The Pines, thirty-six years later

In 1990, a plan to expand a golf course and build houses in Oka threatened a pine forest that the Mohawks of Kanesatake consider their territory. It contains a cemetery of their ancestors. People from Kanesatake put up a barricade on a road to block access to the site.

On July 11, 1990, a Sûreté du Québec operation went wrong: Corporal Marcel Lemay was killed. The crisis lasted 78 days. From August 20, about 4,000 soldiers were deployed. It ended on September 26, 1990.

The consequences were profound. The federal government bought the pine forest and the golf project was abandoned. In 1991, Ottawa created the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which delivered its report in 1996. In 2019, a developer offered to transfer 60 hectares of the pine forest to Kanesatake through an ecological gift. A few months later, the Deux-Montagnes RCM and the Mohawk Council agreed to create a permanent liaison committee.

The land question is not fully settled, and the road is still long. But the Ubuntu lesson remains: peace does not rest only on signed agreements. It is built between neighbours who choose to get to know one another.