Last of the Freemen quietly leave ‘embassy’
CALGARY — A two-year standoff in a north Calgary duplex ended peacefully Friday night when the last four occupants claiming the apartment as their embassy drove off into the night.
The three-car convoy left the Parkdale property just after 8:30 p.m. under police supervision, making good on their promise to leave before a midnight eviction deadline.
“We are leaving in peace,” a man from the house wearing a purple shirt, who didn’t identify himself, said earlier Friday.
“We didn’t realize that all this was this way. I regret I wasn’t informed before that anything was going down this way.”
A friend of the squatters assisted police in convincing them to leave and later turned himself in for outstanding warrants not related to the high-profile duplex occupation, said duty inspector Guy Baker. The man, who wore a hooded sweater, was cuffed, searched and loaded into a police cruiser before he was taken away.
Early Friday morning, Calgary police arrested Freeman-onthe-Land Mario Antonacci, also known as Andreas Pirelli, who had refused to pay full rent and leave the Parkdale duplex.
The group of squatters also took up residence and declared the rental duplex their own “embassy.”
The man wearing the purple shirt, who declared himself a member of the “Deneza Country,” had initially told the Calgary Herald the group planned to stay put.
“I’m going to stay here for now. We’re staying by international law that all lands are Indian lands,” he said, later deciding that the group would leave.
Antonacci was arrested on a Canada-wide warrant without incident and remains in police custody.
Arrangements were made to transport him to Montreal within the next six days to face aggravated assault charges against a former landlord.
Duplex owner Rebekah Caverhill had tried to evict Antonacci for the past two years, but never had a formal rental contract.
When Antonacci changed the locks and declared her Calgary property his own, she was horrified to learn he had taken over the entire space, painting the floor and bedroom black.
The messy suite also sported a boardroom table with chairs in the basement, where Caverhill said he was holding civil disobedience classes.
Now, she says while she’s grateful police have removed Antonacci from her property, she fears she may be facing costs to repair the duplex.
“That’s what scares me, I’ve got a lot of expenses,” she said from her Sylvan Lake area home.
It all began for Caverhill two years ago when a friend recommended she take Antonacci as a tenant in the basement below her own living quarters. Happy to have a handyman to spruce up the aging duplex, Caverhill says she was content to verbally agree to three months’ free rent in exchange for painting and other “refreshing.” She regrets she did not have a formal rental agreement with him.
It didn’t take long for the red flags to go up. By the beginning of 2012, the handiwork still wasn’t done.
“He was making the renos go on and on and never let me see it,” she said.
Meanwhile, the $1,500 a month rent was never being paid.
One day, Caverhill knocked on the door, tried the lock and found it had been changed.
She says Antonacci gave her odd-looking documents that said: “soveran nations embassy of mother earth.”
“When I Googled it, I thought, ‘I think I’m in trouble.’ ”
That’s when she learned Antonacci was calling himself a Freeman on the Land and didn’t intend to pay what he owed.
In fact, Antonacci billed her for work he never let her see, placed a lien on her property and declared it his embassy.
Antonacci had been ordered by the courts to vacate the Calgary rental property he claimed was a sovereign “embassy.”