Details
When: Monday, August 4, 2025. 1100h-1600h.
Where: Kinsmen Centre, Goderich and GDCI High School Track.
What: A celebration of one year of grassroots community activism with rousing speeches, a monumental peace walk, sumptuous lunch, disco dancing, and our featured local vocal diva Jenna Smith. At the end of the event, we shared unserved dishes with our dear friends at Artemis Huron (formerly known as Huron Women’s Shelter).
Objective
To celebrate one year of strengthening community and resisting organized hate.
Significance
Together in the name of peace and community we symbolically reclaimed the site where one year earlier neo-Nazis from across Ontario, Quebec, and Michigan gathered to perform combat training exercises.
Challenges
We faced significant impediments from the Town of Goderich, including a requirement that we sign an indemnification agreement shielding the Town and the OPP from liability, including liability arising wholly or in part from their own negligence, acts, or omissions. We refused to pre-emptively indemnify those with the power to use force. We did not sign, and we did not receive a permit. We conducted our peace walk with joy.
Result
The event was a great success, anchored by moving speeches from Reverend Rohan Pushparajan of Lakeshore United Church and Reverend Alex Jebson of Blyth and Brussels United Churches. The inimitable Jenna Smith sent us off and welcomed us back to the Kinsmen Centre Parkette with a set of joyful songs. We then shared an incredible community lunch from Steve & Mary’s and Curry Co., with our friends at Eat Local Huron joining us to celebrate what we love most: good food, shared in good company.
Lessons Learned
We learned that event insurers treat a peace walk as “political activity” and refuse coverage. Since the Town of Goderich requires $5 million in event insurance as a condition of a brief peace walk, the effect is to block peaceful assembly. We do not accept that our Charter rights should hinge on insurance we were unable to obtain. We conducted our peace walk with joy.
Future Implications
Neither neo-Nazi ideologies nor overreaching bureaucracies are any match for our community’s collective fabulousness and care for one another.
Documentation
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