FARMERS IN SASKATCHEWAN FEEL THEY ARE BEING TARGETED BY THIEVES AND VANDALS, SO THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE THEIR MESSAGE HEARD: “WE HAVE GUNS. WE CARRY GUNS, AND WE WANT THE CRIMINALS TO KNOW IT.”
Barry Kidd understands that you just can’t go around “shooting people,” but he also knows that what is his, is his, and that he works hard, and that people coming onto his farm in rural Saskatchewan and looking to steal something — or worse — are people he is not about to back down from.
“Most farmers are armed in the field,” Kidd says. “It has always been that way for us — you don’t want a skunk to go through your combine since, when you ask a skunk to move, he won’t — so for that reason we have always carried guns.
“But now that has been added to something altogether different: We have guns. We carry guns, and we want the criminals to know it.”
Around noon on Sept. 19, a farm labourer on a property near Fiske, a rural crossroads with an old curling rink and even an older grain elevator, saw three men in the road and a black SUV parked nearby. He slowed his vehicle. Drawing closer, he realized the men were masked — and armed. One levelled a pistol at the windshield of the truck, whereupon the labourer ducked and barrelled toward the trio. No shots were fired, an RCMP manhunt ensued.
The search ended without any arrests, but it has triggered a movement among the province’s farmers to openly declare themselves armed and prepared to protect what is their own. Photos of rifles in combine harvesters proliferated on social media in the days after the episode near Fiske. A Facebook page — Farmers With Firearms — was launched.
Its members sprang into action this past Monday evening, providing updates on a high-speed pursuit involving a green pickup truck that had been spotted in a farmyard northwest of Rosetown. Several farmers gave chase. Local RCMP were called twice before responding, according to a farmer privy to the details of the chase, who requested anonymity. RCMP would not confirm the incident, or whether any arrests had been made.
Kidd doesn’t fault the Mounties. They are overwhelmed, he says. He now sleeps with a shotgun next to his bed. It used to be for coyotes.
The third-generation wheat grower met 10 other farmers recently to discuss forming rural patrols and using drones to monitor their land near Rosetown. Two years ago, his house was robbed. Now he padlocks all the doors that he once left open.
Dallas Ostrom, another grower, with land west of Saskatoon, told CBC that, like Kidd, he has always had a gun handy to dispatch an ornery skunk, but now carries the weapon for “personal protection.”
The Mounties have asked farmers to let them do “their jobs.” But farmers feel that the job isn’t getting done. The Prairie idyll has become a potential powder keg, rife with frustration and fear and guns.
Beyond the anecdotal — and anecdotes abound among the farmers — there are no hard data on rural crime rates. One Statistics Canada report from 2005 showed that the three Prairies provinces had the highest homicide rate in the country. Another more recent StatsCan report says the overall number of crimes in Saskatchewan ticked up by almost five per cent in 2015 — after falling for several years. But those numbers don’t distinguish between urban and rural areas.
Harley Dickinson is a sociologist at the University of Saskatchewan who spent a chunk of his childhood in small-town Saskatchewan. There is a divide between white and First Nations, one, he says, that isn’t exclusive to his province. Dickinson believes race is the “elephant in the room,” amid all the talk of masked men and gun-toting farmers.
“It is a pretty visible elephant,” he says. “It just isn’t spoken about.”
Several farmers agreed to speak, but only with the promise of anonymity. One said he was afraid of being targeted by First Nations gangs seeking retribution. Farms are isolated. Help can be a long way off.
“Everybody is scared of being called a racist, but we don’t have a race problem — we have a crime problem here,” the farmer said. “Unfortunately it is a certain segment of the population that is responsible for most of the crime.”
The current cascade of events comes just seven weeks after the Colten Boushie shooting. Boushie, a 22-year-old aboriginal, was shot and killed during an altercation on a farmyard near Biggar. Farmer Gerald Stanley is charged with second-degree murder. (Saskatchewan’s Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations did not respond to an interview request for this story.)
Meantime, near Rosetown, Kidd is busy with harvest. Ten years ago, he could drive onto another man’s lot unannounced and borrow a wrench. Now he won’t go onto a property without an invitation. An unwritten Prairie code is being rewritten, and that’s a shame, says Kidd. But he says he is not about to be a victim.
“You could be white, black, or Indian — and stealing from us — and it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is: you are stealing. And I am just a dirt farmer, trying to protect himself and his property.”