By Melanie Green StarMetro Vancouver

Thu., Aug. 23, 2018

 

VANCOUVER — Sachiko Charlotte Gyoba was born in 1943 in the Japanese internment camp of New Denver, in southeastern British Columbia, where she said her parents made the best of a “tarpaper shack” with their four young children.

 

That reality left the family with a lingering and inordinate fear of the law, Gyoba recalled.

But it wasn’t until her arrest on June 30, 2018 — while protesting the Trans Mountain pipeline extension — that Gyoba was “overwhelmed” and understood her family’s experience emotionally, not just intellectually.

 

“It was like déjà vu when I was handcuffed. I had a sense of what my parents were going through with this injustice,” the retired teacher explained in an interview. “What I had done was so peaceful and so ultimately mundane.”

 

In that moment, she remembered her mother’s words that “protesters stood for justice,” and without them, her parents would not have become Canadians in 1957.

 

Major opposition to the pipeline has resulted in a mounting standoff between provinces along with cases before the federal courts. Since March, hundreds of protesters have been blocking access to the Kinder Morgan gates.

 

There have been more than 220 people arrested, a third of whom are over the age of 60, according to the crown prosecutor.

 

Gyoba was one of the protesters who broke a court injunction filed by Kinder Morgan that set limits on how close people could be from the gates. The protesters stood right in front of the gates at one of the Kinder Morgan facilities at the Burnaby Mountain tank farm.

 

Of the group of nine that faced initial jail time for convictions on July 31, the first to be sentenced was 70-year-old grandmother Laurie Embree. Indigenous elders have also been arrested at the gates.

Meanwhile, the penalties for defying the injunction continue to increase, with the people arrested this week facing a sentence of 14 days in custody from the B.C. Supreme Court.

 

 

Gyoba was convicted of criminal contempt of court and sentenced to seven days. She was released Aug. 19 — along with four others, all over the age of 65 — after four days behind bars in a women’s correctional facility.

 

And she said she’s not sorry she did it.

“I won’t be here much longer, but I worry about what kind of planet the next generation will inherit from us,” the 74-year-old said. “People have to stand up when they see an injustice. If they don’t, then democracy doesn’t work for anybody.”

 

The pipeline project will contribute to climate change and it blatantly ignores the rights of Indigenous peoples, she argued.

 

Gyoba had never been arrested before. But after going to peaceful protests, signing petitions, writing letters, showing up to her MP’s office twice and marching up Burnaby mountain, this summer Gyoba decided — with her friend and former B.C. Federation of Teachers president Susan Lambert — that more needed to be done to stop the pipeline.

That’s why they blocked the gates of Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby tank farm, prepared to end up behind bars. They served their time together, got out together, and even shared a room in lock-up.

 

“They locked me in a cell, which was a toilet with a partial wall and a hard bench, for about five hours. Because I was the first,” Gyoba explained. “When I was led into a common room where Susan was, I was so indescribably happy to see her. She was already shackled.”

 

They sang I Shall be Released while waiting to exit from behind bars.

Lambert had never been arrested either, though she was an outspoken critic of the former B.C. Liberals government led by Premier Christy Clark.

The rising opposition to the pipeline has been largely generational, Lambert, a 68-year-old grandmother, said. In fact, she said she told her own children to refrain from protesting.

 

“It’s going to be a long, hard struggle,” she explained. “(Our generation) made the mess, not my kids. (And) we have the time.”

Though it’s not fun, Lambert said, jail time is “doable.”

 

 

The federal government purchased the pipeline for $4.5 billion from Kinder Morgan.  While the company had estimated the costs to build the new pipeline at $7.4 billion, financial documents it filed with the United States Security and Exchange Commission suggest the cost could be as much as $9.3 billion, according to previous Star reports.

 

Lambert questioned what avenue is left in a democracy when all three levels of government have expressed concerns about a project, but “The law intercedes on behalf of a corporation.”

 

“I recognize that I’m not doing enough personally. I drive a car,” Lambert acknowledged. “But this needs to be governmental change. We need to have regulations that protect our environment to move more of us into being personally responsible.”

The feds’ decision to take on the project was based on facts, evidence and what was in the national interest, said Emerson Vandenberg, acting press secretary for Natural Resource Canada.

 

“We recognize that not everyone agrees with the decision,” Vandenberg said, noting the government remains committed to working with provinces, territories and Indigenous peoples.

 

The right to “gather and act in peaceful groups” is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the government respects this right, Vandenberg added.

 

Lambert said she respects the rule of law and insisted she and her fellow protesters are not criminals.

 

“We have a different political point of view than those we elected,” she said. “We were political prisoners.”

