From a small crowd of protesters, the eighty-year-old is grabbed by two young Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers. Struggling to walk—Ball is blind in one eye and suffers from the effects of two heart attacks—he’s taken to a wall and slammed face first into the brick before being handcuffed. Shortly afterward, according to Ball, he’s dumped roughly into the back of a police car and sent to the station to be reprimanded. Everything happens in the space of a few minutes, turning an ordinary act of civic participation into a hellish ordeal.
When Ball saw someone snatch a protest sign from a vehicle, he confronted the person. “I saw this man try to throw it away. I went to put it back on the car, and all hell broke loose.”
According to Ball, the snatcher grabbed the sign from Ball and lunged at him. When Ball tried to defend himself, RCMP officers arrested him and hauled him away, over the loud cries of “Shame on you” from the crowd. Ball says none of the officers at the scene tried to intervene to de-escalate the situation. “I was scared stiff. I thought I was fighting for my life.”
The day Houston’s car was surrounded and attacked in Wolfville, the premier’s office issued a statement about the protest, failing to acknowledge Ball’s arrest and assault and that the demonstration, up until then, had been peaceful. Instead, the statement calls the protesters rioters, stating, “When bad actors resort to damaging property and putting lives at risk, they do nothing to advance constructive dialogue. That’s not the Bluenoser way.”
All this comes as Houston’s government continues to slide in the polls. Houston is now one of the most unpopular premiers in the country, and his government trails the opposition New Democratic Party, according to a July poll by Narrative Research. NDP leader Claudia Chender has promised to restore the funding should she become premier after the next election, which doesn’t need to be held until 2029.
For now, Ball says his faith in democracy in Nova Scotia has been shaken. And he no longer trusts the police. After spending an hour alone in the corridor outside the holding cells, fighting to get access to his nitroglycerin to keep another heart attack at bay, Ball was released by the RCMP without charge.