Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, A Lost BlackBerry and the blackberries of Cold Storage Road

The action was heating up across from the County on the other side of the Bay of Quinte last weekend with a group of Tyendinaga Mohawks using an old school bus to blockade the CN Rail crossing at Deseronto Road, effectively shutting down CN freight and Via passenger traffic in a dispute about a Kingston developer’s plans to build condominiums on a 930-acre area known as the Culbertson Land Tract. The tract is on a parcel of land granted to the Six Nations in 1793 and the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte claim that counter to the developer’s position, they never surrendered any part of it as alleged in 1832. At virtually the same time the Mohawks were maintaining their blockade, some nearby County residents were again complaining about a “Mohawk Territory” sign erected on Highway 49, before the Skyway Bridge and south of Green Point Road, otherwise known as County Road 35. The residents have been raising the issue on and off over the duration of at least the last three County councils – including incumbent Mayor Leo Finnegan and his predecessor James Taylor – as the sign itself has undergone several incarnations. The residents argue, quite correctly in a technical sense, that the sign is located on Prince Edward County “soil,” not on the Mohawk Territory across the water. And if it really is Mohawk Territory on this side of the water, some of the Green Point Road area residents say, given their distaste for recent County council budgets and property tax increases, they’re thinking of applying to have the band council of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte become their local governing authority. The sign location argument might hold more water if it was somehow exceptional, but it isn’t. Fact is, many municipalities do it. Such signs are often not located on a surveyor’s actual geographical demarcation line. We suspect a cursory drive along the highways and byways in the area might well reveal Northumberland County signs encroaching on Hastings County or Peterborough County territory or vice-versa. And regardless of signage near the Skyway Bridge, we’re pretty sure some Green Point Road and other County residents can figure out when they’re on Mohawk Territory or not come time for their next cheap smokes run.

In another sign of the times in the County, a hand-written sign can be currently observed on a hydro pole on Main Street in downtown Picton, directly in front of The Armoury: “REWARD: For Return of Lost BlackBerry in leather case. Here on April 19, 2007. Call Doug at 613-476-4427.” The fact the BlackBerry seems to have gone missing right at The Wellington Times newspaper box location there suggests perhaps the owner stopped to pick up a paper and became immediately engrossed in some story or other.

Aside from Doug, it just wasn’t a very good week for BlackBerry owners, otherwise known also as CrackBerry addicts. As virtually everyone knows by now, an insufficiently tested systems cache handling piece of software at Research In Motion’s Waterloo network operations centre, which processes all e-mail messages to or from every BlackBerry in North America, set off a chain reaction that eventually cut off service to more than five million users overnight last Tuesday. And that was two days before Doug lost his BlackBerry in Picton.

My only brush with blackberries last week was also in Picton, but it was a case of taking a gorgeous 19C sunny early spring morning to head down to the County Farm Centre on Cold Storage Road to check out some pretty tempting, albeit frozen, blackberries at $4.99 per bag.