Today Thu Fri
It is forcast to be Clear at 11:00 PM EDT on June 19, 2013
Clear
23°/12°		 It is forcast to be Clear at 11:00 PM EDT on June 20, 2013
Clear
25°/14°		 It is forcast to be Mostly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on June 21, 2013
Mostly Cloudy
25°/16°

35 Comments

politics

Scene: Toronto’s Manif Casserole

Torontonians break out the pots and wooden spoons to rally in support of the Quebec student strike.

By • Photos by Dean Bradley and Christopher Drost


WHERE: Dufferin Grove, through the streets to Dundas and Gladstone, and eventually near Bathurst and Bloor

WHEN: Wednesday, May 30, 8 p.m.–12 a.m.

WHAT: Canadians in cities across the country took to the streets last night, marching in solidarity with Quebec students who have been protesting tuition increases and recent government attempts to clamp down on those protests. Toronto’s manif casserole was good-humoured and upbeat. People gathered at Dufferin Grove and then marched along major and residential streets, out-manoeuvring police several times along the way: a lead group would march along while several meters back the rest of the crowd would turn down a different street. There were many shows of support as they went, people coming out of their homes with pots and pans to cheer on marchers—who in turn were handing out red squares to people they passed.

When the march arrived at Gladstone and Dundas, several of the marchers tried to convince the participants to move east along Dundas towards downtown, warning people in the crowd to leave if they had children with them. Event organizers quickly engaged this splinter group, after several heated arguments the crowd turned west (not east) onto Dundas. By about 11 p.m. the rally had made its way north to Christie Pits then headed east along Bloor, and finally down to Queen and Spadina; participants dispersed peacefully into the night around midnight.

Reporting by Dean Bradley.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    /facepalm

    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ________
    . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . ,.-‘”. . . . . . . . . .“~.,
    . . . . . . . .. . . . . .,.-”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .“-.,
    . . . . .. . . . . . ..,/. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ”:,
    . . . . . . . .. .,?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .,
    . . . . . . . . . /. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,}
    . . . . . . . . ./. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,:`^`.}
    . . . . . . . ./. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,:”. . . ./
    . . . . . . .?. . . __. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . :`. . . ./
    . . . . . . . /__.(. . .“~-,_. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,:`. . . .. ./
    . . . . . . /(_. . ”~,_. . . ..“~,_. . . . . . . . . .,:`. . . . _/
    . . . .. .{.._$;_. . .”=,_. . . .“-,_. . . ,.-~-,}, .~”; /. .. .}
    . . .. . .((. . .*~_. . . .”=-._. . .“;,,./`. . /” . . . ./. .. ../
    . . . .. . .`~,. . ..“~.,. . . . . . . . . ..`. . .}. . . . . . ../
    . . . . . .(. ..`=-,,. . . .`. . . . . . . . . . . ..(. . . ;_,,-”
    . . . . . ../.`~,. . ..`-.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . … . /
    . . . . . . `~.*-,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..|,./…..,__
    ,,_. . . . . }.>-._. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .|. . . . . . ..`=~-,
    . .. `=~-,__. . . `,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    . . . . . . . . . .`=~-,,.,. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . `:,, . . . . . . . . . . . . . `. . . . . . ..__
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .`=-,. . . . . . . . . .,%`>–==“
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _. . . . . ._,-%. . . ..`

    • Anonymous

      Oh you poor thing. Have you been inconvenienced?

    • Anonymous

      Oh you poor thing. Have you been inconvenienced?

  • Clay

    These morons pay almost 2 times the tuition of Quebec students and will still pay more even after Quebec’s tuitions raise. If anything that’s a pretty good indicator of how much thought they actually put into this.

    • Margaretschlegel

      What is your point? That the protesters above should have stayed home because tuition in Ontario is higher? Because they might not directly benefit from the protests (which is debatable) that they should not bother supporting the Quebec protesters? Or do you just want to slag them off?

      • Anonymous

        I think his point is that tuition in Canada, and especially Quebec, is already subsidized greatly relative to many other places with a similar tax structure. These children, because that’s how they’re acting, should be more focused on completing their education and leveraging it to find employment to pay back the reasonable amount of debt they have amassed in exchange for a higher education. have amassed

        • Margaretschlegel

          I challenge you to back up your claim about education subsidies and taxes. But anyway, who put you in charge of deciding what is a “reasonable” amount of debt for education, particularly for people who are not you? And re: “should be more focused on completing their education”, um, it was one evening in the summer. I hardly think last night’s protest derailed their studies.

        • Bornthisred

          Typical reactionary response to any kind of progressive political mobilization: if we just all focused on elevating our own class, we would all be better off. Reaction likes to employs limited alternatives: continue studying, or “act out”. There is no consideration that the protests against tuition fees is actually the beginnings of students questioning the very capitalist system they have inherited. In fact, students are not even treated as adults, as apparent in the above comment calling students “children”.

          • Anonymous

            You are not nearly the first, unique snowflake of a generation to “question the very capitalist system” you have inherited. Every generation has some decadent subset that goes through the exact same phase.

          • Bornthisred

            Your attitude is essentially a defeatist one. Did we say we are doing this to be unique? We are here to avoid making mistakes from, while also learning from, the past to build a better future for ourselves and for the oppressed of the world. Those who fight may not win, but those who do not fight have already lost.

          • Anonymous

            No, you are fighting to make things worse.

        • Anonymous

          Children don’t go on strike or organize protest marches. Children don’t have to spend a decade or more paying down loans they had no choice but to acquire if they wanted to make more than minimum wage in their 30s. Children also generally aren’t on the receiving end of questionable emergency legislation.

