CALGARY (CP) - The concrete barriers and police lines vanished overnight, to be replaced with hay bales and wagon wheels. It didn't take long for Calgary's heavy veil of security to lift as the G-8 summit ended Thursday night, leaving the city to quickly gear up for its kinder, gentler next event - the Calgary Stampede.
The leaders of the world's eight most powerful countries actually met in the remote - and highly guarded - mountain resort of Kananaskis, Alta., about an hour's drive west of the city. But Calgary acted as co-host, with thousands of international media and delegates cramming into its hotels. The Prairie city, better known for its cowboy hats and oil companies, was gripped with fear that thousands of protesters would descend upon it and fight pitched battles with riot police.
Petroleum giant Shell Canada covered up its corporate logo outside its downtown office tower with a Welcome to Calgary sign hoping to avoid any confrontations.
Yet the violent protests that have scarred all other recent international get-togethers of leaders didn't materialize under the broiling southern Alberta sun this week.
Some stores along Calgary's trendy Stephen Avenue had even boarded up windows in anticipation of trouble.
"I wasn't happy with the whole G-8 thing to begin with," said Jim Jinah, owner of Tropicana, a store that sells T-shirts and hash pipes.
"I wasn't impressed with having it here and all that and I'm glad it's over, but it went smooth."
The summit was estimated to bring in $243 million to the Calgary area.
Jinah gave credit to the police for doing a good job keeping the peace, and said the protesters bought lots of things from his store during the two-day event.
Leaders of the security task force, which included more than 5,000 soldiers and police from across Canada, were glowing with pride Friday.
More than 5,000 soldiers and police from across Canada took part.
"If someone had said a year ago right after (the last G-8 meeting) in Genoa that we'd get through this event without use of any tear gas or without even a broken window, people would have said we were nuts," said Rick Hanson, deputy chief of the Calgary Police Service.
Prime Minister Jean Chretien flew out Thursday at the close of the two-day meeting, as did his Group of Eight colleagues U.S. President George W. Bush, Tony Blair of Britain, Jacques Chirac of France, Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Junichiro Koizumi of Japan.
RCMP Chief Supt. Lloyd Hickman said the plan of having the leaders meet in a remote area far away from protesters proved to work well and he expected it will be copied for future international meetings.
"I think they saw the success of having it isolated from the city in restricting the violent contact, so I would suggest that more and more people would look at this type of model."
The police heaped credit on their bicycle teams, who matched protest marchers step for step but didn't provoke anyone while heavily armed riot troops hid in vans parked nearby.
They chatted with the protesters, let them march through the downtown core, allowed a trampoline to be set up in the middle of one of Calgary's busiest roads for a few hours, and let them go topless or even strip naked.
The Calgary protests matched one in Ottawa - long on civil disobedience but short on violence.
In total there were only three G-8-related arrests - two Americans were charged with spray-painting railway cars and a union official was charged with obstructing a police officer at a security checkpoint near Kananaskis.
The courtrooms and jails that had been cleared to make way for waves of arrested protesters sat empty.
The no-fly zone, which extended for 150 kilometres in every direction around Kananaskis during the summit, was lifted Friday. Two small planes and one helicopter were reported to have inadvertently flown into the zone, only to be quickly escorted out by CF-18 fighters.
The fighters were part of a massive security operation to protect the leaders in Kananaskis as well as delegates and media working out of the Telus Convention Centre in downtown Calgary.
In Kananaskis, troops and sharpshooters patrolled the woods, backed up by missile launchers and armoured personnel carriers.
The hotel where the leaders met was circled by a 6.5-kilometre security perimeter where no civilians were allowed to travel.
But by Friday, the barriers had been taken down, and tourists and Albertans alike were allowed free access to the myriad of campgrounds, golf courses and trails just in time for the long weekend.
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