Newspaper apologizes to Indigenous organization for offensive headline

THUNDER BAY — A newspaper in northern Ontario is apologizing for a headline about a police investigation into two incidents where eggs were thrown from passing vehicles at two men believed to be Indigenous. The headline in Thursday’s print edition of the ChronicleJournal referred to the alleged attacks as “egg-toss incidents” that have left police in Thunder Bay, Ont., “scrambling,” prompting the Assembly of First Nations to demand an apology. In a statement Thursday, the organization called the headline “offensive” and “insensitive,” particularly in a city plagued by reports of violence against Indigenous people. The ChronicleJournal’s front-page apology Friday says the play on words was “inappropriate” for a story about an alleged criminal attack. The story focused on a police investigation launched after two men reported they had eggs thrown at them from passing vehicles in two separate incidents on Wednesday. Police said Thursday one man, 21, was taken to hospital by ambulance. The incident comes a little more than a year after an Indigenous woman in the city was hit by a trailer hitch thrown by someone in a passing car. The woman, Barbara Kentner, died of her injuries about six months later. On Jan. 29, 2017, Kentner was walking with her sister in a residential area when someone yelled “I got one” after the 34-year-old was hit. She required emergency surgery, but relatives said she never fully recovered. In the incidents last week, police didn’t say whether either victim is Indigenous, but said its Indigenous liaison unit started an investigation. The AFN said “the perpetrators allegedly (yelled) racist insults about First Nations people at the victims.”