Plan B camp taken down
Police arrest protesters at work site
A few quiet days at the Plan B protest camp came to an end Friday after the RCMP arrested four people at the site many came to see as the heart of the opposition to the project.
Gail Rhyno was one of the people arrested and later released after she refused to leave the small camp protesters had set up near a hemlock stand in the construction’s path.
Like many of the protesters, Rhyno said she felt the RCMP betrayed them, claiming the police promised to give them notice before moving in to evict them.
“I think we’d been given a pretty good sense of hinting indications that nothing was happening today,” she said.
But as Rhyno and the others realized around 4 p. m., the contractor had called the RCMP to remove the protesters who had crossed a snow fence that surrounded the work site.
The RCMP, a few workers and four or five protesters were the only ones at the camp site when the police moved into the area.
It stayed that way because the RCMP blocked a nearby dirt road many people had been using to get in and out of the camp.
Rhyno said several people
were sitting around a sacred fire when they noticed six RCMP officers and the workers move into the area.
She got a few text messages out to supporters before she walked around the perimeter and looked for the machinery, she said.
“I could hear them coming.”
Rhyno said as events unfolded, she realized it was time to decide if she was going to leave the camp or not.
“I just sat down,” she said.
It was that decision that eventually led to an RCMP officer picking her, hoisting her over his shoulder and carrying her away as she went limp in his arms.
Rhyno said another two officers joined the first and helped carry her out of the fenced- in area.
Earlier in the week the RCMP arrested a woman who lay down in front of a tree harvester, so Rhyno said she knew it was a possibility and she was ready for it.
She said she was protesting all week and didn’t plan to make the workers’ jobs any easier.
“It just seemed to me the logical thing to do,” she said.
Rhyno wasn’t alone with the RCMP arresting three others, including a woman they led across the construction site in handcuffs until they reached the site’s parking area where a cruiser was waiting. Eventually they released her, but she still voiced her displeasure and at one point clung to a fellow protester as she sobbed into her shoulder.
“It’s coming down. How can they do this,” she said.
Others directed their anger at the police at the camp and near the highway.
“We live in a banana republic,” one man shouted.
Another woman yelled across the fence at the RCMP officers who were at the camp to keep an eye on things as the protesters’ numbers grew from about five after the arrests to almost 20 when the harvester reached the stream.
“Why didn’t you treat us with respect,” the woman yelled.
There were also more tears with at least one person sobbing as she watched the harvest clear a growing path through the forest where about a dozen tents had stood only a few hours before.
Only once did the RCMP allow a protester over the fence and that was to move the sacred fire so it wouldn’t go out.
As Rhyno stood in the rain with a harvester rumbling in the forest behind her, she said the RCMP made the decision to clear out the protesters at a time when there were few people at the camp and there was no media around.
“They’re not going to convince any of us that it wasn’t a calculated effort to make sure that their job was as easy as possible when they wanted to come in,” she said.
But while RCMP Sgt. Andrew Blackadar said he was sure some people felt the RCMP betrayed them, he also said the police told the protesters Thursday they would have to move and there was no promise they would get any further notice.
“We didn’t give them a time when we were coming in because it’s not up to us when we come in,” he said.
The RCMP had spent little time at the site over the few days before the arrests and Blackadar said they were only there because the contractor called for help to clear the area.
Once the protesters were removed, the RCMP expected to stay on site only as long as they were needed to make sure everything stayed peaceful, Blackadar said.
“We just want to make sure the public peace is kept.”