"A shared tradition which was reflected in those statistics about lynchings ... "

Yes, but as you go on to observe, Canada does not share a tradition of lynching. Even that one recorded lynching on Canadian soil was carried out by Americans, if I'm not mistaken.

" ... those statistics about lynchings, which were by no means confined to the American South ... "

No, but it is the lynchings of blacks in the American south which particularly horrify us, is it not, both because of their role in perpetuating an oppressive, racist system, and because of our assumption that many of the victims, if not completely innocent, received a punishment completely out of proportion to their offence, even by the standards of the day, due to racial prejudice? It is not quite the same thing as the grim and unpleasant business of the lynching of a murderer or horse-thief by a gang of working cowboys a thousand miles from civilization. But even if it were, I don't know why we're even talking about lynchings. More to the point:

"One difference between the local constabulary and the Nazis ... "

One difference between what happened in Grand Manaan and the lynching phenomenon is that in Grand Manaan no lynching took place, no one was killed in any manner, no one was even badly injured, apparently - the news reports on the event and on the trial mention that a man with a long record of violent crime was "beaten", but there has been no report of any severe injury, which would certainly have been brought up in the trial if it had occurred.

I'm not advocating "mob rule", but I think if the police are not going to protect communities, those communities need to protect themselves - and if that means driving out drug dealers themselves, so be it. My hope concerning this incident is that the RCMP and their governmental overseers have gotten the message that if they are not going to do their job, the common people are going to do it for them.