Reflections of Saturday: The Toronto G20 Protests

The past weekend I witnessed downtown Toronto turn from one of the safest cities in North America to a near police state with mobs of people clad in black, faces covered, brandishing hammers, makeshift metal bars, spray paint, and war cries, all in the name of protest. The chaotic rumble plaguing what began as a very peaceful, coordinated, cooperating protest rally will no doubt be the red ink stain that blemishes the rightful, intended message of the groups protesting at the 2010 Toronto G20 Summit. I was there on Saturday the 26th, documenting what I saw with my camera, trying to provide introspection of what I witnessed. It was quite the experience, though I'm not quite sure if that is for all the right reasons. I'm sure those reading have been following the news and are quite familiar with the shocking turns the weekend took, though I hope to provide a unique, first-hand perspective that major media organizations can not.

I left my house in the grey morning at around 9:30 am, boarding the GO Bus that stops one block away, and immediately noticed the group of people at the back of the bus. There were 4 or 5 of them, all students, protesting the $1 billion price tag Prime Minister Stephen Harper donned the weekend with. They were a nice enough bunch, and provided some good company and lightheartedness to an otherwise tense feeling of foreshadowing of the unknown events to come.

While on the 401, we could see Pearson International Airport visited by 20-odd luxury jets, all sporting the flags and insignias of various nations; they were the private jets of heads of government, who must have arrived just before our bus drove past, in preparation to convoy themselves to the so-called Yellow Zone of the downtown core.

Exiting the bus, I noticed the complete and utter lack of human activity in the downtown core, save for the highlighter-jacketed policemen. Immediately walking past Front St and Bay St, which was covered with so much 8 foot chain link fence you otherwise wouldn't have known what street you were on, I was stopped by two police officers, who right away asked for my name, identification, reason for taking the camera, and the contents of my bag. I kept things light-hearted enough, telling them I was simply a student who wanted to write an article and take pictures about the G20, but they took no chances with me. After they went through my pack, shifting around my camera equipment, and dumping my metal waterbottle out, they let me go. As I walked up Bay Street some more, I was stopped by another cop, who asked for my ID and my "affiliation". It must have been because I took a picture of him or something. By the 4th police officer stopping me, without even reaching Queen St, it got pretty fucking annoying. That last lady cop was kind enough, telling me "the camera is a red flag, especially since you don't have a media pass". Unfortunately, the G20 website only granted media passes to those who worked for corporate media, and my position as a regular contributor at Ryerson's EyeOpener, I guess, just wasn't corporate enough.

As I reached the intersection of University and Queen, I couldn't help but notice the sheer lack of volume in the city, even in such a trendy, busy area as this. I mean, there's 4 fucking hospitals on this street, and Queen St almost always has a fair mixed crowd of shoppers, citygoers, vehicles, streetcars, cyclists, and young people walking around. This picture, right off Osgoode Station, exemplifies the eeriness of Toronto on Saturday. Saturday. I mean, yes there's a protest going on, but there were NO CARS on University.

Deciding I wanted to try to minimize how wet I would get on Saturday due to the fluctuating trickle of rain, I hopped onto the metro to head northbound to Queen's Park, where protest groups were assembling. Zero Hour at 1pm. By this time it was quarter to 10, so I had plenty of time to talk with others gathering and gain a perspective of the atmosphere. Immediately reaching the field before the Ontario Parliament Building, I noticed many people congregating.

This fellow climbed one of the trees in the Park, but it wasn't long before Queen's Park security came to fetch him out. He came down willingly, and even got a couple laughs out of the otherwise cautious guards.

More and more people began to trickle on, and many were spending the preparations beforehand creating signs, discussing politics, why they came out on such an unforgiving, rainy Saturday, and what their message to the world was. These two young ladies (whose names I forget, sorry!) were vehemently opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and were advocating the immediate withdrawal of Canadian forces.

Closer to 12 pm the rain got quite heavy, and I began to look around, asking people wearing plastic hooded ponchos where they got them. I was told many people were handing them out, but it seemed like I was too late in asking one, as I kept coming up short. So I retreated to the streetcar shelter on the southwest corner of University ave, and struck up a few conversations with other people carrying around cameras that were much better than mine. Some dude even took some test shots of me on his camcorder, but I've yet to find the video on youtube. This picture is of students from, I'm guessing, Ryerson University, protesting the grossly underfunded university sector of Canadian schools. In the bottom left hand corner of this shot you can see an old residence-mate of mine, Rodney, shouting through the megaphone. This isn't even the first time I've shot him at a protest rally, either.

