It’s my impression that many Torontonians looked at the G20 Summit the same way that they do the Film Festival. Assuming a jaded, big-city posture, they grumble and complain about the inconvenience and influx of tourists, but the truth is that they’re really quite happy and excited to live in a city that hosts such spectacles. I mean, people simply couldn’t stop talking about it.
The build-up was as exhausting and hyperbolic as the one that precedes the Super Bowl, and when game day finally arrived, people were as hysterically partisan about the demonstrations as if they were rooting for their country in the World Cup. My Twitter feeds were apocalyptic shrieks:
“ We live in a Police State!
“The protestors are Douchebags!”
And on it went, each person with a radically different view of the same event.
The demonstrations had a clearly defined US and THEM, and each side played out their roles and delivered their lines as if they’d been rehearsing them for years. People, it seemed, only saw what they needed to see to reinforce their beliefs.
For the most part, as Rachelle and I live on Queen Street East, in a part of town far from the emotional and physical epicenter of protest activity, I felt very removed form the proceedings. However, the detention center for detained G20 protesters was at Eastern and Pape, just a few blocks from where we live and on Sunday, all day long, there was the sound of sirens down the street.
A demonstration had been taking place at the detention center and my little patch of Queen Street was serving as a conduit for all the people and resources flowing to and from the event.
Media trucks were assembled in front of Jimmy Simpson Park, each one with a pressed and bouncy correspondent practicing looks of gravitas. Horse manure lay flattened on the street and small bands of fashionable, young scenesters strolled happily down the street, as if off to attend a sunny afternoon of Art in the Park.
It had a convivial, touristy feel– like a fair grounds.
However, as the increasingly humid day stretched out, the feeling began to change.
In front of the Ralph Thornton Center, people gathered for their weekly AA meeting stood out on the sidewalk smoking. With looks of resentment and suspicion on their faces, they watched as white buses full of riot police drove down the street. Store owners came out of their shops and neighbours looked down from their windows curiously watching as ambulances, oddly empty streetcars and EMF’s rumbled down the street.
Having the G20 drama shift from the mutually agreed upon arena of downtown to an actual neighbourhood, gave the proceedings a surreal, intimate feeling. The people on the streets weren’t invested parties bused in for YouTube moments, they weren’t choosing to participate or witness an event, it was just happening right where they lived.
I chatted with a 20 year-old who had been knocked off his bike by police at the demonstration earlier in the day. He was pale and angry. Uncertain what to do he stared hatefully down the street as if at the officer who knocked him down. It was clear that he’d been marked by the experience. Something he had not expected had happened to him, and it was something he would remember and recount for the rest of his life.
Standing out there I had the same feeling I get just before a fight breaks out. It was tense, and you could feel a reckless, inarticulate energy rising. Every once in awhile, somebody would scream out at one of the buses full of cops, and as this was happening, more and more people emerged from doorways.
I returned to my apartment upstairs, only to be greeted by my quivering Dachshund who was terrified of the exploding firecrackers that somebody had thrown down on the streetcar tracks. The dog could not get close enough to me, and so I sat there soothing her, and then after 15 minutes or so, the sky broke and the rain came pouring down. People retreated from the streets, and relieved for all sorts of different reasons, they returned to their lives, and with that the G20 Summit quietly ended.