CTV.ca News StaffResidents of a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia neighbourhood woke up Sunday morning to anti-Lebanese graffiti scrawled on more than 20 businesses and homes stretching across several blocks. Many of them began working quickly to remove the offensive messages from the walls.The messages contained racial slurs and politically charged statements, many too offensive to publish. They were hand-written in magic marker and appeared to be carefully conceived and well-scripted.
"Isn’t it nice how their children mix with the white folks of Halifax," read one of the messages. Another claimed that local Lebanese-Canadian owned businesses are "turning the neighbourhoods into ghettos."A representative of local Lebanese Canadian business owners told CTV he is concerned the racist graffiti could just be the beginning. "It’s a very personal attack on the Lebanese people in general, and the Lebanese business people," said Sid Chedrawe, from the Canadian Lebanese Chamber of Commerce. "The unknown is will they keep it to writing on the walls and defacing property or will they take it a step further."
Chedrawe said the scrawled messages seemed intentional — put there by someone with a very specific message they wanted to get across. He considers it an insult to Dartmouth’s Lebanese Canadian population.
"We came here with nothing and worked hard for the success we’ve had. And for someone to assume that we would take over the world or Dartmouth is ludicrous. It belittles the efforts that we’ve done," Chedrawe said.
A local councillor agreed, the graffiti did not seem random but appeared to be very intentional.
"These are not kids doing this," councillor Gloria McCluskey told CTV. "I doubt we could find kids that could spell that well. These are people who know what they’re doing."
Police had made no arrests by early Sunday evening, but area residents told CTV that a man, voicing similar anti-Lebanese slogans, visited the neighbourhood on Halloween. He was arrested by police for disturbing the peace. Residents were convinced he was the same individual who had written the graffiti.
