The professional press is a wonderful thing, often taking to time to actually check things out before begining to type. This article in The Toronto Star provides useful background information to this week's protest by people of the Six Nations, including:

In 1783, commanding Gen. Frederick Haldimand and his defeated loyalists retreated north across the Great Lakes into what is now southern Ontario. The Six Nations were part of this trek. In recompense for their service to the Crown, Haldimand awarded them all the land for 10 kilometres on each side of the Grand River, from its mouth on Lake Erie to its source, northwest of what is now Orangeville. All in all, it was about 385,000 hectares — a sizeable chunk of the best land in Ontario. Ken Young's ancestor Theobold Young, an Englishman with ties to the Iroquois, was part of that retreat. The Simcoe-area farmer was at the barricade in Caledonia this week to show support for old allies.

It is simply the fact that if it were not for the Six Nations peoples led by the Brants who protected both ends of Lake Ontario in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Canada would be a country that might have a western border at Kingston or even Quebec City. The recollection of this bit of our actual history by Ken Young reminds me of the position the western Nova Scotian Acadians at a somethings-gotta-be-done meeting in the south-west part of the province a few years ago at the time when the Mi'kmaq received recognition of their long standing but long denied treaty right to fish. After a number of fishermen of English settler ancestry spoke against honouring the treaties, an elderly Acadian stood and pointed out that when the English forefathers were burning the Acadian churches in the 1750s, the Mi'kmaq had taken the Acadian forefathers in. Room quietens. Others agree. Meeting over. Fishery not gone to hell subsequently.