A woman walks along an empty street with
boarded-up buildings before the G20 Summit.
Darren Calabrese/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Posted on 06/25/2010 3:43:14 AM PDT by Clive
Call it Fortress Toronto.
The fenced area around the Metro Convention Centre is under a lockdown, and there are more police officers than ordinary citizens on the streets. Wait, there’s more: protesters are flooding the downtown core and the well-heeled are fleeing.
This is downtown Toronto — this last weekend of June.
“It could be lots of fun, it could be downright miserable,” said Sgt. Tim Burrows, media relations officer for the Integrated Security Unit, in charge of security for the G8 and G20 summits. “What the protesters decide to bring is what we will respond to.”
We’ll see protesters of every stripe and colour, Burrows said.
If they bring a “party atmosphere and just want to yell and be boisterous, that’s great. We’ll stand all day and listen. But if protesters bring violence, we’ll respond to that,” he said.
Burrows is expecting “several thousand protesters.” Be prepared, he warned.
We’ll see what really happens. But this is what is already happening: the fenced area was to come under lockdown sometime in the wee hours of Friday. Now, only those people who live or work in the area and have obtained security clearance can enter.
For everyone else: No amount of pleading or tears, or identification, will let you in. At least one condo building and several office buildings are included in the fenced-off area.
Traffic patterns in the core are a mess: the York, Yonge and Bay ramps to the Gardiner Expressway have been shut down and will remain closed until Sunday.
As world leaders and their entourages arrive in Toronto — G8 leaders are already in Huntsville — Highways 401 and 427 and the Gardiner will have rolling blockades as their motorcades travel. Construction barriers to reduce lanes and restrict access to parts of the highways are already in place.
Burrows doesn’t know how long each blockade may last. (Think of it as highways peppered with traffic lights.)
In the downtown core, too, away from the fenced zone, traffic will be slow because many streets will be totally or partially blocked. Protesters marching in various patterns through downtown will also slow down traffic.
Expect anything out of the ordinary, including police officers randomly searching cars or stopping pedestrians, asking for identification.
Many people have already left for the weekend, but if you think Toronto’s about to become a ghost city, forget it. There are roughly 14,000 police officers in Toronto. Many are inside the perimeter, others outside on horseback, golf carts or just on patrol. They’re in helicopters, boats and on rooftops, too.
“I feel like I am living in a police state,” said Rachel Pfau, who lives at Scott St. and The Esplanade, well away from the fenced area. “I would love to leave the city but I can’t — I don’t have another place to go. So I’m just going to stay in my apartment,” said Pfau, a massage therapist.
The security measures will definitely disrupt life and make driving downtown tough. But it’s worth it, said Aaron Goldrup, who lives at 25 The Esplanade.
“A lot of people are saying there’s no way to justify all this. I don’t agree. These are crazy times and there are some crazy people out there,” said Goldrup, who works for a bank in the financial district.
“We need to be secure — better safe than sorry,” he said.
“As long as I can go for a run on the waterfront, I’ll live with G20,” said Christy MacMillan, who lives near King St and Blue Jays Way, a five-minute walk from where the leaders are converging. “But yeah, I have to remember to carry some kind of identification… the concierge in my building warned us.”
A student at the University of Toronto, she is excited about the G20 brouhaha, but adds that the police presence is a bit unnerving.
But it’s not all grim and gloomy.
Those brave enough to go to work downtown on Friday or over the weekend won’t face long lineups at Tim Hortons, and they’ll definitely get the otherwise rare seat on the GO train or the streetcar.
And for all of you who scramble to find a parking spot in the financial district, it’s your lucky weekend!
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That's what the protesters want.
Lots of fun = Banging a bunch of anarchists heads.
Miserable = Standing around listening.
Was that story posted here? I’d like to read more.
Radio report.
ping
Thank you.
Canada Customs and Imigration has been stepped up on all of the bridges entering Canada from here in WNY over this last week. I have a NEXUS pass which affords me minimal inspection of the US side, and pretty much a friendly wave hello on the Canadian side. I was interviewed Monday and pulled over for secondary inspection on Wednesday going up there. This last time, after they cleared me, I asked if they changed the procedure for NEXUS passes and she told me it was just a temporary increase in security.
I go up there two to three times a week, especially in the summer, I’ve had my NEXUS pass for about ten years, and this is the first time I’ve been pulled over for a secondary inspection during that time.
Maybe he was just taking advantage of a sale at Canadian Tire. :)
They're not anarchists, they're violent leftists committed to a one world government takeover.
Thanks for the ping Nully.
I gave the Canada ping list over to Clive, and he has already pinged it. :-)
Sort of smiling in a sardonic way, or sometimes getting a little testy up here in Great Lakes country. 427 miles from Toronto and do not miss it. What the press seems to miss is how the well fed, narcissistic lot have the time and money to scream blue murder. Screaming murder at a system that clothes and feeds their elegant posteriors.
For a breath of down to earth decency, I have to go to the local Tim Hortons coffee shop. Working stiffs come in for a large double double. The voices are heard..... " worked all over the week-end" etc. Retirees come in and muse about the past.Many worked 35 years and on pension from the local Steel Plant. Church ladies come in for a quick fix of Java. Renovators of frame houses drop in. "gotta go- bye now". Grabbing their Timmys and high tailing it.
Meanwhile the airy fairy world of protesters is shown on CBC. I ask, as no one else seems to ask. "How much of our taxpayers money is given to these rotten anti-social misfits?" Sure, these conferences are all a bunch wind and vinegar. It ain't them that suffer and they never will. Just the average citizen who gets in the way.
Excuse the rant.
Finding a protester with a functioning brain at the summit is somewhat like finding fly crap in pepper, very difficult.
All hell breaking loose as we speak. Two police cars torched, windows smashed. Abandoned street cars vandalized. Black clad mobs even said "to be containing the riot squad" at one point.
The Mayor, David Miller pontificating about justice catching up with the protesters. I take no joy in any of it. Toronto caught a right hot potato here.
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