shingles her family bought in hopes of repairing the gapping holes in their roof.

“You come to my community, you see damaged people,” Thomas says.
“But if you look past that you see broken houses. So really, you see a broken community and how you fix the community, you fix the people, you fix the houses- but you fix the people first.”

“Housing- I can’t stay there much longer, because I could get cancer, I could die from that black mold,” Thomas says.

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