BOOK REVIEW HighGrader Magazine November 2001
Lies, Damned Lies and Ipperwash
One Dead Indian Smokes the Premier
One Dead Indian: The Premier, the Police, and the Ipperwash Crisis
by Peter Edwards
Stoddart,
Toronto,
2001
$34.95 hardcover

If, like me, you tend to regard the police with a mixture of suspicion and dread, you should read One Dead Indian by Peter Edwards. If, on the other hand, you regard the police with a mixture of respect bordering on adulation, then you must read One Dead Indian by Peter Edwards.
Toronto Star reporter Edwards' new book is a modern-day J'Accuse, against both the Ontario government of Mike Harris and the Ontario Provincial Police, who so zealously carried out the government's orders which left one unarmed native protester dead and another beaten within an inch of his life at Ipperwash.
There are more than a few Ontario residents (and this writer is one of them), who believe the murder of Dudley George by the OPP on the night of September 6, 1995 is the real reason that Mike Harris last month became the first Premier in the history of Ontario to resign his post in mid-term.
The political decision to clear Ipperwash Provincial Park of a band of native occupiers by force, it now appears, was made at the behest of the Premiers' Office, if not the Premier himself. The disastrous consequences, which included a rare finding of guilt against an OPP officer, has hung around Mike Harris' neck ever since.
And, like the albatross around the neck of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, Ipperwash may well haunt Harris until his dying day. The only way to clear the air - the creation of a judicial inquiry into the incident, as has been demanded by the George family, Ontario's political opposition, and even the United Nations' Human Rights Committee - has clearly been rejected as an unpalatable alternative by the government.
After reading Edwards' impassioned summation of all the evidence available as of July, 2001, one gains certain insights as to the reasons why. The craven denials, cover-ups and outright lies that have surrounded the killing of Dudley George and the terrible beating of Stoney Point band councillor Cecil Bernard "Slippery" George at the hands of the OPP's Tactics and Rescue Unit (the "TRU" squad), are gradually coming unravelled, thanks in no small measure to the courage and determination of the George family itself, which has launched a civil suit against the government for the killing of their brother.
As the George family's small but dogged band of pro bono lawyers win round after round in the courts, they are forcing the disclosure of ever more internal government documents concerning the Ipperwash tragedy.
These documents, in turn, implicate the Harris government, and Harris himself, as the instigators of the OPP's aggressive actions in the Park that night.
Among the most damning documents is the letter written by Tory MPP Marcel Beaubien urging action against the protesters, whom he describes as "hooligans." This sentiment was, in turn, reflected and amplified by Harris aide Debbie Hutton at a Queen's Park meeting just hours before the police moved in.
"Wants to be seen as actioning," were the exact words used to describe Hutton's position by one note taker in attendance. Still more damning are the notes from a second meeting, this one attended by Harris himself, along with then-Minister of Natural Resources Chris Hodgson and OPP Superintendent Ron Fox.
"Prem.+Hodgson came out strong," noted one attendee in his or her written notes.
Seen in this context, the noose around Harris' neck is tightening steadily. When the day inevitably arrives that Harris will at last be forced to give evidence under oath about his role in the killing of Dudley George, Tory deep thinkers may well have concluded that it's better he be a former Premier and Tory leader than an active one.
But there is also, as Edwards reminds us, a far greater context to the struggle over Ipperwash, one involving more than a century of shameful chiselling, lying and cheating over the lands originally set aside for aboriginal inhabitants of the Kettle Point and Stoney Point reserves.
Indeed, one of the key issues which touched off the conflict was the native contention that there is an old burial ground deep inside the Park boundaries. The truth of this assertion would reaffirm the native claim to the land and undermine the government's attempt to paint the protesters as out of control hooligans.
Here, too, the Harris government lied - by first overlooking and then denying evidence within its own files that the presence of a sacred burial site was well known by both federal and provincial bureaucrats early in the century.
Nor do the lies stop there. In Edwards' recounting of the trial of Acting OPP Sergeant Kenneth Deane (the man charged with killing Dudley George), it becomes clear that Mr. Justice Hugh Fraser found Dudley George's shooter guilty of criminal negligence not so much because of the strength of the Crown's evidence against him, but rather because of the weakness of the testimony given by Deane's fellow officers on his behalf.
In his judgment Fraser minced no words in concluding that police testimony was conflicting and incredible and "was concocted ex post facto in an ill-fated attempt to disguise the fact than an unarmed man had been shot."
Still more disturbing to my mind are the police-government concoctions and prevarications that stand uncorrected to this day. One surrounds the terrible beating given Slippery George by eight to ten members of the TRU squad. George, who was not among the protesters, had travelled to the park in the hopes of intervening to prevent bloodshed. He was unarmed and totally defenseless but was beaten so severely that his heart stopped.
None of the TRU squadders was ever charged for the beating, and not a single OPP present that night could remember even seeing it.
What's more, the police union successfully opposed the releasing of ID photos of the OPP officers on duty in the park that night, thus further obstructing all subsequent investigations.
Nor is that all. No OPP video, audio tapes or still photographs of the incident were ever adduced, despite the presence of a "command post," part of whose duty it is to document events such as these. Audio traffic amongst the TRU squadders, which is supposed to be recorded for posterity, was lost, the court was told, because the officer in charge of the machine neglected to push the "record" button.
And then there is the matter of OPP Superintendent Fox, a key liaison figure between the force and its political masters at Queen's Park.
All of his files were lost, incredulous reporters were told, when Fox was transferred from one position to other and his computer hard drive was returned to the company from which it had been leased by the government.
Peter Edwards' book is another key piece of evidence against Harris, and against the Ontario Provincial Police. If, in a few hours, you want to get up to speed on an event that has wended its way through the courts for six years, you would be well advised to read this book. But Edwards, I suspect, would be the first to concede that the final chapter in this terrible, tragic tale has yet to be written.

-- Mick Lowe

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