New housing to come for residents living on former Camp Ipperwash
By Colin Graf
AAZHOODENA (Stoney Point)— In a strange twist of fate, new homes for the people living at the former army camp where land defender Anthony “Dudley” George was killed are arriving the same way their homes of their grandparents’ generation were forcibly removed almost 80 years ago— on the back of trucks.
The first two prefabricated homes arrived in mid-February from their Winnipeg construction site. In the words of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation Chief Jason Henry, they are “homes with safe drinking water, sanitary sewer connections, electricity, heat, without the contaminants these barracks are full of,” which includes many of the people living at Stoney Point as members.
The land was seized by the Canadian government during World War II to create an artillery training camp and their ancestors, along with their homes, were moved to nearby Kettle Point. George and other land defenders moved on to the land, which had become a cadet camp, in 1993. Two years later, they took over the barracks, the remaining soldiers left. Just over a month later, George was killed when the group tried to enlarge the area of their occupation once more.
Chief Henry, who has previously described the Stoney Point occupiers as “land defenders, our veterans that fought for our land to be returned to us,” was on-hand for the arrival, remarking in a video to the community that “79 years ago, they hauled our homes out and ripped us off the land. Today, the first homes rolled back in.”
“We’ve moved the ashes around here and found a spark of hope for the future; the hope that our grandparents held in their hearts when they left here; the hope our warriors had when they came here and climbed the fence back here in 1993,” Chief Henry added.
Among those who will live in the new homes is Dudley George’s brother, Pierre.
“It’s about time. I’ve been freezing here for 25 years,” says Pierre, as he prepares to move from his former home, the military fire hall at the former Camp Ipperwash.
Pierre chose the fire hall in 1995 but hasn’t lived there regularly for years.
“I really should have made a better choice,” he says, describing how the winter winds whipping off nearby Lake Huron eventually made living in the fire hall impossible. “It was so cold I might as well be sleeping outside.”
Several years back, Pierre built himself a small shelter from reclaimed building materials at the former Camp Ipperwash and says he will be glad to move into the newly-arrived homes, which are to serve some of the roughly 50 year-round inhabitants there.
Pierre has spent several months away from Kettle and Stoney Point living in subsidized housing in a nearby Sarnia, hotel, about 40 kilometres from Stoney Point, after suffering a number of health challenges. Among those is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), diagnosed after the Sept. 1995 night when he and his sister Carolyn (Cully) George drove his dying brother, with part of the trip on a flat tire, to the closest hospital— about 50 kilometres away. When they arrived, the pair were accused of murdering Dudley and jailed overnight, according to the report of a public inquiry that examined the events. Miscommunication between police units was the cause of their arrest, the Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry concluded in 2007.
The 20 temporary homes should all be in place later this month and professional movers will be available to help the residents, according to a newsletter sent to Kettle and Stony Point residents. A long row of locked blue shipping containers sits in the snow near the newly prepared lots, ready to store large items that won’t fit into the temporary structures. The homes were originally expected to arrive at the end of January, but certification was delayed by pandemic restrictions, the newsletter explains.
Plans are being made to demolish the old barracks and build permanent homes, Chief Henry said in the Feb video. The Kettle and Stony Point administration is working with the Department of National Defence (DND) to develop a timeline for that construction, Henry said.
It may be quite a while before those homes are built due to the presence of unexploded munitions (UXOs) on the land. When an agreement to return the land to Kettle and Stony Point was reached with the federal government and approved by the First Nation in 2015, it was estimated to take until 2035 to clear the UXOs. This estimate has since been pushed back 10 years until 2045, more than a century after the land was taken, according to information provided by DND by e-mail.
However, Kettle and Stony Point will recover sections of the land as it is gradually cleared, the DND spokesperson says. Workers have removed 154 UXOs as of 2020 from the 1,050-hectare site, along with contaminated soil and over 11,000 archaeological artifacts, the e-mail adds.
While Kettle and Stony Point has “always been unceded territory…stolen from us by DND,” the department is legally responsible and “wise councillors and Elders” have advised Chief Henry to not rush and have land returned to community control until it is completely safe, he says in a previous video from last Oct. The cost of that cleanup is estimated to be around $300 million, he said.
DND is working closely with the First Nation to “ensure the health and safety of people” at the site by informing people of the risks from UXOs by holding public information sessions, installing and maintaining signs, and making regular visits to the area, the spokesperson says.
Some residents, including Cully George, don’t want to move to temporary homes.
“I just don’t want to move twice,” she expresses, saying she will wait for the construction of permanent houses.
Cully has lived in the former officers’ quarters since the weeks prior to her brother’s death. She remembers having a dream of moving to live in a building with white walls.
“I told everybody at work I’m moving, but I didn’t have any plans,” she shared a few years ago. After the occupiers took over the camp, “everybody was just picking a building,” and she found herself in the white-walled officers’ quarters with “Major this and Major that” posted on the doors, she recalled.
In the years since, the building’s roof has been replaced and some maintenance has been done, but Cully doesn’t trust the water for drinking. She prefers to walk to an outdoor tap at the camp’s gatehouse. Information provided by the military shows DND is spending around $1.3 million annually for utilities and maintenance of the buildings and grounds, including an annual $750,000 transferred to Kettle and Stony Point for property maintenance. The numbers are from 2016-18 and do not include the cost of the UXO clearance.
The land was seized in the 40s even though the First Nation, including members from both Kettle and Stoney Points, had voted against surrendering it. The homes of about 14 families from Stoney Point, “a few straggling Indians,” were moved a few kilometres to Kettle Point, as described by the federal government’s Indian Agent at the time, quoted in the Report of the Ipperwash Inquiry.
The Inquiry, which lasted over two years starting in 2004, was held to report on events surrounding Dudley George’s death and make recommendations to avoid violence in similar circumstances in the future.
The Inquiry heard testimony from a former Ontario attorney-general that then-Premier Mike Harris said, “I want the f*****g Indians out of the park,” to advisors just hours before police stormed Ipperwash Provincial Park the night of the shooting, according to news coverage of the Inquiry at the time. Harris denied the comments during his testimony before the Inquiry, and others who were present told the Inquiry they had not heard the remark.
Ontario’s present Progressive Conservative (PC) premier, Doug Ford, recently angered Indigenous groups after nominating Harris, a previous PC head of government, for the Order of Ontario. In a statement released in January, Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Glen Hare said that the nomination was an insult to First Nations people across Ontario.