Violent incident at Elora Gorge leaves family shaken

ELORA – When an Elmira mom brought family members from New Jersey to Elora, she was expecting some quality time in the scenic village.

She was not expecting her dad to end up in hospital after being spat on and punched in the jaw by a man armed with two knives.  

(The names of those involved are being withheld out of concern for their safety.) 

It was her aunt and teenaged cousin’s first time in Canada, and they really wanted to see Toronto and Niagara Falls, but she wanted to show them a local gem. 

The mom headed to the village on July 31 with her two sons, aged two and three, and her dad, aunt and cousin. 

They walked through Victoria Park and down the stairs to the gorge, where  the grandfather and his sister sat down on the rocks catching up – it was the first time they’d seen each other in decades. 

The mom, her sons and her cousin were about 200 feet away, “taking pictures, throwing stones in the river, and having a lovely time.” 

Then they heard someone shouting, off in the distance, and noticed it was getting louder – and closer to them.

She gathered up the kids to head over to her dad and aunt, and the man kept approaching, “shouting at us to leave, telling us we didn’t belong there.”

He looked about 40 years old and was white with long, uncombed hair held back with a bandana, dirty and torn clothes, and no shoes, she said. 

He was carrying a package of meat from a grocery store and a couple cans of beer, she said, and strapped to his shoulder and leg were two knives.

The family didn’t say anything to the man, hoping that if they ignored him he’d go away, she said, but he didn’t – he kept getting closer and seemed to target her dad. 

The mom asked her aunt to take her toddlers back to safety, which was hard, as she was torn between wanting to be with her children somewhere safe where they wouldn’t witness anything, and wanting to stay with her dad to offer support.

“I could hear my kids yelling, screaming, ‘Mommy! Mom!’ as the yelling from this man continued.”

Her aunt struggled to get the children up the uneven terrain on the way out, and asked a stranger for support. 

“I’m really grateful that somebody stepped in to help,” she said.

Other people were fleeing the area, some leaving their belongings behind while they ran, she said.  

Meanwhile, the man was getting closer to her dad as he tried to back up over the uneven ground. That’s when the man spat in his face.

Until then, her dad had remained silent, she said, but at that point “my dad pushed him away and told him to leave us alone.” 

The man responded by giving the grandfather an uppercut to the jaw.   

“It knocked my dad to the ground, and I was worried the man would continue pounding my dad, so I picked up a rock and threw it at the man,” the woman said. 

That gave the grandfather an opportunity to get up, but now the man turned on the mom, and threw a rock at her, hitting her arm, she said.

She and her father backed away while continuing to watch the man, until he eventually walked off in the opposite direction and the family called the police.

The grandfather went to the hospital for an X-ray, hepatitis shot and blood work. 

“I was scared – terrified,” said the mom. 

“He had knives, and I had nothing ... at any point he could have taken one out and used it.” 

She said several cruisers showed up quickly and closed the park, and it seemed that the man was known to the police.

OPP officials did not respond to the Advertiser’s request for comment in time for publication. 

The mom told the police she wanted to press charges, and they took down her information, but when they called the next day she wasn’t available and said she hasn’t heard back. 

“I guess it’s on me to reach out to the OPP if I want to continue to press charges,” she said. “But I also have zero faith in our system and I’m not sure if that’s something I want to commit the next 18 months to two years of my life to.”  

Asked if she thought the incident was hate-motivated, she said “it’s hard to say – nothing he said screamed racism.

“But I think that the fact that the park was full of people, and my dad being a Black man, and he chose to target my dad – I think that’s why my dad might feel that way. 

“But from my perspective, he made sure everybody was leaving the park, whether you were white, Black, Indian, biracial ... he wanted everyone to leave.”  

The mom used to frequently visit the gorge, alone with her sons, but said she won’t be doing so any more.

“If I was alone with the two children and this man attacked, what would I have done? I wouldn’t have been able to fight him off or get out of there safely,” she told the Advertiser.

And the layout of the gorge means that if he’s on the stairs, he’s blocking the way out, so there’s no escape, she added.