Bob Lovelace-Canadian Hero

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Last month, Lovelace, a Queen's University professor and retired chief of the Ardoch Algonquins, was sentenced to six months behind bars for refusing to allow uranium prospectors onto land claimed by the First Nation near Sharbot Lake. A judge found him to be in contempt of an earlier court order to do so.

Lovelace refuses to back down.

"It would have meant voluntarily compromising my liberty to speak freely and to defend the land ... Algonquin land," Lovelace said in an interview at the Central East Correctional Centre, where he'll reside until Aug. 15 or until he decides to obey the court order.

People who know Lovelace well, like his stepdaughters, Lyann Smith and Lesley Merrigan, don't expect him to get out anytime soon.

In his early days with North Frontenac Community Services, Lovelace received a call from Algonquin chief Harold Perry. The provincial government had given a private company a licence to harvest the wild rice in the Ardoch area, the same wild rice the Algonquins had harvested and reseeded for generations.

The natives feared commercial harvesting would destroy the local crop. Perry heard Lovelace had some knowledge of the legal system and called him for help.

The two travelled to Camden East to visit a Harrowsmith magazine writer and they began a campaign that brought national attention to the issue.

Not unlike the controversy surrounding the uranium mine near Sharbot Lake, the Rice War pit the OPP, the provincial government and private business against local Algonquins and settlers.

On Aug. 29, 1980, about 100 protesters led a standoff against dozens of police officers who were trying to escort the wild rice harvester to Mud Lake. Until this point, Lovelace had fought the provincial government on a bureaucratic level. He could read and understand provincial law and policy and he could talk to bureaucrats in their own language, then relay that information to the Algonquins in a way they could understand.

During the standoff, Perry said it was Lovelace who kept tempers in check.

"People listen when he talks," Perry said. "He talks firm and he says in a few words what takes me an hour."

In the end, the harvester couldn't get through because Mud Lake is surrounded by private land and none of the land owners would allow it to cross. No other company since then has managed to get a licence to harvest there.

Perry believes the war wouldn't have been won without Lovelace. "We, as aboriginal people, owe him big time for bringing us through the Rice War," he said.

After this contribution to the local Algonquins, Perry was determined to adopt Lovelace into the Algonquin community. Lovelace eventually relented to Perry's invitation and he became chief of the Ardoch Algonquins.