    • Anonymous

      Whether tuition goes up or down, someone ultimately pays for the services provided by the universities. In the case of these spoiled brats, they think it should be anyone paying taxes as opposed to themselves.

      • Bornthisred

        Students DO pay taxes, craigagm. Your response presents only two alternatives: students paying tuition, or other people paying it for them. It doesn’t at all take into account the fact that 1) education should be free and 2) if the Canadian government weren’t so busy catering to the bourgeoisie, education WOULD be free.

        • Anonymous

          LOL “catering to the bourgeoisie”?? You mean the people who pay the bulk of taxes already so you can role-play as a neo-Marxist for 4+ years, graduate with a useless skill set and a toxic attitude that leaves you and the rest of us worse off than if you’d never gone to university in the first place?

          • Anonymous

            Would we be better off without doctors, lawyers, dentists, teachers, architects, and engineers? Of course not.

            Would we be better off if the barrier to post-secondary education in their fields and others wasn’t so high? Of course.

            It doesn’t matter one bit who pays for someone to go to school if he or she graduates and has a career that pays better than what he or she would have if they’d just started working at 18. Eventually that individual will have more than repaid society in the higher taxes on what they earn and whatever skills they’ve learned and contribute to their paying job.

          • Anonymous

            Tuition costs are too high for people who are pursuing useful careers, yes. But hey, we’ve got windmills to build, energy costs to escalate, a low birth rate to shrink even further, private industry to crush, an army of Marxists who need PhDs and a public sector bio-dome to preserve! Something’s got to give.

          • Anonymous

            I think you might be a lunatic.

          • Anonymous

            Hey now, that’s Red’s agenda, not mine. But I agree, it’s nuts. :)

          • Anonymous

            @Tyrannosaurus_rek

            1) We do not need any more teachers. Approximately 60% of first year teachers are unemployed or underemployed because there are too many already. (source: http://professionallyspeaking.oct.ca/march_2012/features/now_what.aspx)

            2) Making the argument that Law Students and Med Students cost of education is too high is downright silly. Upon entry into med school, students receive an almost interest free loan of $200k. They will earn this back and then some in their first year of residency. This is why you see lots of med school students with nice new cars ;) . Law students have the nice guarantee of a summer job that pays them $30k for 4 months work and then an exorbitant salary once they’re done their education so I can’t say I feel bad for them either.

            3) Architects and Engineers – Undergraduate degrees that cannot be compared to the above in tuition costs. The career opportunities are plentiful and bountiful but, yes, I would agree there is a bit more of a barrier as tuition fees are higher than and arts or science degree but the OSAP maximums remain the same

          • Anonymous

            1) Context. dissident416 referred to all of these as “useless skill set[s]“. I’d rather have a surplus of teachers than none at all.

            2) This demonstrates my third point in microcosm. Doctors and lawyers may be able to repay these loans in a matter of months, but the principle is the same: once they graduate, they repay, so it doesn’t matter who foots the bill up front.

            3) Tuition doesn’t need to be five figures for it to be too high for lots of people. Once they graduate, these people don’t go on to six figure starting salaries so they can repay loans in a few months. (And OSAP is not exactly a flawless system. I have a friend who was denied OSAP for three years because his estranged father made too much money. I was denied OSAP my first year because I’d made enough in high school to cover tuition and a slice of residence, but not enough.)

          • Anonymous

            1) Fair
            2) I read your original point out of context and agree on this as well :)
            3) OSAP is extremely flawed. I know of people who truly didn’t need it and were afforded the maximum amount. They then took this money and invested and made decent returns on their investments even after repaying the loan + interest. Needs to be restructured and won’t be because I can only imagine the bureaucratic mess it would be.

          • Bornthisred

            The reactionary love to paint the students as privileged. True, post-secondary education is only accessible, at the moment, to sections of students who are relatively privileged. But this is precisely why students have taken the streets to protest. Instead of supporting the strike, and comprehending it as more than about tuition, but rather about a set of political actions & beliefs, reactionary forces love to reduce any sort of protest as privileged complaint. Reaction only conceals the true privilege those giving voice to it hides.

          • Anonymous

            You’re really working overtime to keep it in character, aren’t you? Man, I would love to be there when your bubble pops.

          • Anonymous

            According to Statistics Canada, “Research on the roles of tuition costs, student assistance and other related financial factors shows that these influences explain only a small part of the gap in participation rates across socioeconomic groups.” In other words, the tuition-freeze-as-equalizer argument is not well supported by the literature.

          • Anonymous

            Bingo! Having gone to university for 4 years myself, I can say, without a doubt, that the majority of what I learned there has been absolutely useless in progressing my career. Social and reasoning skills were my best acquisitions that would have developed regardless of which degree I chose to pursue.

            Borthisred, if these students are paying taxes it means they have a reasonable income or don’t know how to use all of the lovely tax credits you get from being a student. This would also mean they should be able to pay for school. What’s the issue? I managed to pay for school by working part-time during the year and full-time during the summer, and I still had a social life to boot. Stop complaining and work for what you want to achieve.

      • Anonymous

        Would you make the same argument about health care?

      • Anonymous

        Yea, clearly this doesn’t work in other countries :P

        Sorry pal, Cuba makes you wrong.

        • Anonymous

          I still wouldn’t choose to live in Cuba. Would you?

          • Anonymous

            What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Makes for a good straw man and that’s about it.

          • guest

            I would!

  • Bornthisred

    Solidarity with the students in Quebec!

  • Anonymous

    oops! double posted

  • confused

    Does his/her hoody say Tomato or Toronto?

    • a.s.

      His sweater says Toronto