Feature Article March 11, 2004
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Manomin Keezis The Rice Wars of 1981 (part 2)
[The first article in this series looked at some of the history of the Algonquins in the Frontenac region, and at Harold Perry and the development of the manomin keezis (wild rice) beds that had been nurtured over 80 years by his family. In this article the events leading up to a confrontation between Ardoch residents and the Ontario Provincial Police in the fall of 1981, and the results of that altercation, will be considered]
In Ardoch, wild rice became politicised in the fall of 1979, when a man named Clifford Zarecki began harvesting rice in a mechanical harvester, an aluminium boat that had been modified to harvest rice from the wild rice stand in the lake. He was first approached by Ardoch resident Howard Hermer, who attempted to make a citizens arrest. Zarecki produced a license from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources entitling him to harvest the crop, which was located on a crown owned waterway.
The rice crop of 1979 was gone, but Harold Perry and his neighbours decided to try to spare Mud Lake from further incursions from commercial harvesters. He approached Bob Lovelace of Northern Frontenac Community Services, in order to try and wade through the politics and determine how best to protect the rice in the future.
Bob Lovelace recalls how prepared Harold Perry was for the frustrations and altercations that followed.
Harold seemed to know, much more than I did, how devious and underhanded the government and the police were going to be. I was surprised by some of the things that happened, but Harold wasnt, he recalled when asked recently about the events of the early 80s.
A major battle over rice harvesting had been taking place throughout the late 70s in the Kenora area in northwestern Ontario, and it is in the context of this battle that events unfolded in Ardoch. In that case, the potential income from the large stands of rice pitted native and non-native harvesters against each other. At stake was a potentially lucrative wild rice crop. In April of 1978, a five year moratorium on the granting of rice harvesting licenses was declared by the provincial government because of the swirling controversies.
The first question about the Ardoch case was how had Mr. Zarecki and Lanark Wild Rice, the company he was associated with, obtained a license during a moratorium on granting new licenses.
When Perry inquired, he was informed by MNR officials that Lanark Wild Rice had a block license to harvest rice on the Mississippi river and they traded that license for a license on Mud Lake. At the time, a biologist with the MNR in Kemptville, David Watt, told Harrowsmith magazine Lanark Wild Rice has been operating for years in Lanark County and the shift to Mud Lake was only a shift of operations within the watershed. The 1979 license was thus only a renewal of their earlier one.
However, another MNR official said that licenses cannot be traded, but Lanark Wild Rice had actually been given a permit to harvest in order to determine how much rice was there. James Auld, the minister of Natural Resources at the time, took another tack, saying the interpretation Ive always had of the moratorium was that it only applied to the northern part of the province.
After a hearing on the matter in the summer of 1980, Lanark Wild Rice was refused a permit to harvest that year, but in 1981, saying the natives werent cropping anything like the whole crop, Minister of Natural Resources James Auld decided to restrict native ricing to a part of the lake and allow Lanark Wild Rice to harvest the rest. Native and non-natives within the area prepared themselves for a battle, which took place on August 30.
Picket lines had been set up at each end of the road along the lake by protesters. The police set up a command post at the Ompah hall, and also set up roadblocks of their own. The police had several boats in the water, along with 27 cruisers and two paddy wagons.
Accounts say the situation did get ugly at various roadblocks. There was a fair bit of pushing and shoving, and protesters said the police became pretty rough at certain points. In the end, a technicality kept the police from putting Zareckis harvesting boat in the water.
Mud Lake is crown land, but it is surrounded by private property. None of the local landowners had given permission for their land to be used as a boat launch, so the police began searching for a point in the lake that was within 20 feet of a road, putting it within the road allowance and thus making it public land.
The police found a spot where the road approached the lake and prepared to put the boat in. Bob Lovelace was on the scene at the time and he asked them to measure the distance. It was 7.6 metres. Although the police officer said that was less than 20 feet, a conversion determined it was actually 23 feet and the boat could not be launched.
That stopped the police on that day, but it was rumoured they were planning to return with a crane in order to hoist the boat into the water from the Ardoch bridge. By this time, however, the police had made many enemies of the local population, and it didnt help that a police cruiser had struck Doug Watkins, who happened to be the roads supervisor in Clar-Mil Township at the time.
Watkins told Harrowsmith magazine what happened next.
We heard that they were coming back with a crane to lower the boat from the bridge, and had an injunction to get them in. I talked to my Reeve and we noted that a lady had just complained that she wanted a culvert put in near her house. So I told him we would just get to work and put that culvert in. We tore up the road. Just by coincidence, The Reeve in Palmerston Township also had road work going on. So they tore up the other end of the road. A remarkable coincidence.
In the end the police never did return, and 23 Manomin Keezis (Wild Rice Moons) have passed on Mud Lake since that time. A group, called the Indian, Metis, and Settlers Wild Rice Association (IMSet) was set up to work for native rights in the area, and it was active for about ten years. The commercial potential of Wild Rice turned out to be overstated, as did the size of the rice beds at Mud Lake. The community that was so strong in the area at the time has changed considerably, and the unity between native and settler populations that was so strong in 1981 has faded.
The past ten years have seen the establishment of an on-again off-again lands claims process for Algonquin territories in the Ottawa valley, and the establishment of three groups: the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation and Allies (AAFNA), an offshoot of IMSet with Randy Cota and Bob Lovelace as co-chiefs and Harold Perry as honorary chief; The Sharbot Lake Anishnabe with Chief Doreen Davis; and the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation (AAFN) with Chief Randy Malcolm. The latter two groups have been recognised by the land claims process and are participating in it, while AAFNA has remained resolutely outside of the process.
The hostile relationship between AAFNA and AAFN will be the subject of part 3 of this series.
