Scenic, genteel and cold
It was a very Canadian protest, writes Ron Corbett.
 
Ron Corbett
The Ottawa Citizen

Sunday, February 10, 2002

The Raging Grannies didn't trudge across Meech Lake yesterday morning. A bit too cold. The ice itself perhaps uncertain, after what had been until a week ago a mild winter.

Dozens of others made the trek, though, walking through slush and snowdrifts to a small rocky point on the eastern shore of the lake, where the G7 finance ministers were meeting in a stone, Tudor building high atop an embankment.

Below that building, in the trees running down the embankment to the edge of the lake -- behind the birch and maple and stunted spruce -- stood an equal number of RCMP officers awaiting their arrival.

It was comical at times, what happened when the two sides met, out on the frozen ice of Meech Lake, and on that rocky knoll of the Canadian Shield. The Mounties in their winter gear -- right down to the fur hats -- chased protesters through the trees. The protesters, when caught, were polite and returned to shiver on the frozen lake. Then they tried to make their way back up the embankment. It was almost a sport. Rock climbing with police.

Jean Chrétien (who turned out to be Montrealer Donald Perron, 21, in a mask) made a bit of fuss and had to be dragged down the embankment. But even he wasn't arrested.

A megaphone was confiscated, but then returned. One protester tried to taunt the police, but then gave up, almost embarrassed, when he was the only one yelling epithets. One very young protester stood defiantly in front of a uniformed man, shoving a placard within inches of his face, and the cops were so polite they never even bothered to tell him he was standing in front of the only NCC conservation officer on the ice.

It was all rather genteel, scenic and cold -- put together, about as Canadian a protest as one could imagine.

There may have been something else typically Canadian about it as well.

"I think this is the closest we've ever been able to get to one of these meetings," said Jamie Kneen, a spokesman for Global Democracy Ottawa, as he stood on the ice of Meech Lake with a megaphone in his hand. "Usually, we're kept so far away they can't even hear us. Right here, it's almost silly how close we are. There's no doubt the people in that meeting can hear us."

The number of protesters at Meech Lake never numbered more than 100. Mr Kneen attributed the low turnout to the cold weather (it truly does seem to make a difference, holding these G7 meetings in February), plus a short three-week notice of the meeting.

For another protest in the Byward Market a few hours later, the number of protesters grew to about 150, which included the Raging Grannies and a few fairweather anarchists, but there was never a sense of urgency to these latest G7 protests, and the police did not even bother to close streets for the protester's walkabout through the Market.

Still, Mr. Kneen, said he was pleased with the turnout.

"I think our message got through today," he said.

"And as for the number or people here, I was expecting a little less, to be honest. Hell, it's Ottawa in February."

© Copyright 2002 The Ottawa Citizen