By Earl McRae

Michel Van Hauve says he has two great heroes. Randy Hillier. And Eddie Merckx.

"Eddie Merckx was my hero growing up," says Van Hauve about the legendary, world-renowned, five-time winner of cycling's Tour de France in the early 1970s.

"He is still a national hero in Belgium. Our greatest hero. "But,(Van Hauve extends his arms in a wide circle) he is like this now. He is very fat. Maybe 250 pounds. He has his own bicycle in his name that he sells, and he designs frames for bicycles that he sells to cyclists."

The name Eddie Merckx brings a rare smile to the lips of Michel Van Hauve who lives mostly in fear. The fear that recently made him jump when he heard a siren wailing and went to the window in panic that the forces of the law had found him in hiding and come to take him away.

Van Hauve, his wife Suzie, and teen-age son Blaise were at Randy Hillier's home near Perth, and Blaise and Hillier's kids were upstairs playing a videogame. Michel Van Hauve was in the kitchen. Suddenly, he heard a siren. From the videogame. Says Suzie: "The look in his eyes. Michel thought it was from outside, that they'd arrived to get us."

Michel Van Hauve suspects those wanting to arrest him for deportation, along with his wife and son, are not likely to signal their arrival with sirens like it happens in the movies. But, it is no calming of his anxiety to hear that Canada Border Services hasn't given up the hunt for them, that a knock could come to their door from agents of the RCMP, or OPP, or Ottawa Police Service.

That's if the agents get past the standoff promised by the Van Hauve's mentor, activist Randy Hillier, president of the Ontario Landowners Association, who says he's willing to be jailed himself for having moved the Van Hauves to farmhouses of sympathetic supporters the past couple of weeks to hide them from their pursuers. He's hoping it won't happen. For himself or the Van Hauves. "At first, Canada Border Services had people going around Navan looking for them. Then l think they got common sense and pulled back."

The Van Hauves, their lawyer, and Hillier are hoping the new Conservative government will grant a 120-day extension of the deportation order that was to have seen the Van Hauves on a Jan. 12 flight to Belgium, for what Hillier says, was the result of nightmare bureaucratic idiocy, and not the then-unemployed Michel Van Hauve's 26-year-old conviction for breaking into a supermarket and stealing baby food, blankets, booze, and cigarettes; his wife about to give birth to twins.

Hillier says the Canadian government had the report on Van Hauve's conviction, sent automatically by Belgian authorities in 1998 when the family was admitted to Canada on visas, and if it was a concern, why were the Van Hauve visas renewed several times since then? It wasn't until the family applied for permanent residency status in 2004 that the problems began with -- in August 2005 after 18 months of bureaucratic silence -- it being informed the visas had been immediately revoked, permanent residency status denied.

'Bureaucratic insanity'

Hillier investigated, says officials admitted they'd been in possession of the conviction document since 1998, but since it was mis-attached to other forms in Van Hauve's file, the family would have to be deported for a minimum of 12 months before re-applying again.

"The Van Hauves did nothing wrong. It's bureaucratic insanity."

Furthermore, the law-abiding Van Hauves -- in Canada eight years now -- have met the criterion of the government's rehabilitation component that newcomers to Canada, to stave off deportation, must have no criminal record in this country for a five-year period.

The Van Hauves and Hillier fiercely deny published rumours that Michel Van Hauve concealed two criminal convictions for armed robbery. If so, they would have been in the initial files sent by Belgium. Van Hauve says there were four minor incidents, the most "serious" being a fine for driving his motorcycle on a highway when he was 16, two years below the applicable Belgian age-law. And the Canadian government has those police reports, too.

Michel Van Hauve, who hopes not to hear the sirens, says: "I like Canadians. They are kind, they are not aggressive like Belgians. I like the space here. All I want to do is make a living by farming."

Suzie: "He's a gentle giant."