Arriving in Quebec City on Thursday evening, I checked into an apartment billet together with Roger Burbach (coauthor of "Globalize This!" among other works), who had flown in to Montreal from San Francisco the day before. For us, Friday was hectic but mundane, filled with a myriad of small tasks and loose ends that needed tying up. Roger busied himself with trying to get press accreditation (he eventually made it to the intra-perimeter media center on Sunday on the strength of his association with Pacific Wire Service), while I helped with setting up the Green Party tabling effort on the docks, made photocopies, hooked up with various contacts, etc.
It wasn't until the next day, during the parade and, afterwards, when I made my way up closer to the perimeter with the intention of filming some of the action, that I really began to feel a part of the larger, mass demonstration. After the parade, I circled around the city by car and then approached the perimeter on Rene Levesque on foot. When I was still about two blocks away, someone yelled "heads up!" and a couple of tear gas canisters landed about ten meters on either side of me. Within seconds, my throat was burning and my eyes were smarting. My goggles and dust mask offered only scant protection, it seemed, from the fierce intensity of the gas being used, and I quickly gave up the idea of operating the video camera in that area. I moved down a side street and circled around to the northeast. After getting gassed repeatedly but less intensely in the smaller streets, I reached the safe-haven of the soup kitchen under the freeway. I enjoyed an hour or two of respite there, did some interviews with protesters, and then made my way back to St. Jean, which had by now acquired a festive atmosphere.
It was somewhere around 7:00pm that I got involved, together with Gabriel of the Legal Observer team, in putting together the vigil at the jail. Over the next 24 hours, this was to become a sort of crusade, and it was certainly the most memorable part of my weekend. The dedication and cooperation of the people I worked with, all thrown together more or less by coincidence, was absolutely awesome.
One of the first tasks was to scout out possible locations to mount the vigil. Up near the jail, I was stopped twice in my car, once by Surete Quebec (who returned my driver's licence and registration papers after checking them, but refused to return my insurance papers ...) and once by Surete Publique. The Surete Publique guys cornered me in three unmarked cars while I was parked in a public parking lot about a half a kilometer from the prison. Surete Publique are apparently what prison guards are called. No, they don't have any jurisdiction over public parking lots... but with two of them banging on my car and playing the heavy, and another four reinforcements in the other two cars, I agreed to move out. I later heard that the scenario was repeated for a couple of other protesters who had also arrived early....
Back at the jail (towards 1:00am Sunday morning), other people had arrived in cars and were parked outside the entrance. The police were no longer telling people to move out; numbers were now weighing in our favor. The Winnebago funded by the Green Party of Canada, manned by Quebec Legal people, and which would serve as the jail vigil headquarters, had arrived, and soon our entrance into the jail parking lot was negotiated. We all drove in and were told we could park at the far end of the large, empty lot.
At this point we numbered not much beyond a dozen people. Candles were lit, and a few people unrolled sleeping bags on a grassy island, preparing for the long haul. Every hour or so, a schoolbus full of arrestees rolled in, and we raised our arms and shouted our support. Cars with reinforcements for the vigil trickled in.
The mother of one of the arrestees was already there in front of the jail when we arrived, with a sign demanding that her daughter be freed. Soon everyone joined her cause, and began to chant: "free Sonya, free Sonya..." I had to leave briefly to deal with another task, but when I arrived back about an hour later, Sonya and her mother were reunited. They were sitting on the grass when I saw them, silently clinging to each other, lost in a moment of profound emotion. Chalk up one victory for the vigil-keepers.
By this time, CMAQ people had arrived on the scene and were filming and doing interviews. A meeting was convened to discuss what was most urgently needed, and Leela C. and I were delegated to go back into the city to look for reinforcements, put up posters at the University of Laval, and stock up on supplies. At the same time, we were to give a few CMAQ reporters a lift back to CMAQ headquarters on the Cote d'Abraham.
When we arrived in the vicinity of Cote d'Abraham at around 2:30 am, police presence was massive. Formations of riot police were moving down the narrow winding streets, and chemicals hung thick in the air. The air in the car was contaminated in no time, although with the ventilation off, we were somewhat protected. One of the reporters was on a cell phone with CMAQ, which relayed info to us about possible routes around the police sweep, while the others manned a window each and yelled out directions as situations arose... "back up back up.... turn right NOW... reverse reverse.... hard left..." and so on. As the driver, I just followed orders, thinking: "this must be how it feels to drive a tank into battle."
We were eventually rebuffed on our first attempt and forced down to a lower street where we stopped to discuss what to do next. Another round of communiques with CMAQ headquarters ensued, until we were told that the situation had possibly improved.
