In 1975, my father – an adventurous French teacher – decided we should move from rural Nova Scotia to rural Saskatchewan, for a change of pace.
After our plane landed in Regina, we rented a car and headed to our new home, a farming community called Langenburg, about 12 miles east of the Manitoba border. The next week, I started Grade 9.
That year, I learned a lot about our adopted Prairie Province: I learned about bunny-hugs, a hooded sweatshirt that was called a ‘hoodie’ in other provinces. Underwear was called ‘gitch.’ I learned that drinking beer on the weekend was an activity in itself, and that the ultimate goal was to find someone old enough to buy you and your friends a case of Molson Canadian from offsales. I learned that people would make fun of my Maritime accent and that people in Saskatchewan ended almost every sentence with an “Eh?”
The other thing I learned about that community in rural Saskatchewan was that racism was rampant. In Langenburg, people referred to the New Star Café as ‘the Chinaman’s’ or ‘the Gooks.’ They talked about the First Nations family who lived on the outskirts of town, who had been there for three generations, living in a faded white wooden house that was at the mercy of the howling winds that would blow across the prairie flatlands, summer and winter, spring and fall. People would refer to this family as: Indians; Injuns; Breeds; Squaws; Big black bucks; Half-breeds. These words were said naturally, in normal conversation. No one thought anything of it, but there was a definite division between the whites of the town and the First Nations people.
On August 9, 2016, a 22-year-old Indigenous man named Colten Boushie died from a single bullet fired at the back of his head. Essentially, he died for trespassing on a farmer’s land.
The farmer – 56-year-old Gerald Stanley – was acquitted on February 9, 2018, found not guilty by an all-white jury of second-degree murder or of manslaughter.
I owned a small acreage for about 11 years, in rural Alberta. I know about how people will drive onto your property unexpectedly, looking for directions to somewhere else. I’m not sure how I would have reacted if a carload of people who had been drinking had roared onto my place, with a bad tire. I know for certain, though, that I would not have shot anyone. I don’t own a gun and have never felt the need to.
As a mother of a son and three daughters, I can only imagine the pain that Colten Boushie’s mother and family must be going through, as they are forced to re-live the circumstances surrounding Colten’s death that terrible day in August.
It feels like justice was not served on February 9, in the Court of Queen’s Bench in Battleford, Saskatchewan. A man killed another man, and then the killer walked free. It shouldn’t matter what colour your skin is. Will we ever know if racism was a contributing factor to the verdict?
If there is anything positive about Colten’s untimely death, it has brought attention to the fact that racism is a huge issue in Canada. We must find our collective voice as Canadians and eradicate prejudism.
Jennifer Isaac is a writer and activist who was educated at the University of Calgary. She has had work published by numerous national magazines and broadcast on CBC-Radio. Currently, she is working on a collection of short stories. She resides in Cochrane
