KENORA, Ont. – Over 100 people gathered in Kenora on Monday to honour George Floyd, the man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25 triggered a wave of protests that have swept the globe.
Tania Cameron, an organizer of the event, said seeing the video of Floyd’s death had haunted her. The cell phone footage shows a police officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as he complains he cannot breathe, and eventually loses consciousness.
“I was hurt and upset, waiting and seeing if anyone in Kenora would organize anything,” she said. “I talked to a couple of my friends and we agreed, we’ll do something. We had to speak to it.”
“I think a lot of people just needed to gather to express their grief and frustration, and to express support for Black and Indigenous members of our community that face racism.”
Over 100 people gathered Monday afternoon to honour Floyd, observing 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence at Kenora’s waterfront. The bells of St. Alban’s Cathedral chimed to mark the beginning and end of the silence.
Organizers raised funds for Black Lives Matter Toronto, selling shirts bearing a design by Christi Belcourt that expresses Indigenous solidarity with the movement. Cameron’s daughter-in-law screen-printed the shirts with permission from the renowned Metis artist.
The racism underlying Floyd’s death is a force with which too many in the region are familiar, Cameron said. Resident Katrina Osborne spoke to the crowd about her experience as a Black person in Kenora, including bullying experienced by her children.
“It was very, very powerful,” related Cameron. “That’s existing today – not 20 years ago, 40 years ago – it’s today. I also spoke of incidents that my children have had growing up in the school system here in Kenora – the racial slurs thrown at them just because they’re Anishinaabe.”
Subtler versions of those same racist attitudes had surfaced in online comments about the protest, Cameron said.
“I unfortunately had to delete a couple of friends [on social media] who expressed views about ‘all lives matter’ and that they didn’t see racism in their community. I’m sorry, but if you’re not a person of colour, you won’t experience it. It really does hurt. It makes me angry when it happens to my kids.”
Cameron was pleased to see Kenora MP Eric Melillo attend the action, saying she would have invited him to speak if she’d known he was in attendance.
In general, though, she believes it’s a time for people to listen to the voices of those who experience racism first-hand.
“I think allies, our white friends – they need to just sit and listen to the realities faced by people of colour in our community. People need to recognize their own biases and learn to have discussions, even in their own families, that are healthy – that are not racist.”
