Local activist and Green Party candidate Roger Fleury passes away

Local activist and Green Party candidate Roger Fleury passes away

Former Pontiac political candidate and activist Roger Fleury has died. His obituary states that he passed away on April 15 at the Marionhill Nursing Home in Pembroke Ont. at the age of 80. His funeral mass will take place April 20, 2022 in St. Alphonsus Church in Chapeau at 11:30 a.m.

Fleury, who identified himself as “Chief Pontiac Anishinaabek Fort de Coulonge Kitchesipirini”, was the candidate for the provincial Green Party in the riding of Pontiac several times and also ran for the federal Greens in the riding of Hull-Aylmer in 2011 and 2015.

He was also an outspoken activist, who courted some controversy in recent years. In the fall of 2020, Fleury demanded that the MRC Pontiac stop using the name Pontiac, and protested outside their office in Campbell’s Bay alongside Quebec Green leader Alex Tyrell.

In December 2020 he landed in hot water after organizing a “cultural hunt” for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents of the region, in violation of wildlife protection regulations. His actions were denounced by Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council Grand Chief Verna Polson, who said that his title and group were not recognized. In a statement, she called it “nothing more than an incitement to perpetrate an illegal act since neither he nor the members of his social club are First Nations.”

Back in 2014, he was part of a group that occupied a construction site at 823 rue St. Jacques in Gatineau, after 3,000 year-old Indigenous artifacts were discovered by workers.