Canadian Geese

by a co-conspirator

This was the first original poster we did, I’ll have to look up the press articles on it to get the exact date, but it was sometime prior to Feb 28, 1990 obviously. I kinda thought it was in the fall of the previous year, but no guarantees on that.
The group I work with in Kingston is called Action for Social Change (ASC). We had been working with the Alliance for Non-Violent Action (ANVA, a regional group) for about five years in solidarity with the Innu Nation of Nitassinan (Labrador on the East coast of Canada).
The Innu were fighting low-level flights over their unceded homeland by jets from the Goose Bay military base. This is a Canadian Forces base but the gov’t of Canada also gave flight time to other NATO nations there. The noise and dummy bomb drops from the flights were wreaking havoc with the animal and human life in the region, hence doubly affecting the Innu traditional lifestyle in the bush.
The Innu used civil disobedience to block the flights (invading the runways) and ANVA and ASC participated in cd actions in Ottawa and ASC did one in Kingston in support of the Innu demands to stop the flights. The posters were our attempt to bring the war home to Kingstonians — it worked.
The phone numbers on the posters are 1) the local Canadian Froces base number and (2) the local member of Parliament’s number. By early morning of poster day the MP’s secretary had received 200 calls. The base had to bring in extra personnel to answer the phones.
The following year we put up a similar poster (new phone numbers) in the nation’s capital (Ottawa) the night before a mass cd with ANVA and Innu people blockading the Department of National Defence HQ. The poster got the front page that morning, the action, the next morning.

The municipality of Kingston has been selected by the Department of National Defence in association with UTDC, a subsidiary of Lavalin Corporation, to serve as the target area for a series of non-destructive low-level overflights of NATO military aircraft.

Overflights will commence February 28, 1990 and will consist of approximately twenty overflights per day at heights not below twenty metres and speeds of greater than 1300 km/hr. Overflights are scheduled daily at

0400hrs	0500hrs	0600hrs	0730hrs
0800hrs	0900hrs	1030hrs	1100hrs
1200hrs	1330hrs	1400hrs	1500hrs
1620hrs	1700hrs	1800hrs	1900hrs
2000hrs	2100hrs	2200hrs	2310hrs

On active bomber simulation runs only “dummy” bombs will be released. These pose no danger once having landed and reached target destination. Incidents of bombs landing on your property should be reported immediately to Canadian Forces Base Kingston (541-5103) — meanwhile, DO NOT TOUCH.

WARNING: Although no permanent physical damage is likely to result from an overflight, children and the elderly are advised to remain indoors during scheduled flight times as posted above. Sound levels at ground may surpass 120 decibels.

For further information phone 542-3243.

More Kingston Pranks

On This Day in Snigglery	November 21, 1953: The British Museum publishes its study showing that the “Piltdown Man” fossils were faked. (See Archaeological Forgeries for information on pickled relics)