Since my post on Monday, the mood in downtown Toronto has changed. For one thing, it’s empty. The people there are either police officers and security personnel, or they are people like me who have come to gawk. It’s a show. A spectacle. It even has its own posters hung from the street light poles — like Miss Saigon or Legally Blonde. I started the morning getting stopped by a police officer and asked for ID. For the duration of the G20, police have expanded powers. The officer wondered what I was doing with my camera (which struck me as kind of obvious). He took down all my info, then radioed it in. He started with: “The cheque’s in the mail.” I take it that’s their code-phrase for “I’m going to send you personal info on a guy. Check him against whatever list you have.” I guess I’m not on anybody’s list, so I went on taking photos. What I found as the morning went on was that most police here are bored. There isn’t a lot to do. They’re wearing all this equipment in sweltering heat. So a lot of them are up for a chat. Some, like Steve from the York Regional Police, invited me to take photos and gave me name & email address because they thought it was cool to be photographed at the big event. It made up for the morning, because I was able to turn the tables; it was almost as if I got to ID police officers.
I left before any serious protesting started, not because I’m chicken-shit, but because a) I have a short attention span; b) I ended up meeting my wife at a watering hole on College St. & c) I then got a migraine headache and had to high-tail it home. The only protester I saw was Kevin Clark who, a few years ago, ran for mayor of Toronto on the “masturbation” ticket.
A couple other things to note:
1) I called my last post on the G20 a bullshit report. That’s inaccurate. All I saw was horseshit. There are mounted police riding around the downtown core and they must have fed the horses laxatives beforehand.
2) My favourite (and most ironic) photo is of the Eternal Flame of Hope in the park by Metro Hall. It has been extinguished and covered in plywood.
