Right of way blocked in Kanehsatake
The right of way blocked by a wire fence and iron posts. Courtesy Ellen Gabriel
A historically used right of way situated on Oka Golf Club has recently been fenced off, much to the dismay of Kanehsata’kehró:non, who say that the closure of the passage is a further infringement on their inherent rights.
The right of way is located where Centre Road continued to the village, before the golf club was built. When the golf course was built, developers included the right of way so that community members could still access the village, since the golf club was blocking the way.
Over the years, posts have been erected to narrow the right of way so that only one person can walk through at a time, but community member Ellen Gabriel said that in the winter, she saw a wire fence strung between the posts for the first time.
Back then, another community member removed that fence with wire cutters, but on June 6, Gabriel saw that it had been re-hung.
“This has never happened before, they just started doing it,” she said.
“There needs to be something done to correct the situation.”
The fence was once more taken down by community members, but Gabriel said that when passing by on Monday morning, she noticed it was once again strung up, this time reinforced with additional iron posts.
What the right of way typically looks like when open, after the wire fence was formerly removed. Courtesy Ellen Gabriel
Gabriel said that she had been told that a golf course administrator said people had been parking on the lacrosse road and stealing the flags from the greens.
“The agreement a long time ago when they gave a permit to the golf course was that there would be this right of way,” Gabriel said. “The people of that generation had said ‘Well, how are we going to get to the village, the golf course is blocking us from going to the village,’ and so that was the agreement, that there’d be this right of way.”
Gabriel said that the right of way can’t be put anywhere else, because that would constitute a detour - this right of way represents the original, direct route to the village.
“That’s the original agreement. It’s been there since I can remember, and I’m as old as the golf course, it’s always been there,” she said.
Oka Golf Club did not respond to The Eastern Door’s request for comment by deadline, nor did the municipality of Oka when seeking clarity about who installed the fence and why.
“The trouble is always going to be there, simply because it still exists,” Gabriel said. “Those posts should remain where they are, and in fact they should be wider.”
On Monday, Gabriel returned to the right of way to cut back foliage that had grown up around the fence over the past few months. There, she met a non-local who claimed he was “just driving around” on “the edge of some reserve.” Gabriel told him that the area was for residents only and asked him to leave, and the individual refused, starting to insult her and calling her a “crazy old lady.”
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Gabriel called perimeter security, but the man took off before they arrived.
“A lot of the people who come here have been very disrespectful to community members and it’s just another example of the kind of people that come through here to purchase products from Kanehsatake on the 344,” Gabriel said.
Gabriel said that as of Wednesday morning, the fence was still up, and the right of way still blocked.
