Buoyant blog of septuagenarian (78) Kanadian poet and haikuist Chris Faiers/cricket. People's Poetry in the tradition of Milton Acorn, haiku/haibun, progressive politikal rants, engaged Buddhism and meditation, revitalizing of Callaghan's Rapids Conservation Area, memories of ZenRiver Gardens and Purdy Country LitFests (PurdyFests), events literary and politikal, and pics, amid swirling currents of earth magick and shamanism. Read in 119 countries last week - 75,777 readers in September.
The threats against Canada have been on the table since day one of the Trump regime.
But now we are learning just how real the threat is.
According to Chrystia Freeland’s new book Unreliable Boyfriend (terrible title, I think), Howard Lutnick threatened to send troops across the border by “sundown” to force Premier Doug Ford to bend the knee to Donald Trump.
Lutnick was enraged that Canada was acting like “Ukraine” by refusing to give in to the gangster regime in Washington. He claimed that Canada “needed to say sorry” to the president for standing up for our sovereignty.
To make that happen, Trump set out to “break some guy in Ontario.”
The “guy” in question was Premier Doug Ford.
It was total gangster language.
Ontario’s steel, auto, manufacturing and softwood mills were being hammered. In response, Ford was all over the American media acting as Captain Canada. He vowed to impose a 25% surcharge on energy exports to the United States as a countermeasure.
In retaliation, Lutnick threatened to send American troops across the border to seize Canadian land “by sundown” unless Ford backed down.
Doug Ford waved the white flag and has basically gone to ground ever since.
Threatening to invade our country is a blockbuster allegation, but it appeared like a gossipy aside in a long excerpt in The Globe and Mail from Freeland’s book.
What to make of it?
Well, let’s start with the notion that Canada needs to say sorry after being threatened and having our industries attacked unilaterally.
Lutnick, Hoekstra, Navarro, Trump and gang have been infuriated that Canada didn’t immediately roll over when they targeted our industries. They don’t see us as a sovereign nation, but as a vassal people deserving punishment.
As little as two weeks ago, Trump reiterated the threat, saying Canada would come forward to say “sorry, sir.”
He said that we were in the process of “being taught a lesson.”
Lutnick’s statement that we were acting like Ukrainians is telling.
Trump has made no secret of his belief that Vladimir Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine was an act of “savvy” brilliance. Like Putin, he is furious that the Ukrainians have stood up to the Kremlin.
Trump sees Canada in the same way that Putin sees Ukraine — that we have no right to an independent future.
As for the threat to send troops across the border by sunset? Freeland points out that Lutnick didn’t have the authority to launch an invasion.
Of course, Lutnick didn’t have the authority to send troops. He was acting as Trump’s loudmouth enforcer. This is how Trump has done business since he was in charge of collecting rent at his dad’s buildings in Queens.
In the book Art of the Deal, Trump praised one of his tenant enforcers, Irving. The man was small and bald, with hands Trump says were “like jello,” but he was absolutely vicious. Trump bragged about the time Irving met a 10-year-old girl at the door and screamed at her,
“Tell your dad to pay his f-ing rent, or I’m going to knock his ass off.”
Trump wrote that this kind of malice left a strong impression on him.
If it was okay to threaten a 10-year-old, why not journalists? Or sitting judges? Or independent nations?
Howard Lutnick (who lied about bringing his children to Epstein Island) has won Trump’s favour because he is carrying on the tradition of Irving.
Perhaps Lutnick was just trying to act like a tough guy, but Ford took him seriously.
The question is not so much whether the United States would have sent troops across the border, but that an American trade negotiator put military threat on the table in the first place.
It must be taken with the utmost seriousness.
The White House antagonism towards Canada has never wavered, so we must assume they may follow through at some point. We know that if we back down or our leaders go to ground, then our nation is finished.
But over the last two years, the world has witnessed a remarkable transformation in Canada. Wherever I go in this immense, beautiful land, I meet people who have thought long and hard about the value of our national sovereignty.
We will meet the challenge.
We won’t ever bend to gangsters.
Lutnick and his crowd are enraged with us for a reason. They cannot abide a proud democratic nation on the border. Hence the threats and attempts at intimidation.
No matter what the threat, Canadians will hold the line.
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published in Poems, an anthology with Sourav Sarkar
Cooch Behar, India, 2025
My initial email to Patrick:
Hi Patrick,
I believe this poem is your "signature" poem. I think it's the best poem you've written, and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves and anthologization after anthologization.
You, and your poetry, remind me a lot of my old friend Shaunt Basmajian. I believe he died before your time as a poet, but he wrote about similar themes of being alienated in Toronto. Your background circumstances are very different, but you both wrote from the heart. Shaunt died of heart failure about a year after he was stabbed during a robbery on night shift cabby work on Craven Road.
