Sarah Kerr has lost her voice. An environmentalist and "global justice" activist from Calgary, she has spent the past few weeks on the telephone and in meetings, talking herself hoarse in an attempt to convince local authorities to allow anti-globalization protesters to set up camp in Calgary for the upcoming G8 Summit.
Her efforts have failed. Jean Chrétien does not want them. Dave Bronconnier, Calgary's Mayor, calls them bullies and wishes they would all stay home.
But in less than two weeks, says Ms. Kerr, anti-globalization activists will descend on Southern Alberta, whether they are made to feel welcome or not.
It is obvious, however, that enthusiasm has waned.
While some have spent months plotting to disrupt Mr. Chrétien's summit, scheduled for Kananaskis Village, a deluxe mountainside resort inside a provincial park an hour's drive west of Calgary, fewer than 10,000 protesters are expected to show up.
Even anarchists have shunned the invitation to interrupt this year's most important political powwow. This week, delegates to the North American Anarchist Gathering, held in Lawrence, Kan., told a Calgary Herald reporter the Kananaskis protests were "badly planned, so everyone is pulling out and going to Ottawa," where another protest is planned.
"There's just a certain amount of information that is needed when a gathering has the possibility of violence," declared Nicole Burton, a 17-year-old anarchist from Smithers, B.C.
Summit protest co-ordinators have been stymied in their attempts to find a venue for camping and a large demonstration, both in Calgary and near the summit site itself.
The moment Mr. Chrétien announced last summer that the gathering of G8 leaders would be held at Kananaskis Village, anti-globalization forces across Canada cried foul. The location seemed too remote, the ecology too fragile to allow dissenters to descend en masse.
In fact, Kananaskis is easily accessible, and it is no rustic hideaway. Built to accommodate hordes of international visitors attending the 1988 Winter Olympics, Kananaskis Village boasts three hotels, two championship-level golf courses complete with a large clubhouse and pro-shop, plus a major downhill ski operation. Any irreversible damage to the local wildlife was done long ago.
Of course, Mr. Chrétien did not pick Kananaskis just for its world-beater facilities and jaw-dropping scenery. He chose the site because it will afford his fellow leaders two days of privacy. Only one road provides access to the area: a two-lane ribbon of highway that is easily sealed off at its intersection with the Trans-Canada Highway, east of Banff National Park.
Security will be tight. Up to 5,000 police officers and militiamen will guard a six-kilometre perimeter around the meeting place. The public will be free to use the rest of the wildlife area around the village, but demonstrations in and around the park will not be sanctioned.
In Calgary, Mayor Bronconnier has turned down Ms. Kerr's requests to allow protesters to camp on city-owned land, which has led activists to complain that their rights of expression and assembly have been trampled.
"We have been marginalized," says Ms. Kerr, who remembers being tear-gassed in Seattle during the 1999 World Trade Organization talks. "The mainstream media is portraying us as vandals and rioters. The Mayor portrays us as irrational hooligans. All we're trying to do is spread the message that we can create a different world, an alternative to global capitalism. We're actually nice people."
Activists who do decide to make the trek to Calgary will be armed with the usual banners and bullhorns, plus stuffed teddy bears, bags of pretzels, large knitting needles and bundles of yarn. They will represent such diverse groups as the "Ewoks," the "Deconstructionist Institute for Surreal Topology" and the "Revolutionary Knitting Circle."
The teddy bears are to be catapulted over security perimeters. The knitting needles and yarn will be employed to make "tree cozies" to protect local fauna. And the pretzels will be used to taunt U.S. President George W. Bush, who choked on one of the snacks while watching football on television earlier this year at the White House.
While Mr. Chrétien and his G8 colleagues meet in the mountains, protesters in Calgary will attempt to "block off traffic and shut down the business district. Moving blockades will be used to stop anyone from entering the downtown core," according to one Web site devoted to the protest. There will also be a "die-in," described as "street theatre, artistic components and direct action to show solidarity with the oppressed."
Ms. Kerr acknowledges there is always potential for violence surrounding high-level political gatherings. During last year's summit in Genoa, Italy, where 100,000 protesters turned up, one was shot dead and 80 other people -- including 30 police officers -- were injured after hooligans rioted. Security forces responded with truncheons, tear gas and bullets.
Post-Sept. 11, there is little appetite -- and less tolerance -- for ugly confrontations between elected government leaders and citizens. And Mr. Chrétien does not want a repeat performance of the 1997 APEC Summit in Vancouver, where protesters were pepper-sprayed by members of the RCMP.
And so anti-G8 activists have found themselves completely outmaneuvered, with no place to go. A deal that would have allowed them to erect a "solidarity camp" on the Stoney Nation, an Indian reserve adjacent to Kananaskis, came apart last month amid accusations from the Council of Canadians, the left-leaning lobby group based in Ottawa, that the money the federal government had offered the Stoney Nation to cover security costs was, in effect, meant to frighten them into breaking the agreement.
A band administrator claims, "there was no conspiracy. We were worried that the solidarity camp was getting too big."
According to Ms. Kerr, a second reserve, closer to Calgary, offered to accommodate the solidarity camp. Besides camping facilities, it was to offer protesters live music and anti-globalization seminars. "The offer came too late," Ms. Kerr says. "There just wasn't any time to work through all the details."
Officials in Calgary say protest organizers then approached them. "They said, 'Well, what do you have for us?' " recalls John Chaput, G8 project manager for the City of Calgary. "We said, 'Pardon?' They seemed to think that we had to provide them with something, just like that."
In Mr. Chaput's view, "It would have been in everybody's best interests to find a place for [the protesters] to go. But they were talking about holding a free concert for 10,000 people. Then they said it might be 25,000. And they wanted a place for up to 2,500 campers. The Mayor said it wasnot going to happen in a city park."
Even if the Mayor hadn't dug in his heels, says Mr. Chaput, allocating municipal land for a mass campsite would have required the city to pass a new by-law. "That requires public hearings. The process usually takes four to six months. Listen," he adds, "I sympathize with these guys. But we don't accept that it's our responsibility to find them a camping site."
So what's a pretzel-packing G8 protester to do? Ms. Kerr is encouraging all activists not to give up on traveling to Calgary.
"We will be in the streets," she says. "We will have places for people to gather and to spend the night."
For now, she says, all times and venues are to be kept secret.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.