High-profile West Coast politicians have also been arrested, including Kennedy Stewart, Vancouver independent mayoral candidate and former NDP MP for Burnaby South, and federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May. But they did not serve time.

 

Joining the two retired teachers behind bars was Order of Canada recipient Jean Swanson, 75, who is a long-time anti-poverty advocate and currently a Vancouver city-council candidate.

 

Swanson had also never been arrested. She spoke to the Star the morning after her release, “thrilled” to wake up in her own bed.

 

“The mattresses in the jail are about an inch thick and covered in plastic. I managed to get two of them, but it was still really painful to sleep,” Swanson said. “We were so profoundly affected by the beauty and generosity of the prisoners … For me, it was a choice, for them it was not.”

 

She said inmates showed the protesters how things worked at the facility, shared their toiletries and even made them beaded bracelets.

 

 

Swanson sat in court on July 30 when the crown prosecutor argued conditional sentences were not enough deterrence for older protesters, who had been the ones repeatedly violating the injunction. The prosecutor said these activists had made a “particularly sinister challenge to the court’s authority.”  That’s when protesters started being sentenced to serve time.

Swanson subsequently posted a photo captioned “sinister seniors” on Facebook, which earned more than a 1,000 shares.

 

“Sinister seniors” are taking up the cause because it’s practical, Swanson said.  “Seniors don’t have jobs or young children. We are really worried about our grandkids and climate change,” she explained. “A lot of the seniors getting arrested are people who have a history working for justice.”

And they will not be deterred, Swanson said.

 

The cities of Vancouver and Burnaby and some First Nations have raised environmental concerns and publicly opposed the expansion project, which would twin the existing 1,100-kilometre pipeline that runs from Edmonton, triple its flow of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to a port in Burnaby, and increase tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet sevenfold.

But on Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed one outstanding legal challenge — denying the City of Burnaby leave to appeal a National Energy Board ruling that allowed the company to bypass local bylaws during construction of the federally-approved pipeline.

 

The environment is a visceral issue on the West coast, said Warren Magnusson, University of Victoria professor emeritus of political science. That’s why, he said, it’s such a specific catalyst for certain generations who are willing to put their bodies on the line.

 

Thanks to internal migration patterns in Canada, people move out West because of the mountains, sea and forest. The fear of “detrimental” effects of the pipeline threatens that, Magnusson said.

 

But out East, there’s a tendency to think of environmental concerns as “luxury” issues, he added.  “There is also something connected to the feeling that B.C. is always left out of national calculations,” Magnusson said. “We’ve been detached from the industrial economy that exists in Canada. Having someone in Ottawa decide that their concerns are unimportant seems offensive.”

What’s more, Indigenous land rights are at the forefront in because it’s “in the face” of the province’s urban centres.

 

“It can cut across the political spectrum. Even people who are on the right, gradually come to realize that you can’t ignore these issues,” he explained. “A government in office can only tolerate so many arrests. If it goes on and respectable people are being arrested, that puts a lot of pressure.”

 

According to BC Civil Liberties Association lawyer Dylan Mazur, many cases that straddle both the public and private sphere lack clarity because they are not spelled out in the criminal code.

 

“This hasn’t come around in a generation,” he said, pointing to the Clayoquot Sound protests on Vancouver Island in the 1990s, which brought the political struggle over environmental issues into households across the nation. Justice Kenneth Affleck, who presides over the current Trans Mountain court injunction cases, often refers to Clayoquot to defend the use of custodial sentences to deter civil disobedience, Mazur said.

 

That’s a pressing concern for Joanne Manley, 85, who was handcuffed on Aug. 14 and faces up to 14 days’ imprisonment. She first appeared in court on Thursday afternoon.

 

Manley has been arrested before — linking arms at sunrise with protesters before a chain-link fence at the Clayoquot Sound logging facility 25 years ago.

“I was scared at first. But a woman had told me her experience and what the police would do,” she said.

She was not sentenced to jail time. Instead, Manley paid a $500 fine and was under house arrest for 21 days.

 

This time, however, she may not be so “lucky.”

Born in Burnaby, the retired civil servant raised her children blocks away from the Kinder Morgan facility where she was arrested at this month. She retired on Vancouver Island. And that’s where she engaged in her first act of civil disobedience with a friend at Clayoquot Sound.

 

Their actions helped change the political landscape, she said. And that’s why when the opportunity arose this month to support those being arrested, Manley said she “had to take a stand.”

 

“Part of me is scared stiff, but my heart tells me this is the right thing to do,” she explained. “I have to make a difference and I don’t know how else to do it.”  Like many others, Manley wrote letters and signed petitions. She is “very concerned” about righting the wrongs done to First Nations people and the environment.

