“At the best of times expropriation proceedings are charged with emotional tensions,” wrote Eric Todd of the University of British Columbia law faculty in a 1961 issue of the Canadian Bar Review. More than half a century later, tensions still regularly boil over when private property is expropriated, that is, forced to be sold for the public good.

Such discontentment has been on display in Ontario’s Waterloo area ever since a dozen of its rural property owners were given notice earlier this year of the regional municipality’s intent to expropriate their properties and assemble them into a 770-acre plot for future economic development.