Hornets do not anger and they do not react unless their home is threatened. Hornets gather to protect each other. We are done having our house kicked in.
Protect unique cultures inside a community. South Dundas is rural, beautiful, and full of history. Old barns. Farmhouses with one-of-a-kind additions. Beautiful red-brick homes. Architecture and design. Veterans. War and Freedom. Water. Animals. Fields. Life. Tractors and classic cars. It is full of artists — woodworkers, bakers, and more. Christians. Spiritual wellness guides. Indigenous Peoples. Settler families going back hundreds of years. This is where Ontario began. That mix is not a mess to be tidied by a by-law officer or a council who wants it gone to sell parks to condo developers. That mix is the roots of Canada. Cherish it, and work with people to improve it, do not destroy it.
I did not come here to sand it down until it looks modern and sterile. I came here to live in it, work in it, and protect what is special and irreplaceable.
Who I am
I am a small-town girl who did not stay put. I have lived across Canada. I have spent time in many countries. I studied people — sociology, human behaviour, stress, health, law — because I wanted to understand why some folks get to build the life they can see, and others get talked or blocked out of it. I write. I publish. I build businesses. I am obsessive about law. I listen first. I do not pretend your world is mine but I will protect your right to have it.
I founded a publishing house so women with something true to say could get a book into the world without being sanded down. I wrote Boss Up Your Life with Mia Martina because two small-town girls who had already built something wanted to show cooperation over competition. We rise together, or we do not rise. The point was never the awards, the billboards, the status. While it came and I was so grateful for it, I am humble and I was not seeking that part. The point was the sentence I have been living since I was young: what if the thing standing in the way is the opening?
I am the INFJ advocate. I am a Gemini. I carry First Nations warrior spirit. I work the Trickster Archetype — Trixster — on purpose. Shape-shifter. Bridge. The one who walks into a room that has already decided the story, smiles, and tells a truer one. The INFJ sees the system and will not leave people inside it. The Gemini has lived enough places to know a rule in one town is a suggestion in the next, and that words either free you or box you. The warrior does not audition for permission. The Trickster refuses the official version when the official version is a lie wearing a laminated card.
Put those together and you do not get a mascot. You get a leader who will talk, move, publish, restore a building, stand in a courtroom to defend others, and then put her name on a ballot. Freedom is not a mood. Freedom is what you protect when someone with a municipal ID card decides your barn, your rights, your cars, or your culture is a problem.
Why I ended up here
It was not by chance. I show up unannounced at all the right times. This life path was not a happenstance.
I am a Kwakwaka’wakw woman from British Columbia. In 2020 I bought the empty United Church at 4 Elizabeth Drive in Iroquois. The rectory became my home — a “permitted accessory dwelling” — government permission to reside on land I legally bought. The hall became Oneida Grand Event Centre and Bistro. The creative side is Trixster. That name is not décor and it was not a whim.
The United Church of Canada was built from churches that helped enforce the potlatch ban. From 1885 to 1951 the state criminalized the gathering that is feast, gift, story, song, dance, and name-giving — the public holding of a people. My creed is tied to hosting the very kinds of community events the Church and the government once punished my nation for holding. I have never claimed the lot is a reserve. I have never asked to be exempt from by-laws. I pay the taxes. I follow the law. I simply told the truth: this land is owned by an Indigenous woman who took an abandoned former United Church and put the gathering back in it.
I named the building Oneida on purpose. I sit in Iroquois. The Iroquois Confederacy includes the Oneida Nation. My stone building is a tribute to Oneida — the people of the standing stone. This county is “where Ontario began” and “where Canada began.” Automotive tourism and Canadiana sit on my lot because that is also this place: cars, water, border, work, ingenuity, “rez cars” and classics kept alive because that is how people move and how people remember. Trixster is the creative business. Oneida Grand is the hall. Same owner. Same vision. Former staff could see it. They wrote the Tourist Commercial approvals down. They knew the OMVIC dealer inventory belonged on site. They helped with grants because I was new, motivated, Indigenous, and building automotive and Canadiana tourism in a town that loves and needed both.
