‘Spirit Train' stopped on its tracks

A group of student and indigenous activists from Six Nations, Toronto, Waterloo, London, Kitchener and Guelph, blockaded the tracks and hung anti-Olympics banners and Native Unity flags off a ‘Canadian Pacific (CP)' rail overpass on Highway 27, near Elder Mills, just north of Toronto this past ‘Thanksgiving' weekend.

In an escalation of resistance to the 2010 Olympics, and the CP-sponsored ‘Olympic Spirit Train', these activists brought trains to a complete stop across the country for over three hours and gained national media coverage of the growing anti-Olympics movement in Canada.

This highly sophisticated action caught the authorities completely off-guard and involved safety scouts, media and police liaisons, off-site support, decoys and dozens of others who occupied and secured the area while activist Winnie Small locked herself down to the tracks.

“Today we shed light on what the Olympics really stands for; capitalist greed and colonialist theft of Indigenous lands,” said Small. “In stark contrast to Canada's cherished reputation as a human rights advocate, our First Nations live in abject poverty; casualties of Canada's apartheid policies, and its refusal to respect Indigenous rights to their own land.”

A CP police officer told the activists' police liaison midway through the lockdown that trains had been stopped and were backed up ‘across the country' and that this delay had already cost the company “millions of dollars.”

Hundreds of drivers passing by expressed their support for the blockade by flashing peace signs and raised fists while they yelled ‘keep it up' and honked their horns. And after many of their demands were met, the activists successfully negotiated a peaceful dispersal after hours of negotiations. No arrests were made and the activists were able to leave the area without incident.

The “Spirit Train” was launched Sunday, September 21, 2008 by Canadian Pacific Railways (major sponsor of the 2010 Olympics) in a bid to bring the ‘Olympic spirit' across the country. However it's been met with resistance at almost every stop along the way with protesters sometimes outnumbering supporters.

According to Dan Kellar, the groups media spokesperson, the main reasons more people are joining the anti-Olympics movement are, “the theft of vast amounts of native lands for Olympic infrastructure, the environmental destruction caused by all the development, the six billion dollar public debt passed down to taxpayers, to pay for it, the eviction and displacement of thousands of Vancouver's' urban poor because of accelerated gentrification, the exploitation of migrant laborers brought to Canada to work for under minimum wage in construction of the infrastructure, and the modern Olympics and their corporate sponsors' long history of racism and colonialism.”

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