 

“If it means helping save the oceans, especially the salmon for food, then that’s what I must do,” Manley said. “I’m coming to the end of my life and I’ve been very lucky. I have a granddaughter and I don’t want her to miss out on a clean future.”

 

Recollections from behind bars

 

These four protesters all found themselves facing jail time late in life. StarMetro asked them about their experiences. Here’s what they say they’ll never forget.

 

Sachiko Charlotte Gyoba, 74, sentenced seven days in jail on Aug. 15, released after four days.

“They took me into a little room. They handcuffed me behind my back,” she said. “They gave us green sweatsuits for our prison garb ... It seemed like a week. It was a room with two, narrow horizontal windows and bunk beds. The toilet was right out in the open by the door. It was quite degrading.”

 

Susan Lambert, 68, sentenced to seven days in jail on Aug.15, released after four days.

“We were put in tight shackles and cuffs into a paddy wagon. These were cages — steel mesh cages — sheathed in plexi glass. We couldn’t stand up. We were in a four-by-four cage. Our journey was at least two hours,” she said of getting to the prison.

 

Jean Swanson, 75, sentenced to seven days in jail on Aug. 15, released after four days.

“One thing they did was keep all five of us together ... The inmates were so young. They were just so nice to us. ‘You can’t use that shampoo in there, take mine. Oh, you can’t use that silly black comb they give you, take my brush’ ... They warned us about little things, like if you’re in the bathroom and you have to flush the toilet while someone is in the shower, yell flush, because if you don’t they will get scalded,” she said.

 

Joanne Manley, 85, arrested on Aug. 14, awaiting sentencing.

Twenty-five years ago, Manley was arrested on Vancouver Island protesting the logging industry.

“I had a friend that I met in the bank one day who wanted to protest but was a parent, so she couldn’t be arrested. She drove me there and we slept in the car that night on the side of the road. In the morning, someone came along at 4 a.m. to wake us up,” she explained. “I went with them and my friend came along later in her car. We stood on the bridge. There were 14 of us, and (we) linked arms ... It was almost holy, I thought. I felt a real connection to what I was doing.”

 

Melanie Green is a Vancouver-based reporter covering food culture and policy.

By Melanie Green StarMetro Vancouver

Thu., Aug. 23, 2018

 

VANCOUVER — Sachiko Charlotte Gyoba was born in 1943 in the Japanese internment camp of New Denver, in southeastern British Columbia, where she said her parents made the best of a “tarpaper shack” with their four young children.

 

That reality left the family with a lingering and inordinate fear of the law, Gyoba recalled.

But it wasn’t until her arrest on June 30, 2018 — while protesting the Trans Mountain pipeline extension — that Gyoba was “overwhelmed” and understood her family’s experience emotionally, not just intellectually.

 

“It was like déjà vu when I was handcuffed. I had a sense of what my parents were going through with this injustice,” the retired teacher explained in an interview. “What I had done was so peaceful and so ultimately mundane.”

 

In that moment, she remembered her mother’s words that “protesters stood for justice,” and without them, her parents would not have become Canadians in 1957.

 

Major opposition to the pipeline has resulted in a mounting standoff between provinces along with cases before the federal courts. Since March, hundreds of protesters have been blocking access to the Kinder Morgan gates.

 

There have been more than 220 people arrested, a third of whom are over the age of 60, according to the crown prosecutor.

 

Gyoba was one of the protesters who broke a court injunction filed by Kinder Morgan that set limits on how close people could be from the gates. The protesters stood right in front of the gates at one of the Kinder Morgan facilities at the Burnaby Mountain tank farm.

 

Of the group of nine that faced initial jail time for convictions on July 31, the first to be sentenced was 70-year-old grandmother Laurie Embree. Indigenous elders have also been arrested at the gates.

Meanwhile, the penalties for defying the injunction continue to increase, with the people arrested this week facing a sentence of 14 days in custody from the B.C. Supreme Court.

 

 

Gyoba was convicted of criminal contempt of court and sentenced to seven days. She was released Aug. 19 — along with four others, all over the age of 65 — after four days behind bars in a women’s correctional facility.

 

And she said she’s not sorry she did it.

“I won’t be here much longer, but I worry about what kind of planet the next generation will inherit from us,” the 74-year-old said. “People have to stand up when they see an injustice. If they don’t, then democracy doesn’t work for anybody.”

 

The pipeline project will contribute to climate change and it blatantly ignores the rights of Indigenous peoples, she argued.

