Clifford George kept his humour in battles
OBITUARY Native elder fought in two wars but found ‘ enemies’ at home A regular at hearings into cousin’s death at Ipperwash park
Clifford George, a native elder who retained a boyish sense of humour despite pain that included being a WW II prisoner of war and losing his family home to the Canadian government, will be buried tomorrow.
George was a constant fixture at the Ipperwash inquiry into the shooting death of his cousin, Anthony ( Dudley) George, until August, when he began traditional native and mainstream treatments for cancer. Over the past month, he also suffered two heart attacks and stroke while in hospital. He died Friday in a Sarnia hospital at the age of 85.
Mr. Justice Sidney Linden, chair of the Ipperwash inquiry, praised George’s humour and wisdom over the past 14 months during public hearings in the southwestern Ontario town of Forest, near the Stoney Point reserve where George was raised.
“ Clifford George’s good humour and positive outlook were particularly admired and appreciated,” Linden said in a prepared statement. “He will be greatly missed by many and his death marks a sad day for all of us.” Lead commission lawyer Derry Millar said: “Clifford George as an elder brought great wisdom to his community and the wider community. His presence at the inquiry virtually every day was an inspiration to all participants.” The inquiry is looking into the death of his distant cousin Dudley George, 38, who was shot by an Ontario Provincial Police officer late at night on Sept. 6, 1995. Acting Sergeant Kenneth Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing death.
Dudley George was one of two dozen native protestors who occupied Ipperwash Provincial Park at the end of tourist season in 1995, saying it was on a sacred burial ground. Their claims were later supported by documents released by the federal government.
Clifford George said there were several sacred burial grounds in Ipperwash Provincial Park on Lake Huron near Sarnia. He also loved to tell that he knew the secret burial site of the great native leader Tecumseh, who was killed by U. S. troops during the War of 1812 on the banks of the Thames River, about a 45- minute drive from Stoney Point. When he testified at the Ipperwash inquiry in September 2004, Clifford George wore a veteran’s blue blazer, with a chest full of war medals from World War II and the Korean War, and held an eagle feather, a native symbol for truth. He told of how the return home from World War II was particularly rough for his older brother, Kenneth, who suffered shell shock in combat. Immediately after returning to Canada in 1945, Kenneth George skipped a party held by his military unit in Guelph to hitchhike to Stoney Point, only to see his community had been levelled for a military base.
“ He looked around and found that ( his former home) was a barracks, and he couldn’t understand that,” George said. “ He slept in a ditch for the rest of the night, because he didn’t know where to go.”
Clifford George and his two older brothers, all of whom volunteered to fight overseas, were granted permission to visit the graveyard at the military base where their mothers and others from the community were buried.
“ There was trenches dug where they were playing soldier, right in our gravesite,” George said. “ That is what made it bad for us. . . . I always say, ‘ I found all
my enemies when I got home.’ ”
Clifford George said he tried to
bring his English war bride, whom he
met while fighting with an anti- aircraft unit in Dover, onto the Kettle
Point reserve where his family had
been forcibly relocated by the Canadian government in 1942.
However, he testified an official told him it wasn’t right to bring a white woman onto a native reserve that would likely never get hydroelectricity or indoor plumbing.
Clifford George and his cousin Dudley were among several dozen Stoney Point natives who moved back onto the military base in 1993 and refused to leave. In the summer of 1995, the Canadian military moved out.
In an interview, Clifford George said he welcomed Linden’s approach of putting Dudley George’s death in the context of history and culture, and striving for healing as well as facts.
“ I’ve been asked a lot of times, ‘ Don’t you hate white people?’ ” he said in an interview during a break in the inquiry. “ I can’t hate nobody. . . . I learned a long time ago if you want to have friends, you’ve got to be one.”