Amid the speeches taking place at Queen's Park, 1 pm fast approached. At that point I made a call to my good friend, the aspiring photographer and peaceful warrior Josh, who unfortunately could not make it back to Toronto in time for the weekend. His reconnaissance via TV watching, internet browsing, and text messaging me proved vital in helping me capture some of my better shots of this weekend. Above you can see the bicycling police slowly riding forward, stopping, then riding again, of the front lines of the protest rally, which slowly began making its way out of Queen's Park.

Before long, many people began to spearhead the police, reacting fast to the containing methods they attempted to impose on the crowd, and having none of it. I cautiously remained on the sidelines, snapping away at the progression of what seemed to be an ever increasing Leviathan of a crowd, a blob of activism, trickling southbound to the main street below.

Here this man ran to the next barrier of cops, stopped, and slyly strutted past a line of 15 of them, staring blankly forward at his smirk and his bright red t-shirt. I'm not quite certain what his message was with this t-shirt, if nothing more than an ironic slogan of his self-aware positioning of himself being the protestor, vs. the police, a protection to which his t-shirt insisted we immediately start fucking. I wonder what country his t-shirt was made in.

This was interesting to see; an NDP banner from Toronto-Danforth riding. While I have voted for NDP in the past, I'm not quite certain that aligning themselves with the G20 protests was the wisest thing to do, especially considering the events to come. Nevertheless this banner was there, plaguing the crowd, at least partially, with partisanship. This wasn't a very surprising thing to see, given the crowd and grassroots ideals a socialist party like the NDP attracts (*ahem*), it just didn't seem like something they would want to associate themselves with, especially in hindsight.

As the crowd moved onto Queen st, the first sign of riot police made their appearance, immediately setting the tone from an excited, expressive demeanour, to a feeling of oppressed, almost reactionary need to protest. I certainly did not expect them to line the backstreets the way they did, especially considering the generally peaceful nature of the crowd so far.

Here you can see the yellow cops on bikes lining Queen, with the riot police ready to go one block behind them.

Now this was one of my favourite groups of protestors. They were a group of women adamant on asserting their right to abortion. The giant hangar they carried around through the entire march gave a shuddering thought to the primitive methods desperate women once, and unfortunately, still sometimes use to rid themselves of an unwanted child. Their message to Stephen Harper was loud and clear: "hands off our ovaries!" Their cheers held strong the entire march, and despite your stance on abortion, their energy and pulse is certainly worth commending. More power to you, ladies.

The march went to Spadina st, turning north, and made a full circle back to Queens Park, stopping all traffic, and causing many people working to come outside and take a look at all the commotion. Here is a group of potheads, showing their support for marijuana activist Marc Emery, who was extradited to the USA on charges of drug dealing, and general chillness.

A closer look at the riot police, at the ready. There were, by far, more police in Toronto on Saturday, than I have ever seen in my entire life. It was actually quite unsettling walking right by these police, who didn't even react to the pictures I took of them, and who wouldn't move a muscle at all.

Upon reaching Queen's Park at the end of the march around part of Queen, Spadina, and College streets, I was informed by Josh to immediately head back to Queen, as some shit was going down. I saw many protestors, who were not part of the initial group I had been following, marching eastbound on Queen and turning onto Bay. Among them were a group of people clad in all black, brandishing weapons, and walking with vigour. These people were imposing black bloc tactics on the crowd, causing a violent momentum to shift the protest from peaceful and progressive, to primitive and destructive. Immediately I heard the BANG and CRASH that resulted in the broken window of the glass-paned Starbucks, the first of many damages I would witness.

Following the yells, roars, bangs, and noises I found myself running southbound on Bay, trying to catch a glimpse of the commotion. I noticed many people, clad in black, running up to windows, smashing them, breaking down signs, spray painting messages on walls, and causing a stir in the crowd by pushing, provoking, and instigating aggression. Notice the misrepresented anarchist's symbol on the right.

Running down Bay some more, a very loud, unrecognizable noise was heard, and a huge puff of black smoke began to rise from the head of the crowd. I pushed myself through the people running around to catch a glimpse of the action. What makes this scene especially heart-wrenching, aside from the symbol of the police car on fire, and the onlookers watching, is the lone thug, standing above the car, watching it burn. It seems as though the true face of the memory of this weekend's protests was beginning to reveal itself, in the form of senseless acts of violence, that are in direct opposition to what virtually every activist group was out protesting for! In layman's terms; we paid for that fucking police car, so why the FUCK would you want to burn it. Senseless upon senseless, like a cat pouncing from the bushes, quickly made its presence known, and I felt the uneasiness of being in what was the closest thing to a warzone in Toronto. This picture was shot just before the first deployment of tear gas by a policeman in Toronto, and the faint whiff I got of it was enough for me to have trouble breathing, and caused 300 people to run, myself included, in fear.