 

Gyoba had never been arrested before. But after going to peaceful protests, signing petitions, writing letters, showing up to her MP’s office twice and marching up Burnaby mountain, this summer Gyoba decided — with her friend and former B.C. Federation of Teachers president Susan Lambert — that more needed to be done to stop the pipeline.

That’s why they blocked the gates of Kinder Morgan’s Burnaby tank farm, prepared to end up behind bars. They served their time together, got out together, and even shared a room in lock-up.

 

“They locked me in a cell, which was a toilet with a partial wall and a hard bench, for about five hours. Because I was the first,” Gyoba explained. “When I was led into a common room where Susan was, I was so indescribably happy to see her. She was already shackled.”

 

They sang I Shall be Released while waiting to exit from behind bars.

Lambert had never been arrested either, though she was an outspoken critic of the former B.C. Liberals government led by Premier Christy Clark.

The rising opposition to the pipeline has been largely generational, Lambert, a 68-year-old grandmother, said. In fact, she said she told her own children to refrain from protesting.

 

“It’s going to be a long, hard struggle,” she explained. “(Our generation) made the mess, not my kids. (And) we have the time.”

Though it’s not fun, Lambert said, jail time is “doable.”

 

 

The federal government purchased the pipeline for $4.5 billion from Kinder Morgan.  While the company had estimated the costs to build the new pipeline at $7.4 billion, financial documents it filed with the United States Security and Exchange Commission suggest the cost could be as much as $9.3 billion, according to previous Star reports.

 

Lambert questioned what avenue is left in a democracy when all three levels of government have expressed concerns about a project, but “The law intercedes on behalf of a corporation.”

 

“I recognize that I’m not doing enough personally. I drive a car,” Lambert acknowledged. “But this needs to be governmental change. We need to have regulations that protect our environment to move more of us into being personally responsible.”

The feds’ decision to take on the project was based on facts, evidence and what was in the national interest, said Emerson Vandenberg, acting press secretary for Natural Resource Canada.

 

“We recognize that not everyone agrees with the decision,” Vandenberg said, noting the government remains committed to working with provinces, territories and Indigenous peoples.

 

The right to “gather and act in peaceful groups” is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the government respects this right, Vandenberg added.

 

Lambert said she respects the rule of law and insisted she and her fellow protesters are not criminals.

 

“We have a different political point of view than those we elected,” she said. “We were political prisoners.”

High-profile West Coast politicians have also been arrested, including Kennedy Stewart, Vancouver independent mayoral candidate and former NDP MP for Burnaby South, and federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May. But they did not serve time.

 

Joining the two retired teachers behind bars was Order of Canada recipient Jean Swanson, 75, who is a long-time anti-poverty advocate and currently a Vancouver city-council candidate.

 

Swanson had also never been arrested. She spoke to the Star the morning after her release, “thrilled” to wake up in her own bed.

 

“The mattresses in the jail are about an inch thick and covered in plastic. I managed to get two of them, but it was still really painful to sleep,” Swanson said. “We were so profoundly affected by the beauty and generosity of the prisoners … For me, it was a choice, for them it was not.”

 

She said inmates showed the protesters how things worked at the facility, shared their toiletries and even made them beaded bracelets.

 

 

Swanson sat in court on July 30 when the crown prosecutor argued conditional sentences were not enough deterrence for older protesters, who had been the ones repeatedly violating the injunction. The prosecutor said these activists had made a “particularly sinister challenge to the court’s authority.”  That’s when protesters started being sentenced to serve time.

Swanson subsequently posted a photo captioned “sinister seniors” on Facebook, which earned more than a 1,000 shares.

 

“Sinister seniors” are taking up the cause because it’s practical, Swanson said.  “Seniors don’t have jobs or young children. We are really worried about our grandkids and climate change,” she explained. “A lot of the seniors getting arrested are people who have a history working for justice.”

And they will not be deterred, Swanson said.

 

The cities of Vancouver and Burnaby and some First Nations have raised environmental concerns and publicly opposed the expansion project, which would twin the existing 1,100-kilometre pipeline that runs from Edmonton, triple its flow of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to a port in Burnaby, and increase tanker traffic in the Burrard Inlet sevenfold.

But on Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed one outstanding legal challenge — denying the City of Burnaby leave to appeal a National Energy Board ruling that allowed the company to bypass local bylaws during construction of the federally-approved pipeline.

 

The environment is a visceral issue on the West coast, said Warren Magnusson, University of Victoria professor emeritus of political science. That’s why, he said, it’s such a specific catalyst for certain generations who are willing to put their bodies on the line.