I was given this area and its challenges because I am the one that can change it. Not because I asked for a war. Because the work that followed matches who I am.
Then the people in the office changed. The file did not. Suddenly the same business project, mid renovation setup from COVID delays, during a potluck to meet locals and gain insight, the cars were ordered “debris” and “a wrecking yard.” The same Oneida hall was now “the old United Church” and “OUR United Church,” as if, three years after purchase, I was a stranger who had done something to their building. The words are written in my town’s freedom of information request fulfilled: how can someone from another province come here and do this to our church? With the new council and staff, the meetings I asked for did not happen. Allegations — not findings — were walked over to other agencies. A liquor file that had passed inspection was turned against me as an Indigenous person with a legally operating business on definitions and claims that did not hold in any tribunal or court so far. Neighbours signed a petition in support of us. The current mayor ignored all 129 of them. Some would not put their name on paper because they thought staff would come for their yard next.
Landowners already know this movie. A clean-yards rule that sounds like dumped trash gets stretched until wanted property — plated or insured vehicles, project cars, farm iron, décor, inventory, firewood, a boat on a trailer — is “refuse” because it is visible, old, or not to someone’s taste. That is not garbage collection. That is a municipality trying to decide what you are allowed to own. In my opinion, they are shopping our property and abusing their power.
The law, and who does not know it
I studied law because I got tired of being told the rule was whatever the person across the counter felt that morning. I am obsessive about it. In court I have known the Fire Code, the Building Code, the by-laws, and the Municipal Act in more detail than the employees sent to enforce them. I expect the people Canadians hire to keep us safe and protect our democratic rights, to be competent.
These people are in charge of our safety. They write orders on an officer’s eye from bias or what looks like from motives of forced land sales. They skip the committee that is supposed to hear you. They treat a laminated card like a badge. They could not keep their own statutes straight while they were trying to take a woman’s inventory off her own land.
Charges went to the Ontario Court of Justice under the old yard by-law. Trial, March 4, 2026. Decision, June 24, 2026: not guilty on the four counts that proceeded. Jeff Bogaerts of Canadian Property Rights Legal Services stood there with me. One verdict does not repair a town. It does prove this: trying to starve someone out of their material items, only feeds their advocacy fire.
Council then passed By-law 2026-36. The public line was rodents. The definitions went after vehicles, parts, appliances, furniture, firewood, motorhomes, boats and trailers — “whether of any value or not.” Orders. Entry. Removal. “Final.” The bill on the tax roll. On September 1 and 2, I and other South Dundas landowners filed in the Superior Court at Cornwall to quash the overreaching parts — not actual dumped waste — and to stop the town treating wanted property as refuse while the court decides. Real garbage should be cleaned up. Wanted property should not be redefined until it can be seized.
Condemning barns and food trucks can not be done simply because one person at a municipal desk said so. There is a process to protect all of us, even them when they go home at night and live in their municipalities.
Using untraceable warrants, taking people to tribunals and court without proper inspections or authority, entering properties unannounced, hiding their documents, ignoring their permits, intimidating them with staff and lawyers their tax dollars pay for … This will stop on my watch. It is a disgusting way to treat people, especially the ones that pay your salary, hold trust in what you run on, and you are supposed to protect.
Call it what it is
We will not sit and be victims of an evil that has consumed our democracy. We are the warrior spirit, and everything on our path we are ready for.
Much of our society has been acting stubborn, with a complete intolerance of a creed, a belief, an opinion, or a group of people that is not like them. The system is holding a hard, unreasonable view — and then disliking the human being who lives another way. This is the definition of bigotry.
I believe Canada has a problem with this. It is a big word. I thought we had moved past it. We have not. It is alive and well. It hurts my soul to see it and having to call it out.
Your political beliefs. Having humour. The work you do. Your creative work. Your invisible disability. Your way of life. Your home. The unique characteristics that make you interesting and let you enjoy life to build a life and legacy. They want those gone. Be like them. Or move.
