Steeves addresses wife’s Facebook post

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/08/2014 (4072 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

wfpvideo:3727607009001:wfpvideo wfpvideo:3727520038001:wfpvideo

Four days after his wife’s past Facebook comments about “drunken native guys” became known, mayoral candidate Gord Steeves did not issue an apology himself.

“My wife made the comments she made,” Steeves told a throng of reporters and some members of the aboriginal community who showed up today at a news conference whose location the Steeves camp initially tried to keep secret from the public.

“My wife apologized. I support her on those comments.

“I love her and I stand with her.”

Steeves said he has been silent since the comments became known last Friday — shortly after he made an announcement on how he would make downtown safer — because he knew today he was having a press conference on eliminating red tape for developers and he had to think of his family.

“It was a difficult weekend,” he said.

“I’m a candidate for mayor and I’m also a husband and father.

“I had to look after my family this weekend.”

On his wife’s behalf, Steeves said she had been alone with their two young children four years ago when “a large man” in the skywalk downtown “approached in a threatening” way causing her to tell her then eight-year-old son to get security if he grabbed her. Nothing happened, Steeves said.

As well, Steeves said on another occasion a few weeks later “three Native panhandlers” asked for money and when she refused one “put his finger in her face” and asked her why she didn’t like aboriginal people.

Steeves said his wife went home angry and wrote the Facebook comments in that state of mind.

 

Kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

wfpvideo:3727231027001:wfpvideo