Liberators

Western Canada—February, the Third Year

Soon after the French arrived in each province, a decree went out that ba

The RCMP’s failure to enforce the UN’s gun ban made the UNPROFOR commanders furious. Despite some threats and posturing, they did nothing. They recognized that they needed the cooperation of the RCMP to successfully occupy western Canada, and that cooperation was marginal, at best. Although they had access to the same gun registration records, UNPROFOR didn’t even attempt to go door-to-door, searching for guns. They preferred to make proclamations and to send out notices. These public notices threatened the citizenry with long prison sentences, deportation, and even the death penalty for noncompliance.

The Canadian government had attempted to create a universal long-gun registry when the Firearms Act became law on December 5, 1995. However, it took until 1998 to develop a system to issue licenses and require buyers to register long guns. As originally enacted, by 2001 all gun owners were required to have a license and, by 2003, to register all of their rifles and shotguns. But there was massive noncompliance and loud complaints, especially in the western provinces.

The registry’s database had some huge flaws. The consensus was that the registry was unworkable, that it had no impact on crime, and that it was outrageously expensive. (The administrative costs were estimated at $2.7 billion in 2012.) With the passage of bill C-19 in 2012 the registration scheme was abandoned, and the registry records were destroyed. So even if UNPROFOR was willing to take the casualties, they still would not have known where to find all of the guns in Canada.

The UNPROFOR occupation smothered every aspect of life in Canada. Most public meetings were ba

UNPROFOR had underestimated the growing resistance, characterizing the resisters as “bandits,” “a few scattered anti-Francophone malcontents.” They also misread the mood of the populace in western Canada. The citizens at first appeared happy to see “help from France” with the arrival of fuel tankers by road in Kamloops and by sea in Vancouver. But when infantry troop ships arrived at Vancouver and Prince Rupert, passive resistance began almost immediately. The French tried to use le gant de velours (“the velvet glove”) approach at first, to cast themselves as the Nice Guys. But the passive resistance grew and soon morphed from vehicle sabotage to sniping.

UNPROFOR was slow to react, but when it eventually did, it came down with a fist of iron. Many of the French counterinsurgency tactics dated back to their experience in Algeria in the 1950s. As resistance grew, the French tactics became more brutal, with torture of prisoners becoming commonplace. Once the serious shooting started, the velvet glove was removed from the iron fist.

The French army had been freshly emboldened by massacring illegal aliens protesting in France, with impunity. Their Foreign Legion troops were used primarily to police Quebec, while the French-born soldiers were used in the other provinces, where English was the predominant language. These deployments both fit in with the UN’s strategy of using unsympathetic troops to quell local uprisings.

28

BRUSSELS CHARADES

Calling it your job don’t make it right, boss.

—Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke (1967)

The McGregor Ranch, near Anahim Lake, British Columbia—May, the Third Year

The small meeting at the McGregors’ house started with Phil recounting the chatter that he’d heard on the shortwave radio. In addition to Alan, Claire, Ray, and Phil, there was also Stan Leaman, a twenty-three-year-old bachelor from an adjoining ranch. Stan was a descendant of one of the earliest settlers of the region. Most of Stan’s siblings had moved to Canada’s oil sands region, following opportunities with the petroleum boom. So Stan had to hire laborers to help him operate his raw-milk dairy farm.

Stan rode up to the McGregor ranch house on his big gelding one afternoon and said to Alan, “If you’re pla

The five of them formed an independent resistance cell that would later be known as Team Robinson. They chose the name in memory of the FOB in Afghanistan where Ray and Phil had first met each other. Their first formal meeting was in May, just after news came to them of some mass arrests in Edmonton. Stan arrived wearing his usual green-and-black-checkered fla

“The vast unpopulated expanses in this part of British Columbia will give us a few advantages. It will be a huge area for UNPROFOR to control and patrol. Their forces will necessarily be spread thin. The muskeg regions are ‘no go’ country for nearly all of their vehicles. With our opponents on foot, we’ll be fairly evenly matched, despite their firepower, communications, and night vision gear. And when we do engage them, the response time for them to receive any backup will be lengthy. That will give us time to beat feet, so that they’ll have great difficulty in tracking us down.”

Stan asked, “So what are you proposing?”

“I think that we can manage a few operations inside city limits—mostly very carefully targeted demolition and sabotage. Out in the boonies, we’ll probably be doing ambushes on remote stretches of road, and perhaps engaging isolated detachments. In cold country like this, simply burning down their barracks in winter months will be quite effective—both logistically and to push down their morale.

“The UNPROFOR units will likely be moving in from the east via Highway 1, and by rail. Interdiction of these routes would be possible but likely limited to delaying actions by irregular forces; the prairies are awfully wide open. Any force with decent air superiority or armor will prevail conventionally. Once the French arrive to occupy the west, things will get more sporting. Securing the highways and rail lines through the Rockies and the coastal ranges will be much more difficult than pushing across prairie. Our country here is challenging terrain to operate in summer, and winter makes conventional operations extremely difficult.

“There are three main routes that they can come west on: south through Crowsnest Pass, in the center-west of Calgary on Highway 1, and farther northwest of Edmonton on the Yellowhead Highway.”