But, there are more of us than there are of them. They are just louder and holding a false narrative of power. The power is, and always will be, the people.
When a township treats lawful difference as a defect — when the test for belonging is “be like us” — that is not standards. That is not community.
The slogan is the work
Driven. Not restless. Direct. The will to finish what you start when the polite people have gone home. I have built publishing houses, communities, event halls, books, and a legal file the long way. Drive is what you use when you need to get somewhere with intention and are focused on the destination while being conscious of the obstacles that may come on the road to get there.
Community. The barn. The baker. The kid on the back of her dad’s dirt bike. The classic in the driveway or field. The church supper and the potluck and the car show. Indigenous and settler and everybody who decided this stretch of river was home. Community is not a brand. The community is not the 1000 people who put on the “show.” Community is the foundation to build on, and I refuse to flatten that.
Restore. Not nostalgia for its own sake. Put the building back to work. Put the by-law back inside the Act. Put Council back in front of every resident and every problem; it is not a selective role. Restore means the town was run backwards, and we put it on a legal track forward.
Integrity — Integrity is the file matching the story. Grit is staying in the room after they have called your cars junk and your name a problem. Integrity without grit is a speech. Grit without integrity is just another fight. I am both. It is speaking the truth when it makes you unpopular. It is having a bigger purpose than yourself, it is sacrifice for a greater need.
Vote on October 26, like you never have before!
Our government is broke because they prevented their people from prospering. Corruption is running everywhere. They are trying to weaken us so only they survive.
I am on the ballot for Mayor of South Dundas. Vote window October 19 to 26, 2026. I am not running to collect a title. I am running because debate, collaboration, and mediation will help this town, and lawyers on retainer as a first move will not.
New council comes in at the end of the year, on a budget already set by the people still sitting. I cannot promise that budget will be good. I can promise I will be honest about what I find. I will read it line by line, by department — not a PowerPoint. I am not protecting the system. I am protecting the people, and Canada. Transparency on what we need, what we can afford, and how we can be resourceful to get it done.
If I am elected, the first hundred days are motions — one vote of five — not a throne. Property standards back on a legal track: genuine refuse, not ownership. A working committee with a real appeal. The Integrity Commissioner complaint fee the Ombudsman already said should not exist. Least restrictive means. Visual barriers before seizures. Duty to mitigate. Talk before the invoice.
Urgently finish the projects that are stalled, get out of the way and help residents get busy. Williamsburg needs to be treated equally. Neglecting areas from Council for four years, while favouring where the majority of the council lives — shows. Rural taxes should support rural areas, not only developing one area of the township. Project budgets in Morrisburg were egregiously over budget. Everyone outside of Morrisburg suffers from this. When some residents are a closer drive to the next Municipality, it is wrong to go massively over budget and not tend to their road and utility needs.
Council spent a significant amount of time and costs on “consultant studies” to see how they could charge residents more money. They got in the way with bureaucracy and chasing pennies while applying AMPs unconstitutionally; The Supreme Court in Democracy Watch (July 2026) said a government cannot hide an administrative decision behind “final — no court.” Our council and staff did this aggressively, adding fines to residents to the point of them selling or almost losing their land. Our council has not corrected anything since this Supreme Court decision.
They spent time on all of this instead of getting businesses open and the residential lots filled when the market was looking. These unnecessary delays prevented 300 homes x $12300 connection fees (approx $3,690,000) where the mains are sitting there waiting. This money was needed for Iroquois upgrades, and why have we not asked Williamsburg if they want a water main?
We can advance and grow without knocking anything down. Without making anyone leave. We have abundance all around us but our township has operated on a scarcity mindset.
I will use the office the way landowners asked for it: property rights, personal freedom, open communication, and a town that advances instead of a handful of people advancing themselves.
This is not the Canada we built. We will save our country. For all those knocking us down — you cannot anymore. We are too strong. We are too many. We want our country back.