Protesters block road in Westphal, alleging racism
Posted Aug 9, 2010 03:03:34 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Members of North Preston’s black community are calling it racism, but the area councillor says it’s a matter of logistics.
A group of peaceful protesters are blocking a rural road in the community, claiming they’re being blocked from accessing a route around a construction site because of racism.
Ten families on the Lake Major Road are being allowed to use a former logging road that is padlocked and inaccessible to the rest of the community. Everyone else has to take a seven-kilometer detour to the nearest highway. The protesters are alleging it’s only white people who are being allowed to use the dirt road that cuts the length of the detour by about a kilometer and a half.
Pastor Wayne Desmond was among a group of protestors who blocked access to Lake Major Road on Monday. He tells CTV it’s a clear-cut race issue.
“In 2010 they have the black community, the largest in Nova Scotia being denied an opportunity to travel a road and yet the neighbours down the road are granted the right to travel that road,” he said.
Fellow protester Myra Beals says she’s not happy with the detour she’s forced to use.
“There’s no lights, the road is not paved and there’s access to cellphones,” says Beals.
Coun. David Hendsbee (Preston-Lawrencetown-Chezzetcook) says he’s disappointed that some people have taken the situation and skewed it in such a way as to upset the community.
He says the families living on the road got a key, regardless of racial background, because of their proximity to the shortcut.
“(The protesters) are trying to make it into a racial divide which it is not,” he said. “It is simply a geographical matter in regards to people who live immediately abutting the construction zone who were given the courtesy by the private property owners to access the road if they wished.”
Hendsbee adds he negotiated with the property owner to have access to the road for emergency vehicles so that there was an emergency evacuation route available to the community.
The detour will be in place until the new Ernst Mill Bridge is reopened in mid-October.
