Housing hundreds of men in work camps near First Nations communities can have devastating consequences, writes Kyle Edwards.
Fort St. John is situated in northern B.C.’s Peace River region, a landscape that is a beauty to behold. Statistics Canada lists the city’s population at about 20,000, but locals are quick to acknowledge that they live in a place containing two distinct communities: one that’s from here and one that isn’t—a “shadow population” that roughly doubles the resident number, depending on the season. For decades, the city has thrived off oil, gas, coal and hydroelectric development.
Two years ago, a report from the Firelight Group, a consulting organization that works with First Nations and municipalities, raised warnings about the “hyper-masculine” “rigger” culture in remote camps in Western Canada.
An awful pattern ensued. There would be partying at a local hotel; people would trickle in and out—some of them workers passing through town, she now believes. Soon Greyeyes would be one of the last remaining, she says, pressured to do things she didn’t want to do; saying no, but getting more intoxicated because she couldn’t control her addictions, until she finally passed out.
Linda Watson met Tony Labrie through an online dating site called Badoo in August 2016. She was a romantic who loved reading and watching romance movies at her home on the Saulteau First Nations, southwest of Fort St. John. Before the internet came into existence, she would become pen pals with people from as far away as Florida, never fearing they might have ill intentions.
Tammy’s 72-year-old mother Marvelene recalls being abused and subjected to racism in the 1960s during the construction of the W.A.C. Bennett dam. When Tammy was growing up, her father would befriend transient workers employed at various projects, five of whom, she says, abused her. She never told her parents. In one case, when she was five or six, a man staying at their family home called her into his bed to have a nap. She agreed, and the man gestured for her to touch his penis.
On a recent afternoon near the shores of Moberly Lake, Tammy and Ashley recalled their stories at their home in Saulteau—the house in which Linda and Krystina were killed. Tammy moved back home to support Kate after their deaths. They had to replace nearly everything. Everything, that is, except the memories. There’s a picture of Krystina, smiling in her basketball uniform, and one with her mother, both of them sharing the same energetic smile.
Whatever the increase, the impact is keenly felt on the ground. Organizations in places like Fort St. John that support victims of violence and sexual assault have waiting lists of women seeking their help. “The level of violence that’s going on that we don’t necessarily know about frightens me,” says Amanda Trotter, the executive director of the Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society.
The federal government has a way of assessing how projects may affect vulnerable populations: through a long-scrutinized tool called a gender-based analysis plus . One has been done on the Site C dam, and it was submitted to cabinet in 2014. But since then, no eyes outside Ottawa have seen it. Whenrequested the report, a spokesperson from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, which authored the analysis, said it is subject to cabinet confidence.
Manitoba Hydro was first made aware of these abuse allegations in 2012, and similar allegations were detailed in a CEC report from 2014, but failed to gain the same level of media attention. Commenting for a news article, Manitoba’s Sustainable Development Minister Rochelle Squires apologized for “what had occurred decades ago.”
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