 

Thanks to internal migration patterns in Canada, people move out West because of the mountains, sea and forest. The fear of “detrimental” effects of the pipeline threatens that, Magnusson said.

 

But out East, there’s a tendency to think of environmental concerns as “luxury” issues, he added.  “There is also something connected to the feeling that B.C. is always left out of national calculations,” Magnusson said. “We’ve been detached from the industrial economy that exists in Canada. Having someone in Ottawa decide that their concerns are unimportant seems offensive.”

What’s more, Indigenous land rights are at the forefront in because it’s “in the face” of the province’s urban centres.

 

“It can cut across the political spectrum. Even people who are on the right, gradually come to realize that you can’t ignore these issues,” he explained. “A government in office can only tolerate so many arrests. If it goes on and respectable people are being arrested, that puts a lot of pressure.”

 

According to BC Civil Liberties Association lawyer Dylan Mazur, many cases that straddle both the public and private sphere lack clarity because they are not spelled out in the criminal code.

 

“This hasn’t come around in a generation,” he said, pointing to the Clayoquot Sound protests on Vancouver Island in the 1990s, which brought the political struggle over environmental issues into households across the nation. Justice Kenneth Affleck, who presides over the current Trans Mountain court injunction cases, often refers to Clayoquot to defend the use of custodial sentences to deter civil disobedience, Mazur said.

 

That’s a pressing concern for Joanne Manley, 85, who was handcuffed on Aug. 14 and faces up to 14 days’ imprisonment. She first appeared in court on Thursday afternoon.

 

Manley has been arrested before — linking arms at sunrise with protesters before a chain-link fence at the Clayoquot Sound logging facility 25 years ago.

“I was scared at first. But a woman had told me her experience and what the police would do,” she said.

She was not sentenced to jail time. Instead, Manley paid a $500 fine and was under house arrest for 21 days.

 

This time, however, she may not be so “lucky.”

Born in Burnaby, the retired civil servant raised her children blocks away from the Kinder Morgan facility where she was arrested at this month. She retired on Vancouver Island. And that’s where she engaged in her first act of civil disobedience with a friend at Clayoquot Sound.

 

Their actions helped change the political landscape, she said. And that’s why when the opportunity arose this month to support those being arrested, Manley said she “had to take a stand.”

 

“Part of me is scared stiff, but my heart tells me this is the right thing to do,” she explained. “I have to make a difference and I don’t know how else to do it.”  Like many others, Manley wrote letters and signed petitions. She is “very concerned” about righting the wrongs done to First Nations people and the environment.

 

“If it means helping save the oceans, especially the salmon for food, then that’s what I must do,” Manley said. “I’m coming to the end of my life and I’ve been very lucky. I have a granddaughter and I don’t want her to miss out on a clean future.”

 

Recollections from behind bars

 

These four protesters all found themselves facing jail time late in life. StarMetro asked them about their experiences. Here’s what they say they’ll never forget.

 

Sachiko Charlotte Gyoba, 74, sentenced seven days in jail on Aug. 15, released after four days.

“They took me into a little room. They handcuffed me behind my back,” she said. “They gave us green sweatsuits for our prison garb ... It seemed like a week. It was a room with two, narrow horizontal windows and bunk beds. The toilet was right out in the open by the door. It was quite degrading.”

 

Susan Lambert, 68, sentenced to seven days in jail on Aug.15, released after four days.

“We were put in tight shackles and cuffs into a paddy wagon. These were cages — steel mesh cages — sheathed in plexi glass. We couldn’t stand up. We were in a four-by-four cage. Our journey was at least two hours,” she said of getting to the prison.

 

Jean Swanson, 75, sentenced to seven days in jail on Aug. 15, released after four days.

“One thing they did was keep all five of us together ... The inmates were so young. They were just so nice to us. ‘You can’t use that shampoo in there, take mine. Oh, you can’t use that silly black comb they give you, take my brush’ ... They warned us about little things, like if you’re in the bathroom and you have to flush the toilet while someone is in the shower, yell flush, because if you don’t they will get scalded,” she said.

 

Joanne Manley, 85, arrested on Aug. 14, awaiting sentencing.

Twenty-five years ago, Manley was arrested on Vancouver Island protesting the logging industry.

“I had a friend that I met in the bank one day who wanted to protest but was a parent, so she couldn’t be arrested. She drove me there and we slept in the car that night on the side of the road. In the morning, someone came along at 4 a.m. to wake us up,” she explained. “I went with them and my friend came along later in her car. We stood on the bridge. There were 14 of us, and (we) linked arms ... It was almost holy, I thought. I felt a real connection to what I was doing.”

 

Melanie Green is a Vancouver-based reporter covering food culture and policy.