From Oka, understanding
20th anniversary SQ officer's sister translates book about community

By DAVID JOHNSTON, The Gazette July 12, 2010

OKA, QC - Twenty years to the day after the shooting death of a provincial police officer triggered the Oka crisis of 1990, the officer's sister visited the Mohawk community of Kanesatake near Oka yesterday to say Cpl. Marcel Lemay's death was not in vain.

"I sincerely believe that the blood of my brother, which flowed very close to here in the pine forest, will serve a purpose much greater than anyone can now imagine," Francine Lemay said in a speech to a gathering of aboriginals and non-aboriginals yesterday afternoon in Aronhiatekha School.

Lemay's speech in French and English was the highlight of a weekend of activities in Kanesatake to mark the 20th anniversary of the Oka crisis and underscore how land-claims issues in the area remain unresolved a full two decades later.

Lemay's brother was shot and killed by an unidentified shooter when he and other members of the Surete du Quebec SWAT team tried to take down a barricade that Mohawks had put up on Route 344. The barricade had been put up to prevent expansion of a private golf course on land on lands bordering a Mohawk cemetery. The shooting sparked a 78-day standoff that ended without death or serious injury by the Canadian army in September. Although the summer confrontation provoked governments to look at land claims, momentum to resolve these claims has dissipated in recent years.

Yesterday's anniversary activities began with a commemorative march of 250 aboriginals and non-aboriginals through the town of Oka and up the hill on Route 344 where the barricades were placed. No major political figures at the federal, provincial or municipal levels of government in Quebec participated.

The peaceful march was led by an SQ car and just behind by a four-wheel, all-terrain vehicle driven by Harvey Nichols, 63, who was on the Mohawk side of the barricades in 1990. Nichols said his thoughts were with many of his fellow Mohawk men who were with him through that summer who have since died relatively young of diabetes and heart disease, two diseases for which there is a high incidence among aboriginal men.

"It's a sad day for me," he said.

It was also a difficult day for Lemay, whose path toward reconciliation with the community that has been associated with the death of her brother was praised yesterday by Kanesatake community leaders at an afternoon event where Lemay was the keynote speaker.

In February of last year, Lemay stunned community leaders when she phoned up Hilda Nicolas, director of the Kanesatake Language and Cultural Centre, out of the blue and said she would like to translate a book about the history of Kanesatake Mohawks into French.

The book, At the Woods' Edge, was published in 1996, after three years of research and writing by three women in the community. Lemay was introduced to the book after two McGill University students contacted her in 2006 to ask if she had any opinion on the Oka crisis, all these years later.

She agreed to speak to the students, but not wanting to come across as ignorant, she phoned a friend and asked for help in trying to find out something about the Kanesatake Mohawks before doing the interview. She was given a copy of At the Woods' Edge, which she said she read straight through virtually without stopping. It gave her a sense of empathy and sympathy with the Mohawks. As a translator who earns a living translating from English to French for major corporate clients, she thought that translating the book into French would help build bridges between francophones and Mohawks in Quebec. She spent March of last year through March of this year translating the 394-page original English version of At the Woods' Edge into A l'oree des bois.

"Our licence plate reads 'Je me souviens' -I remember," Lemay said in English to people gathered in reception room in Aronhiatekha school. "But how can we remember something that we are not even aware of ?"

While speaking in French, her voice cracked with emotion when she spoke of "the pain of losing my brother in this crisis" and then cracked even more when she followed that with the words "that troubled all of Quebec."

Later, speaking again in English, she said: "I firmly believe that the assault that took place here 20 years ago was a mistake and a failure. A simple work of mediation could have spared us the Oka crisis, the death of a man who was a peace officer who loved life and his family, and saved millions of dollars."

For more about Lemay's personal journey of reconciliation, see www.francinelemay.com