Wednesday, Sep 22

Elizabeth Nickson

Wednesday, September 22, 1999

There were at least as many counsellors, facilitators, mediators, Lions Club members, RCMP, city police, military police, city council members, representatives of MPs, official observers, and press at the Esquimalt Town Meeting on Monday night as there were residents. Were organizers expecting a riot? Certainly the people who live around what residents call the prison concentration camp, temporary home to the Chinese migrants, were fit to be tied. Besides, each official looked guilty enough for the ordinary tax-paying, working-class Joe to wonder if rioting wasn't in order.

But they're Canadians and therefore too wry and ironic. Rather, they insult and tweak and raise the blood pressure of their officials. "STAND UP WHEN YOU SPEAK TO US!" they were shouting from the floor by the end of the night, particularly at their lackadaisical mayor tranced out at the end of the table behind the unctuous blond mediation lawyer he had hired to ease his way through the furies. The fellow from Citizenship and Immigration Canada developed a bright red face. The burly RCMP Inspector looked mad enough to bite, and the base commander from CFB Esquimalt looked spooked. Four of the five officials on the podium were dancing as fast as they could.

Esquimalt is the last neigbourhood in Victoria where real estate is still cheap. It is also a possible future home of hipness, what with the warehouses, modern blight and bungalows that look out on a harbour-and-mountain vista that would cost serious money in other parts of the world.

Many prosperous working-class families live in Esquimalt. So do a couple of hundred people from South China in the gym and on the soccer field where Scouts, Brownies and Beavers used to meet. There are a remarkable number of people whose backyard view resembles scenes from a prison camp. They say they won't be paying their taxes this year.

"We haven't had a night's sleep since they moved in," said one woman tearfully. Another man almost breaks down when he says that his house has been on the market and he'd sell it for $50,000 less than asking right now. But he can't: No one will even come to view it. The house represents his retirement.

Floodlights glare all night into their bedrooms. Helicopters chop overhead all day. Student demonstrators shout encouragement to the migrants from outside the camp at all hours. Dogs bark, air horns sound at 2 a.m. and every single citizen complains that the military police roar up and down the streets all day and night, endangering their children.

The CIC man stands up to make the first mistake of the evening. He says the department of immigration had known for a year that these ships were coming, but had only 12 hours to decide where the camp would be placed, and then build it. This reminds the citizens that their houses were covered in dirt, the camp was built noisily in the middle of the night and where they used to look out at the harbour, now they see yellow walls and toilets.

From the floor comes: A year? You've known about this for a year? The mayor slides down further into his chair.

When question period starts, officials take the mike every second turn with more explanations. The residents mock them.

The camp is supposed to be decommissioned at the end of December. Hollow laughter and suppressed jeers. When is anything the federal government built temporary? National policy discussion is forbidden at this meeting says the blond mediator. How dare you forbid us to discuss national policy, shouts someone from the floor.

Finally one guy stands up. "Why don't you all just go back, open the gates, go home, let 'em go and at least they won't cost us anything." This statement earns the most applause of the evening.

If I were counting on Liberal votes next federal election, it wouldn't be from Esquimalt.