Bonnie Ste-Croix

Dear Chief Gloade,

Please share this letter with Millbrook First Nations people and friends who were part of the Highway 102 Blockage on December 21, 2012.

On December 21st, my family was preparing to leave for my hometown of Gaspe, Quebec to spend Christmas with family. The day got off to a rocky start, bogged down with last-minute to-do’s that set our departure time back and made us all a bit grumpy. We finally got our 7-year-old, the puppy, loads and loads of Christmas gifts and ourselves into the van to head out for the 11-hour drive.

We were on the road for just 40 minutes when our son started getting car sick, and our puppy, restless. But with a 91 year-old grandmother sitting at a kitchen table in Gaspe waiting for us, we knew we would have to try make our best to get to there that night. We pulled over, gave the boy a bit of fresh air and the pup, a snack; crossed our fingers and held our breath that another stop would not be needed for a while so we could finally make some headway.

We hit the blockade

We sat quiet for a while, thinking it must have been a serious accident to cause such a jam, and that somewhere a family may have lost a loved one very close to Christmas. But our stress levels started to rise as time ticked by and our nauseous green-tinged son engaged in whimpering verbal repetition, “Why are we stopped? Why are we-he-he-he stoppppped?” We turned on the radio and it was there we learned of ...

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