But you have found a positive way to accept this urban alienation andr transmute it with a positive attitude and belief system that I don't think Shaunt ever managed to achieve in his short lifetime.
Anyway I'd really like to publish "Broken" on my blog.
BTW Sourav's poem has had well over 200 reads on the blog in a few brief days.
Thanks again for taking the time to share the sushi lunch with me last weekend. Appreciate the hugs!!! Know your Thanksgiving dinner was a family feaast!
When the leaves turn red and yellow, and the intense blue sky signals a coming cold wind, I think of the Adams Mine near Kirkland Lake. On Thanksgiving weekend in 2000, a ten-year battle to stop the biggest waste project in Canadian history came to a head on the road leading to the abandoned mine.
Adams Mine
A blockade by locals shut down access to the mine and all rail traffic on the Ontario Northland Railway. Tanker cars from the smelters in Rouyn and Timmins backed up, causing a serious economic crisis.
As Thanksgiving weekend approached, hundreds of people were gathered in a makeshift tent city on the rail tracks. Over 700 kms away, chaos reigned at Toronto City Hall as powerful financial interests tried to push this reckless project ahead despite growing opposition.
It all came to a head on Thanksgiving weekend.
Faced with mass arrests, people responded with pumpkin pie, turkey, and ham. We held the biggest Thanksgiving celebration the North had ever seen. That act of community defiance broke the stranglehold of backroom power and killed the environmentally dangerous Adams Mine dump project.
Adams Mine Blockade, October 2000
First Nations, farmers, and miners hold the line on the Adams Mine Blockade, October 2000
Standing on the road that weekend changed my life. Up until then, I was a musician, part-time journalist, and handyman. I had trusted the “system” and the “process” to do the right thing.
But watching the police come down the road to arrest my neighbours made me realize that trusting the power wasn’t good enough. You needed to organize and make those with power accountable to the people.
I’ve carried the lessons of that weekend with me ever since.
On this Thanksgiving, I would like to share with you an excerpt from my book Unlikely Radicals: The Story of the Adams Mine Dump War
Thanksgiving on the Road
The blockade on the Adams Mine Road was entering its 9th day.
Every day more and more people were coming to the blockade – First Nations, farmers, miners – people from both Ontario and Quebec. The cookhouses and sleeping quarters had grown into a small tent town. People were preparing for a potential winter occupation.
On the Thursday before Thanksgiving, I received an anonymous call from someone in the local Crown Prosecutor’s office.
“Premier Mike Harris is freaking out. He wants 100 people arrested and held without bail until after Thanksgiving in order to take the pressure off the Toronto council vote.”
“Will the judge grant this injunction?” I asked.
“Not a chance.”
My source said that the judge took the position that as long as there was no violence on the blockade, there wasn’t a judge in the region who would sign the order. Our rag-tag group of activists had built a reputation as the good guys in what had been a very ugly and dirty fight.
On the Friday evening, a large crowd gathered in the tent town that had grown up along the tracks. Joseph Gold held a Sabbath prayer service, and then people began to bring out musical instruments around the large fire near the railway tracks. Folks were coming in from as far away as Toronto and Thunder Bay. A couple from Florida ventured down the road and decided to spend the evening.
It was a festive night. The feeling in the air was electric. The evening seemed remarkably lighthearted until Toronto Sun reporter Alan Cairnes took me aside and gave me the heads-up that the police were moving against the blockade.
“The cops are coming before dawn tomorrow to arrest you people. You guys are fighting the good fight. You have no idea how much damage you have done to the other side. No matter what happens, you have to be still standing here when the voting resumes in Toronto on Tuesday.”
The voting at City Hall on the dump deal had been suspended over the Thanksgiving weekend. But to hold the line until next Tuesday with the growing pressure of the backed-up rail traffic seemed like an impossible task.
Night fell dark on the surrounding bush, but an eerie light appeared just beyond the curve in the road behind the police lines. It was the headlights of a growing number of police cars and vans lining up for a raid on Saturday morning.
I was standing with my wife watching the ominous lights. My wife was holding our youngest daughter, Lola, who was only two. Grand Chief Carol McBride came up to us and said simply,
“It’s either a really good sign or a really bad sign to see a mother with a baby on a blockade.”
Either way, we were about to find out.
We put the call out to everyone through our immense phone tree to pack their cars and head to the road. We told them that the showdown was coming.
Just before dawn on October 7, the police set up their own blockade at the entrance to the Adams Mine Road. Any cars attempting to come down to the barricade site were told to go home.
None of the cars left. They parked along the gravel shoulder of the highway.
