So THAT’s how they got the CN trains moving again.

This afternoon, one of the CN trains parked on the rails (there are three pairs of them, plus one set of CP tracks) behind my house finally departed for points east, after the blockade near the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory was lifted. I knew something was up two days ago, when I heard ticking noises coming from that same train, and realized that the engine was running after more than two weeks’ silence.

I figured that something was up, but exactly what, I didn’t know. Maybe they were just warming up the brake lines to make sure that nothing was jammed when the trains started running again? But that made little sense. The weather was actually unseasonably warm at the time.

Well, now I know what that “something” was. It was “something” like this:

And no, that’s not satire.

Meanwhile, there are still skirmishes going on between police and indigenous protesters not far from here. This was one of them:

The takedown of a Tyendinaga Mohawk blockade on CN Railway tracks at a level crossing east Belleville on Monday hasn’t ended disruptions in the area for rail officials trying to reopen the Toronto-Montreal corridor after nearly three weeks of hundreds of freight train cancellations.

A second protest group of local Mohawks camped not far down the tracks near the original protest site continue to hamper CN officials and Ontario Provincial Police working to get freight and passenger train traffic moving again.

A Canadian National Railway engine collided Wednesday with wooden pallets strewn across the tracks near the second encampment of Tyendinaga Mohawk demonstrators along the tracks at a Highway 49 CN overpass.

Demonstrators were witnessed dragging debris Wednesday morning toward a patch of scorched earth on the railway tracks where a burning tire was thrown Monday evening.

Ontario Provincial Police were on scene to counter protester efforts to block further rail traffic.

Possibly that’s why just one of the two trains on the tracks behind my house has moved, and the other is still waiting.

Despite the inconvenience, though, I’m on the side of the Mohawks…and the Wet’suwet’en people as well. Capitalism has had its own way, and had it unobstructed in this country, for far too long already. If humanism and environmentalism don’t become our prevailing ethics, this planet is doomed. And that’s going to be a helluva lot worse than a bit of temporary inconvenience to some people who are already so rich that they wouldn’t really miss the extra money.

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