Protests in solidarity with the hereditary chiefs of Wet’suwet’en that have erupted across Canada in the past week came to Vaughan on Saturday as supporters blocked all trains coming in or out of Macmillan Yard.

Cargo trains going west were blocked starting at 10 a.m., and by 1 p.m., all north and north-west trains were blocked at the facility near Highway 7 and Keele Street. Following hours of chants on a bitterly cold day, the protesters left around 5 p.m. after being served with an injunction ordering them off the CN Rail line.

“To Canadians who feel inconvenienced by our actions, they should think about the stolen Indigenous lands they currently stand on, the genocide the same government has committed on my grandparents, on the older generations. We’re here to protect everyone’s right to a healthy environment and that means solidarity with Indigenous land defenders,” said Toronto Wet’suwet’en Solidarity spokesperson Vanessa Gray, a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia.

Gray said the decision to leave was a matter of safety for the protesters as the sun began to set.

“Their injunctions show us we’re being effective and we will keep going,” Gray said.

She said plans for further protests are already underway but would not reveal when or how that will unfold.

“I would just say expect more action in the near future,” Gray said.

Meanwhile, near Belleville on Tyendinaga Mohawk territory, Federal Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller met with representatives of the Mohawk Nation at a rail blockade, which was in its 10th day and has shut rail services across Eastern Canada.

After hours of talks, Miller said there was “modest progress.”

“Tonight, we made some modest progress by opening up a dialogue with the people standing out there in the cold and doing so for eight or nine days,” he said. “We talked openly, frankly, painfully at times, and sometimes with humour. There’s a lot more work to be done.”

Train service was also impacted by a protest in east Vancouver on Saturday.

The GTA protest began early Saturday at Bloor Street and Spadina Avenue with many demonstrators travelling by subway to the Pioneer Village station and walking with banners across a parking lot.

They carried signs saying, “Uphold Indigenous sovereignty,” “Hands off Wet’suwet’en,” “Capitalism is organized crime,” and “No RCMP on Wet’suwet’en lands.” More than 200 people gathered in the parking lot south of the rail line chanting, “When justice fails? Block the rails!”

With about a dozen York Region, Toronto and CN Rail police vehicles parked nearby, the protestors climbed between rail cars to the blockade on the other side of the trains.

Protesters lit fires to keep warm, piled wood on the tracks at the second protest site near Keele Street, singing and drumming by the small fires.

“Protesters put their personal safety at risk by climbing on and between railcars,” CN Rail president and CEO JJ Ruest said in a statement. “The protesters trespassed on active railway tracks and on active trains to hang their banners and take photos of themselves. Trespassing on railway property and tampering with railway equipment is not only illegal, but also exceedingly dangerous.”

Although the GO tracks were not directly affected, GO service was also suspended on the Barrie line as a safety measure, said a Metrolinx spokesperson.

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“There’s a large group of people near our tracks on the Barrie corridor north of York University station. To ensure everyone remains safe near the tracks, we have had to unexpectedly cancel and/or modify service on the Barrie line until further notice,” a statement said.

Via Rail and CN have suspended their services indefinitely amid the Wet’suwet’en blockades as students at universities across the country struggled to get home for reading week.

An injunction in B.C. was enforced earlier this month by the RCMP to give Coastal GasLink access to a work site for the pipeline, which is part of a $40-billion LNG Canada export project in Kitimat, B.C.

Coastal GasLink has signed agreements with all 20 elected band councils along the pipeline route. However, Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs assert title to a vast 22,000-square-kilometre area and say band councils only have authority over reserve lands.

On Saturday, opponents of the pipeline said they have returned to camps along a road leading to a work site outside Houston, B.C.

Jen Wickham, a member of the First Nation’s Gidimt’en clan, says they went back to the camps where 28 people were arrested.

She says those at the camps are not blocking workers from Coastal GasLink from using the road or accessing the work site, and workers have been freely moving through.

Coastal GasLink and the RCMP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said the blockades and subsequent rail shutdown is “becoming a very serious threat” to the Canadian economy.

“Fascinating to see champions of wokeness suddenly embrace hereditary patriarchy as a preferred governance model,” he tweeted.

Canada’s largest propane supplier predicted critical shortages of the fuel in central and eastern Canadian markets.

Greg McCamus, president of Superior Propane, says customers who rely on the fuel to heat and power their homes, businesses, farms, hospitals and more will see shortages “in the coming days.”

On Friday, Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau said Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer’s suggestion of ordering police to end rail line blockades across the country was unhelpful.

Scheer wants the prime minister to order the public safety minister to tell RCMP detachments to end blockades by supporters of Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs.

Trudeau says he has no plans to order the RCMP to end the blockades.

“We are not the kind of country where politicians get to tell the police what to do in operational matters,” said Trudeau from Munich, where he was attending a global security conference.

Trudeau said Canada has failed Indigenous Peoples for generations and there is no quick fix to problems that have sparked the latest disputes.

With files from The Canadian Press

Abhya Adlakha is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star’s radio room in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @AbhyaAdlakha

Jason Miller is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Reach him on email: jasonmiller@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @millermotionpic

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