As dawn broke in Ottawa Friday, two more incidents of racially-charged graffiti vandalism came to light — this time at the Parkdale United Church and the Ottawa Muslim Association.
For Rev. Anthony Bailey, this was an unhappy déjà vu, harkening back to January, when vandals canvassed one wall of his church with hateful words and imagery.
Friday morning’s vandalism was limited to the side doors of the church but bore three bigoted messages, painted in bright red ink: 1488 (a white supremacist numeric symbol evoking Adolph Hitler), the N-word, and two swastikas.
“It was shocking. It was very disturbing,” Bailey said Friday. “This is something that’s targeted, and it seems there is a kind of emboldening that is taking place in our city.”
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Around the city, similar graffiti desecrated two synagogues, one discovered Thursday and the other last weekend, as well as the home and teaching centre of a Jewish woman early Tuesday morning.
Ottawa Police spokesman Const. Marc Soucy said Friday morning there is no information connecting all five incidents, but there are similarities that investigators are looking at.
“It’s been a rash — five in a week. So it’s a great concern,” Soucy told Global News. “Now we need to let the investigation take its course.”
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Police said there is no indication yet whether one person or a group of people are responsible for each instance of vandalism.
The church — which has a black minister and significant black but diverse congregation — and mosque are about 1.5 kilometres from each other, just west of downtown.
“These are not accidental or coincidental,” Bailey said. “I think it’s part of a movement of discontent, where those who are not in favour of welcoming refugees or of immigration or people who they consider are ‘other’ are now feeling emboldened and entitled to speak their mind.”
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Despite the week’s spike in these instances of intolerance and racism in Ottawa, Bailey is regrettably familiar with the sentiments behind the vandalism.
As a teenager in Montreal, Bailey and his brother were attacked.
“My brother was killed, was murdered on the streets of Montreal as they yelled, ‘Kill those n****s,’” Bailey recalled.
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Bailey was among the dozens who reached out to the leaders at the Machzikei Hadas synagogue when news spread Thursday that one or more vandals had defiled the outside walls with swastikas, Nazi jargon and messages of white supremacy.
Today, he was on the receiving end.
Odelia Scher is a member of Machzikei Hadas who on Friday morning visited the mosque and church that were targeted overnight. She said she wanted to help wash off the spray paint, or help in some other way.
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“My general message is it doesn’t matter what your religion is, where you’re from. We’re here for you,” she said. “In a certain way, it’s almost a good thing it happened, because it brought people out to show how we care.”
Outside the church earlier that morning, just up the street from his home, Neil Morrison was with his son, offering help and support.
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Speaking to his children about the incident, Morrison told them “99.9 per cent of the community supports and loves each other, supports diversity. Whoever is doing this is just the tiniest minority.”
The reverend, sitting on a pew inside his church, echoed the sentiment.
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“I feel that our city is better than this,” Bailey said. “There is much more love and harmony in our city, but there are issues we have to address that create the environment where people think this kind of thing is OK.”
Police have not determined whether any of the recent events can be classified as hate crimes. While speaking with Global News on Tuesday, Ottawa police spokesman Const. Chuck Benoit said investigators have several steps to take before vandalism can be pursued as a hate crime.
In Canada, race is the most common motivator for a hate crime and religion is the second-most, according to Statistics Canada. Together, the two accounted for 80 per cent of all police-reported hate crimes in Canada in 2014.
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Black people are the most targeted group in Canada, accounting for almost 40 per cent of racially motivated hate crimes and 18 per cent of all hate crimes; Jewish Canadians are a close second, accounting for 50 per cent of religion-motivated hate crimes and 16 per cent of all hate crimes reported in the Statistics Canada report.
Homosexuals and Muslims are the third and fourth most targeted groups in Canada, according to the data.
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