Terrace Fire Department has been busy responding to two separate arsons targeting Kalum Cabs within five days of each other. Kalum Cabs is a taxi and shuttle company based in Terrace which operates in a few neighboring towns offering private and commercial shuttle services. According to a press release, early on the morning of the 24th police arrived hot on the heels of firefighters attempting to extinguish two of the companies shuttle busses which were found in flames. The buses were reported to be severely damaged and photos published showed charred pavement from where they had been parked. Judging from the photos it seems the remains of the busses were oddly moved before the photo was taken. The wee hours of August 29th must have been another dreadful surprise for the forces of order who found themselves looking at another arson this time targeting Kalum’s taxi cabs. Police reported several cabs were targeted and one was seriously damaged.
For readers unfamiliar with Terrace it’s worth noting some visible tensions in the city around poverty, gentrification, resource extraction and the interplay of all three. The city is the rapidly growing industrial hub of the region, many of the surrounding projects depend on workers flown in from afar delivered via taxi and shuttle around town where they stay during the duration of their contracts. This industrial reality is inseparable from the gentrification, dispossession and poverty which defines the city.
These recent fires are not the only ones which have struck Terrace. The police and media’s decision to provide few details and withhold photos of the wreckage is similar to September last year when the Terrace RCMP reported that four vehicles and a building had been severely damaged by arson. They chose to only publish the street address of the block the arson occurred on withholding the name of the business and pictures of the damage. An article published later on BC Counter Info dug a little deeper revealing the cars belonged to McElhanney a surveying company active in the region’s industrial projects. One thing these late night fires have in common is the police and medias withholding of information. Could this decision to withhold images and information be an attempt to keep the myth of social tranquility alive? We cant say for sure, but we do know that these recent fires remind us that below the surface of misery people are in fact alive and cracks in social peace multiply.
Unsung
Unsung is a writing initiative which highlights self organized direct action across BC. State agencies and media have a practice of obscuring breaks with social peace except when they think it serves their interests. We believe that it is important for the rebel imagination to highlight the ever present practice of attack. Unsung highlights anonymous unclaimed actions we encounter in the media, police reports and stories we hear. We will explore some of the economic, ecological and political realities that shape the context that each action occurred in. It is important to remember that we do not know the intention of those carrying out actions and cannot speak on their behalf. Unsung is not an effort to explore actions taken exclusively by anarchists, but instead focuses on any that could spark the anti-authoritarian imagination. We are not publishing communiques or action claims, we believe regular entries to counter info sites are adequate for that effort.