Angry in the Great White North

From The Hamilton Spectator:

The Catholic School Board has reaffirmed a plan to build an eight-foot high privacy fence behind Notre Dame School to shield students from the native occupation of a neighbouring housing development.

But trustees would like it to be temporary and aim to take it down once a berm is built behind the Braemar Avenue school on Douglas Creek Estates and a 15-metre buffer zone is established.

Fence or buffer zone -- the message is the same: Children are to be kept away from the reserve lands. If it is determined that the Douglas Creek Estates are part of reserve, then a separation must be established and maintained.

I thought only drug dealers and pedophiles are routinely told to keep away from children.

"We had some discussions on if a wooden fence is the best answer," education director Theresa Harris said yesterday.

"We did revisit the situation and the board decided we would go ahead with a temporary wooden fence with the distinct hope it would soon be replaced with a berm of some sort."

A berm? Though the word has many uses, the primary use of the word berm is to describe the flat strip of ground on the top of a low rampart -- part of the vocabulary of military fortification. Nice choice of words.

The Natives are offended:

The decision to stay with the fence also came after officials met with chiefs and clan mothers from Six Nations.

Harris said the natives called it a "drastic measure" and spoke of alternatives such as the buffer zone. Others have also been disturbed by the fence.

A drastic measure? Hey, these people are just protecting their land. Surely the Natives can understand how important that is? How just about any action is justified?

Expect a lot more fences to go up -- and more cameras:

Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic board trustees also decided to install a half-dozen additional surveillance cameras at the school, bringing the total to nine.

Tripling the surveillance capacity of the school. The school board is clearly not expecting three times the normal level of trouble from the kids. So I expect the cameras will be aimed outwards. School administrators monitoring the camera feeds can immediately react if a potential threat approaches or attempts to breach the perimeter.

Yeah, we're still talking about an elementary school.

You know, you can talk to kids until you are blue in the face about multiculturalism and respecting differences and learning to get along. But the kids will see the fence and the cameras and the nervous adults, and they will learn a very different lesson from all this, even if it's not the one you wanted them to learn. That some groups are never likely to ever get along, and the best you can do is draw a line and keep them on the other side.