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THEY CAME alone, and in small groups. Many arrived
hours before the funeral of Tim McLean, the victim of a gruesome slaying on
a Greyhound bus.
Most didn’t know him, yet they stood under a
blazing sun on Saturday afternoon to pay their respects – and to stop
members of an extremist American Christian sect from disrupting the
ceremony.
In the end, nearly 400 ordinary Winnipeggers ringed the
church from which Mr. McLean was to be buried, to prevent members of
Kansas’ Westboro Baptist Church from shouting out their hateful
opinion that Mr. McLean’s killer was “sent by God” to
murder him in retribution for Canada’s acceptance of homosexuality,
abortion and adultery.
Compassion
Ultimately, the Kansas protesters failed to show.
Still, the private and spontaneous outpouring of concern by hundreds of
people for the feelings and privacy of Mr. McLean’s family and
friends is a demonstration of the innate compassion and ingenuity of
ordinary Canadians.
As steadfast proponents of free speech, we were
reluctant to call for the Westboro Baptists to be banned from Canada or
barred from the street in front of the funeral.
Nevertheless, we were disgusted by their plans to
desecrate Mr. McLean’s final send-off with repulsive chants and
placards proclaiming that “God Hates Canada.”
Day ordered blockage
Declaring the group’s messages to be
“hateful,” Public Service Minister Stockwell Day ordered the
Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to block any of its members who
attempted to enter the country. A handful were turned back, but another
small group boasted to the media that it had made it through and intended
to disrupt the memorial.
Winnipeg police, rightly, said they had no grounds to
arrest members of the Westboro congregation for shouting their obnoxious
beliefs. Still, they promised to have officers ready to take protesters
into custody the moment any of them disturbed the peace, broke traffic laws
or demonstrated in the street, rather than on the sidewalk.
Officers were posted at the doors of the church and on
its roof. Squad cars and a mobile command truck were parked discreetly down
the block.
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Regular citizens
Yet it was the quiet, calm action of regular citizens
that trumped the best-laid plans of all the security officials in the
country.
Jim Cotton, a resident of Winnipeg Beach, a small
resort community about an hour north of Winnipeg, started an internet page
that encouraged residents of Manitoba’s capital to assemble
peacefully on the street to show sympathy for Mr. McLean’s loved ones
and to beat the Baptist sect to the site. He hoped to crowd out the
protesters.
Stacey Titterton, a 24-year-old waitress who is seven
months pregnant, stood for several hours because, while she did not know
anyone inside at the ceremony, “we have to show that Canada will not
tolerate” the extreme prejudice practiced by the Westboroians.
Walter Fehr, a 60 year old former trucker, and his wife
brought umbrellas – not because they feared rain, but rather to open
and block the Kansans’ distasteful messages from the view of
mourners. Ingenious.
A nearby business even handed out free smoothies to the
waiting crowd as they stood in the clammy heat.
Spared an indignity
We are heartened by this independent, personal
approach. Too often, the first instinct in such cases is to demand
government do something: block the controversial performance, ban the
protesters, launch a hate-speech investigation.
But ultimately, nothing the state could have done would
have been half as effective or satisfying as having 300 or 400 ordinary
Winnipeggers take a few hours out of their Saturday afternoons to stand in
quiet solidarity with the friends and relatives of Tim McLean – to
let them know others care, and to spare those already grieving the added
indignity of a few extremist lunatics capitalizing on one man’s
grisly death.
National Post – August 12, 2008
September 2008
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