Hundreds show support; U.S. protestors a no-show
By: Gabrielle Giroday
Updated: August 10 at 07:32 PM CDT
Seven months pregnant, Stacey Titterton stood on a sidewalk in sweltering heat Saturday afternoon to ensure a peaceful funeral for a slain 22-year-old man she'd never met.
Titterton, a 24-year-old restaurant server with a long shift still ahead of her that night, stood amongst hundreds of strangers lining the sidewalk of Westwood Drive while a funeral for Tim McLean took place across the street.
Titterton never met the young man who was reportedly stabbed and beheaded on a Greyhound bus July 30, but she was there to send a message to extremist protesters who had threatened to picket outside the funeral and disrupt family and friends of McLean's.
After much fanfare, those protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas never arrived. However, an estimated 300 to 400 peaceful mourners came to pay their respects to the McLean family outside the church.
"I think we're a fairly strong community, so when someone starts bashing someone that died, that we will unite together. We have to show that Canada will not tolerate this," said Titterton, who was standing in the shade alongside a like-minded friend.
"I don't believe it's any of my personal business to be (inside the funeral), because I didn't know him. But I believe showing support outside, there's nothing wrong with that... this is just an honest, silent way of showing the way we feel."
Starting around 1 p.m., Winnipeggers crammed the sidewalks of the lush Westwood street in a peaceful blockade to stop the protesters.
People waited outside Westwood Community Church to protect the McLean family from any protesters who might show up. (Sarah Kearney / Winnipeg Free Press )
The Westboro protesters had threatened to picket the funeral with the message that McLean's death was God's punishment for Canada's policies that enable homosexuality, abortion and adultery. They never came, following promises by the Winnipeg Police Service anyone disrupting the funeral would be facing arrest. Several members of the group were also turned away from the Canadian border Thursday after Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day issued an alert.
"It was bad enough the way (the death) happened, without radicals coming up here and creating a problem," said Walter Fehr, a 60-year-old former truck driver from Transcona, who stood in beating sunlight with his wife Saturday beneath black umbrellas.
The umbrellas had a purpose -- the Fehrs said they'd brought them in case they needed to be used as shields over offensive signs being held up.
"It's so they can't get their point across," said Fehr, who said he's a former hippie who hadn't been compelled to participate in a similar event since the 1960s.
A circus-like atmosphere surrounded the funeral, with uniformed police officers posted at the doors and roof of the church, and a nearby business handing out small paper cups of smoothie samples to those waiting for hours in the muggy heat. A police spokesman told reporters before the funeral began that anyone creating a disturbance could be arrested under the Highway Traffic Act, or for other applicable offences.
Saturday afternoon, a large police vehicle inspection truck sat conspicuously on Westwood Drive, with news anchors and jostling photographers only metres away from amateur photographers and videographers shooting their own material of the spectacle. One heated mourner, a dreadlocked young woman who said she knew McLean, cooled herself off in a lawn sprinkler.
Just outside of street view, in a parking lot about 200 metres north of the church, at least seven police cruisers and another police van sat hidden while the funeral proceeded.
Shortly before the service ended, McLean's family was hustled out the rear door of the church on an alternate route, with at least one flashing police cruiser blocking the roadway. Around 5:30 p.m., the crowds on the street began to disperse, about four hours after they began gathering.
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