REXTON, N.B. – People gathered near Rexton, New Brunswick Friday to reflect on the events that happened that day, one year ago.
On October 17, 2013, violence erupted in the area when RCMP, acting on a court injunction, moved in to disperse a three-week-long blockade of protesters, blocking seismic testing equipment owned by SWN Resources.
SWN Resources has been conducting exploration for shale gas in various parts of New Brunswick since 2010. The company has been the subject of repeated protests.
“We came very, very close to having shots fired,” Susan Levi-Peters told Global News Friday. “What happened that day was unbelievable.”
Over 40 people were arrested and six RCMP cars were burned.
Now, the former chief of Elsipogtog says she prefers to think about the future, rather than the past.
Levi-Peters says she’s been meeting with RCMP, talking through what happened and discussing ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again.
She says they are talking about holding a public meeting to inform people on what’s happening within the province now and what could happen in the future.
“Things like, when these leases were signed and what are inside these leases? Do we have any legal say in it, we believe we do, but how much?” she said. “Could we do a court injunction and then who do we do a court injunction on? Or do we say, ‘Yes, we might do the test wells provided we know the risks?’ We should discuss these.”
Mayor of Rexton David Hanson says, in his 28 years of serving on village council, he had never seen anything like it before.
“We would certainly hope that this type of thing never happens again. I think some education needs to happen, if there was proper education it probably wouldn’t have escalated to where it did,” he said Friday.
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