People began to get out of the cars bringing turkeys, ham and pumpkin pie. They moved in and around the vast array of police and paddy wagons as if the police weren’t even there.
The message had gone out through the region – the police are coming and rather than bringing placards or balaclavas, bring food and supplies because arrests or no arrests, we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving on the road.
One frazzled officer who was trying to turn the vehicles back received a stern lecture from an older couple from Kirkland Lake.
“George Mangotich is roasting the Thanksgiving pig. If you don’t make room for his supplies, he’s not going to be able to have the pig ready in time for the supper.”
At first light, the police came down in a phalanx to the railway tracks. We were already lined up on the other side, locked arm in arm. A police officer stepped out and read the injunction ordering us to leave. Terry Graves, who was our key negotiator, went forward to meet the officer, who tried to serve him with the injunction.
Graves looked it over and noticed that the official seal was missing.
“Wait a minute, this isn’t a legitimate injunction. It came off a bloody fax machine. Where’s the original?”
The original copy was nowhere to be had because the police couldn’t find a local judge to sign it. They had been forced to rely on a faxed injunction from another jurisdiction.
“You can’t arrest us with a faxed injunction,” Graves declared.
The officer repeated his ultimatum. Graves turned his back on the police.
“I refuse to be a participant in an illegal act.”
The police officer was now thoroughly confused. Tensions were running very high. A young activist from Timiskaming First Nation began waving the Warrior flag.
The police might be waiting for the better part of the day for an enforceable injunction to arrive. At this moment, officer Jim McDonnell, the lead commander for the Ontario Provincial Police, stepped forward. He was all brass and serious business and had been sent from the North Bay detachment to bring the situation under control.
McDonnell was a tough cop. I knew McDonnell, and I knew that both he and Terry Graves shared a deep love of the music of alt country legend Fred Eaglesmith. In a break from their intense arguing, I explained to Graves that the OPP lead was a fellow “Fredhead.”
Terry came back to the police line and began to talk music. Officer McDonnell was confused at first, but then they found common ground.
McDonnell had a problem on his hands. He could easily fill the paddy wagons with Thanksgiving families, but that could lead to a troublesome backlash. Throughout the region, there were many rural and First Nation loners willing to take matters into their own hands.
Both sides feared the possibility of a lone actor causing damage or hurt.
McDonnell and Graves struck a compromise: the tent city was to be moved back fifty feet and days of backed-up freight allowed to move. The tents, cookhouses, and so on could stay on the road, leaving a de facto occupation of the Adams Mine Road intact while the trains could proceed.
McDonnell barked out the orders to push everything back fifty feet. Our volunteer army sprang into action. We couldn’t believe we were still standing.
As Graves and McDonnell finalized their negotiations, people began pouring down the road with supplies for the single largest Thanksgiving supper Timiskaming had ever seen. Large temporary dining halls were built with two-by-fours and tarps to provide some protection from the increasingly cold temperatures.
The event began with prayers of Thanksgiving from the back of a pickup truck. Yellow birch leaves fell from the trees and swirled in the cold air as Rita Stanger sang a haunting a cappella version of “Amazing Grace.”
And then the feeding of the people began. In true rural style, the gathered community came together in shared food and fellowship. The Thanksgiving meal on the Adams Mine Road was the highlight in a month of tension and conflict.
Over 1,000 people were fed with multiple supplies of pumpkin and apple pie left over.
But as families celebrated their continued control of the road, the Adams Mine leadership realized we had come to another dead end.
The Toronto vote was within three days, and we appeared to have run out of tools for maintaining the pressure. With an injunction against actions on the rail line, our pressure points had been severely limited.
Grand Chief McBride listened quietly to each idea put forward. She then said emphatically,
“Load up the school buses; we are taking the fight to Toronto.”
There was a flurry of protests as to why this wasn’t a good idea. But she was resolute.
The very next day, a short public meeting was held in the upstairs of Earlton Arena, which was about 30 kms south of the mine site.
Leftover food from the Thanksgiving dinner, including hundreds of slices of pumpkin pie, was laid out on the tables. The room quickly filled with hundreds of people, and the opp stood along the walls of the hall. They seemed relieved that they didn’t have to arrest us. We had developed good and respectful relations with the police.
The mood of the hall was energized.
Carol McBride stood up and made a simple pitch.
“There are school buses outside. We are leaving in one hour. We want you on those buses. Go home; get your toothbrush and your sleeping bag. We’re going to take this fight right into the city of Toronto.”
And with no idea of where we would stay or what would come next, northern folks grabbed their toothbrushes and sleeping bags. We were off to Toronto for the final showdown.
We were going to shut this dangerous plan down once and for all.
If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.
The Resistance is a 100% reader-supported publication. If you enjoy the work as a free subscriber, we hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Thank you.
