Local Siblings Spark Black Lives Matter Movement

PORT HAWKESBURY - The Black Lives Matter movement in Cape Breton got a shot in the arm from an unlikely source - two white siblings, including a Special Olympian, whose march across the Canso Causeway led to a larger protest in the centre of Port Hawkesbury only eight days later. 

Sasha and Talen Repko began their three-hour journey from Auld's Cove, on the eastern mainland of Nova Scotia, one hour before noon the first Friday in June. Before the afternoon was over, they had achieved their goal of carrying the Black Lives Matter message across the Causeway and through the streets of Port Hastings and Port Hawkesbury, before wrapping things up at the Port Hawkesbury detachment of the RCMP's Inverness District. Once there, they convinced the detachment's commanding officer, Staff Sgt. Dave Morin, to join the siblings in taking a knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Sasha Repko, a track athlete who has competed at the 2017 Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg and won two silver medals at the 2018 Special Olympics Summer Games in Antigonish, was named 2019 Special Olympics Female Athlete of the Year for Nova Scotia. However, at the midway point of her journey, she pointed out that one of her greatest joys in these events was competing alongside Black athletes, including some that shared her autism journey and others with various types of mental and emotional difficulties. 

She also expressed great sadness for the widow and children of George Floyd, a Black man from Minneapolis whose death during a police altercation in Minneapolis, Minnesota the previous week had touched off a firestorm of protests across North America and around the world. Having lost their mother to cancer a year earlier, the Repko siblings were moved by the thought that a loving father had been taken away from his family. 

In addition to their two-person march on June 5, Sasha and Talen Repko also led a successful Black Lives Matter Rally and March in Port Hawkesbury on June 13, which attracted 70 people to join forces against racism in the town and the surrounding Strait area.