Vandals spray paint racist graffiti on Neepawa welcome sign, buildings

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This article was published 05/07/2017 (3045 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fear is likely behind racist slogans spray painted on road signs and buildings in Neepawa after Canada Day, says the head of local resettlement agency.

“I would say, these actions are based in fear. They are based in ignorance. They’re coming from a complete lack of a good and healthy relationship with these new neighbours and a lack of willingness to understand another person,” said Dorota Blumczyńska, executive director of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba, the province’s non-profit resettlement agency for immigrants and refugees to Manitoba.

Racism against newcomers isn’t new, but articulating it so openly is happening more often, she said.

Neepawa RCMP Sgt. Mark Morehouse said vandals defaced four locations in the aftermath of Canada Day festivities in that town, 190 kilometres west of Winnipeg on Highway 16.

Racist and hate-filled graffiti was spray painted on two buildings near the local park that had been the focus of Canada Day 150 celebrations the previous day. The town highway signs and the local Royal Canadian Legion building were also defaced.

The slogan on the town’s welcome sign on Highway 16 read “Land of the G… ” using a slur against South Asians. “G… go home” and “F… the Queen” and “F… the government” were scrawled at the other three locations.

The vandalism has unsettled the town of about 4,600.

“It’s probably somebody mad at the Filipinos in town; they’re upset with them, and there was also stuff about the government and the queen,” Morehouse said.

“It could be someone who got fired from HyLife (the hog plant), or never got hired, or a kid, but we don’t take this lightly. This is racism in our town.”

Neepawa has ridden a wave of change recently, with new businesses, jobs and an influx of growth since a hog processing plant opened about five years ago.

About 1,000 immigrants, mostly from the Philippines have moved to the area, altering this town, perhaps best known as the birthplace of Canadian literary figure Margaret Laurence.

Laurence wrote about ethical perspectives on life in a colonial state and the racial tensions that erupt out of it. Those tales of tension between Métis and European settlers and their descendants formed the plot of her best known book, The Stone Angel, set in the fictional Manitoba town of Manawaka.

Fast forward 60 years or so and the world is in the midst of a global migration that’s moving so fast, it’s upended settled patterns of life, especially in small towns.

It’s no wonder people on the fringes are feeling displaced even if they’re not swept up in the migrant wave directly, Blumczyńska said. Who would have ever imagined that closing borders would be a topic of everyday conversation, she noted.

“I would rather give people the benefit of the doubt, that this isn’t entirely absolute hate. I think it’s coming from a place of fear, of the unknown. Maybe jobs are scarce, maybe resources are scarce and there’s a sense of people having to compete for those limited resources,” Blumczyńska said.

An immigrant herself, Blumczyńska has lived in Canada for 30 years.

What’s changed in recent years is people’s response to current geopolitics, such as the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, the Brexit vote and the influx of migrants to Europe, she said.

“The feelings are maybe more polarized than they ever have been before. And they’re also more articulated. In these times… global migration has taken such a front page in the lives of everyone,” she said.

“I just recently came back from Germany and I was in the middle of downtown Berlin, and in the middle of light post there was a tiny sticker that said, ‘Refugees and their families are welcome here.’

“And I thought, ‘How far have we come.’ There is so much welcome all over the world, and it’s regrettable that sometimes these misguided acts take centre stage.

“I bet what’s happening in Neepawa is there are incredibly welcoming people who are meeting their new neighbours, who are becoming friends and want to make sure their community celebrates everything that’s Canadian. That includes diversity and inclusion, and this overshadows all that good will,” Blumczyńska said.

Whoever spray painted the slogans gave it some thought.

The RCMP officer said it took a ladder to reach the town’s welcome sign to deface it.

Initially, town leaders didn’t think the spray paint could be scrubbed off and worried it would cost thousands of dollars to repaint it until a local employee came up with a cleaning solution that worked.

The town has a local citizens patrol program that’s now on the lookout for vandals, Morehouse said.

The RCMP’s regional detachment in Neepawa is altering its shifts to run more overnight patrols, he said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca