Where they were headed that day also is at the least interesting.
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The final destination of the Mitt Romney clan that summer of “83 with Seamus strapped to the car roof was his parents’ cottage on the Canadian shores of Lake Huron in a private gated community called Beach O’ Pines — which was the focus of one of the most important civil rights cases in Canadian history. Up until 1949, the bylaws of the exclusive community, which was located near Grand Bend, Ontario, restricted who could live there. The “covenant” stipulated that the land “could never be sold, used, occupied or rented by any person of the Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or coloured race or blood.” The document provided a legal justification that only “persons of the white or Caucasian race” could live within the cottage community.
In April, 1948, Bernard Wolf, a successful London, Ontario, Jewish, businessman, signed a buyer’s agreement to buy a cottage property in Beach O’ Pines for $6,800. But he later found out that the transaction was voided due to the real estate restriction. So with the help of a hot shot attorney by the name of John J. Robinette, they sued Beach O’ Pines.
They lost at the first trial. But as the case made its way through the Canadian judicial system, it was clearly obvious that there was a don’t-rock-the-boat mentality, according to Bob Aaron, a lawyer and columnist for the Star: “Barely disguising the anti-Semitism that was so prevalent at the time, five justices of the Ontario Court of Appeal agreed with the trial decision, and noted that the restriction against those of ‘Jewish, Negro or coloured’ race or blood was just to assure that the residents were “of a class who will get along together. This was merely an ‘innocent and modest’ attempt to establish a place suitable for a pleasant summer residence, according to the Chief Justice.”
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....As Aaron writes, lawmakers “passed a law voiding restrictive covenants entered into after March 24, 1950, but it did not cancel older ones.”
Three or four years later, Mitt’s father, George Romney, who was president of American Motors, bought a cottage in Beach O’ Pines. It was here, that George, who later became governor of Michigan, took his family every July Fourth (why not celebrate American Independence Day on Canadian soil?). And keeping the Romney summer vacation tradition intact, Mitt annually shlepped his family to the beachfront cottage on the shores of Lake Huron despite the long 12-hour drive from Massachusetts. (It was only a two-hour drive from Detroit).
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