Cautiously, we crept back into the war zone, which had quieted down considerably. After a little distance, a couple of white vans raced passed us, the second of which went into reverse, blocking our right flank. I backed up, trying to squeeze out, but the van followed in tandem, pinning us against a wall. Not seeing any way to get out without getting into a car chase, which I really wasn't ready for, I stopped. The rest of the people in the car scrambled to conceal their gas masks.
Two SQ agents came up to the car, one on my side, the other at the passenger side, and rapped heavily on the windows with their riot sticks. We rolled down the windows.
The agent on my side asked if we had masks. I replied that we didn't. On the other side, the passenger seat reporter was explaining that she and the others were with the media. The officer took a look at their media credentials. Meanwhile the agent on my side reached into the car and tried to open my door. He tugged at lock and the handle, until I told him that the door was broken and wouldn't open. He glared at me and then told me to unbuckle my seatbelt. I could see what he had in mind but figured I didn't have much choice in the matter. I complied.
With the seatbelt off, the officer seemed a bit less certain of the advisability of dragging me out the window. He conferred a moment with his partner. When he returned, he ordered us to get out of the area at once. We backed out and returned to a lower street, collectively experiencing a great rush of relief.
Another 15 minutes or so later, we heard from CMAQ that the sweep appeared to be finished for real, and we succeeded in getting the reporters delivered to their destination....
Driving back with Leela, I realized just how badly things might have turned out. Earlier that night, there were a couple of large bonfires near the CMAQ headquarters, which had allegedly been started (or intensified) with gasoline. Well, among the many items that no longer function in my '86 Pulsar is the gas guage. Never knowing when I might run out of gas, I keep a few liters of it stashed back in a canister in my trunk…. I had to stop the car for a few minutes as the import of this sunk in. Leela and I sat there in silence, amazed at our luck.
We continued on to a community center on Ernest something-or-other street, where we recruited another vigil-keeper, and put up a few posters. And just before reembarking in the car, we were treated to a surprising sound … birds chirping! After the apocalyptic scenes of repression that we had just emerged from, this seemed almost impossibly unreal, so it took a little while to hear the simple message. But there it was: life will triumph. When we set out again, we felt nourished in spirit.
Next stop was the University of Laval. An image that will remain with me for a long time is the sight of the gymnasium at the University of Laval filled wall-to-wall with sleeping protesters as we tip-toed around putting up signs about the jail vigil. From there, we continued on to a supermarket, where we stocked up on fruit, bread, coffee, peanut butter and other essential items.
On Sunday, I continued working at publicizing the jail vigil, putting up posters at CEGEP Limoilou and phoning in a few reports to CMAQ and Quebec Legal. By the afternoon, close to 200 people had made their way up to the prison. There was some impromptu theater - a reading of "The Lorax" accompanied by a simultaneous enactment of the story by a dance troupe - going on when I arrived back in the afternoon with more supplies, and media people were arriving in droves.
A common pattern to the experiences of arrestees began to emerge. The vast majority were peaceful protesters (some were actually just observers!) caught up in police sweeps. Some had been singled out merely because they looked the police in the eye. They had been forced to the ground, handcuffed with plastic 'tie-wrap' cuffs and tossed like garbage bags into vans. There, they were deprived of food, water, and toilet facilities as they were driven around for periods of up to ten hours, ostensibly to 'allow the chemicals on their clothing to dissipate'. Once they arrived at the prison they were forced to strip and undergo a collective hosing down. Protesters were then crammed four-to-a-cell into cells designed for one person, and second phone calls were denied when the one allowed phone call hit a busy signal. Meanwhile, as the interviews continued, prisoners were being released at a rate of about one every thirty minutes. Each time, a great cheer arose and people redoubled efforts to make their chants heard by those remaining inside....
By late afternoon, the jail vigil had become a self-sustaining community, with a constantly rotating set of people handling the most pressing tasks. Leela had managed to catch a bit of sleep and was helping to coordinate lifts for arrestees back into town. For me, however, time was running thin. I had to be back in Montreal that night, and I was already nearing the point of fatigue at which driving was impossible.
I finally drove back to Montreal late Sunday night with Roger, who was booked on a flight to San Francisco leaving from Montreal the next morning. Roger would have driven, except that he is paralysed from the waist down (after suffering an accident in Nicaragua over a decade ago). So I manned the wheel and the gas pedal, while Roger steadied the car each time I nodded off - one last cooperative effort to cap off a weekend of incredible solidarity.
Eric Squire