Behind the crowd, more destruction was taking place on the buildings. One fellow behind us got tazed, and dragged behind the line of riot police. The sound he made was really quite disturbing, and caused everyone to immediately jerk their heads around to see what the commotion was all about. Take note of the kinds of people you see in this picture. Notice the seldom few belonging to an anarchist's posse. Most of them, I can tell you, were trying to protest, or were bystanders. It could not have been more than 50 or 60 people total that caused almost all of this damage downtown. Of course, that's really all it took to completely change the efforts of activism and a positive message against our government's into a shocked public reaction to the new, harsher, meaner, foreign Toronto flickering on every Canadian news outlet imaginable.

After the tear gas, and the running, and the closing in of the riot police, the group quickly mobilized and headed north on Yonge st. I broke off from this group initially to take a few shots of the destruction they left behind, eventually losing their trail. Not before that, however, I stopped to ask a police officer a question, and was met with a full-body search, and accusations of being apart of the "fucking mob". After explaining my stance, I asked them if the subway system was still running, and the best way to get to Union station. The response I got was "just get the fuck out of here".

This is the Starbucks on Yonge st, completely smashed. It seems the little stains were targeting multi-national chains in an attempt to loosely align themselves with the philosophy of anarchism, an alignment the media jumped on.

It was at this point I met up with two good friends Justin and Katie, and began discussing where we should head next. We decided to follow the crowd up Yonge st, in what turned into a futile attempt at following the black-clad thugs. Here we saw our first mounted police patrolling the area. It seemed the destructive group was always one step ahead thus far.

The American Apparel on Yonge, right off Ryerson's campus. It looked like a few people even went inside to loot.

This was shot by Justin with my camera, a formidable photographer in his own right.

The Starbucks at Yonge and College, completely smashed. This was especially heart-wrenching as it is a historic building in Toronto, despite the fact that it currently has an international chain at the storefront level of it.

The riot police guarding the station on Bay and College. Protestors started congregating here, increasing in numbers steadily. The cops switched to their gas masks in the time we were there, raising tensions considerably, especially after seeing the effects tear gas had on one person already.

A few rowdy protestors getting rushed by riot cops after provocation after provocation. It was at this point, around 4pm, that we decided to go get some beers and reflect on what we've seen. I was starving as I didn't eat all day, and have been essentially playing a game of cops and robbers.

I didn't go back to Toronto on Sunday due to work, though part of me wishes I could have. The things I saw on Saturday were some I never really thought to see, at least in my hometown. I expected quite a stir to take place at the G20 summits, with reports on protesting beginning as far back as January, and the previous summits carrying a long history of violence, but it became very, very real seeing it first-hand. I made it in and out of there virtually unharmed, and my camera didn't get smashed, which was the important thing. But still, a sense of danger was present the moment I heard the first glass shatter, and it simply kept escalating from there.

The real tragedy of this weekend was the complete and utter disregard for civility and order by a select few of motherfuckers, who decided to completely eradicate any notion of legitimate protest and disagreement with government(s) policy(ies) by way of mass, vigilante destruction.

I commend the organizers of the protest rallies on Saturday for their patience, planning and execution, as the first few hours truly went off without a hitch. It was only when the black-clad little shits decided to stir things up in a way that took away from the entire effort of the planners did the weekend take a turn from true Canadian protesting to a primitive level of angst, bordering on complete insanity. History will no doubt forget the positive messages trying to be advocated at the G20 protest rallies, and remember the cop cars burning to the ground, the violent destruction of property, tear gas, the tazing, the 600+ arrests, the accusations of police use of excessive force, and complete darkness that, for a weekend, engulfed Toronto; a city of true multiculturalism, acceptance, and pride, not just for what it is, but the way of life it encourages and promotes.

Here's hoping we will take this weekend into perspective as a reminder of the massive amounts of damage a small group of people can do, and hopefully, from that viewpoint, draw our own conclusions on the problems world leaders attempt to solve twice a year at the G20 summits. This was a weekend I will certainly not forget anytime soon.