It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances.

This year’s edition of Toronto’s Global Marijuana March had everything one might expect at such an event. The crowd, which massed at Queen’s Park North on Saturday afternoon before the parade headed north on University Avenue, was a mix of activists with some reasonable points to make and stoners looking for a good time. Dozens of Canadian flags, complete with marijuana leaves in place of maple leaves, flapped proudly. And when it was time for the parade to begin, roughly half of those gathered forgot to go.

Organizer Neev Tapiero said that committed legalization activists and folks looking to get stoned in the park were equally welcome at the event.

“There are several ways of describing this,” he said. “Protest, festival, protestival…we’re just out to celebrate cannabis culture.”

He added that the mission of the march is to spread awareness of the benefits of marijuana and the need for legal reform.

Among the activist groups represented at the march was Moms for Marijuana International. Moms Canada president Cheri Shaw is a medical marijuana user and the mother of a teenage son. She began using weed to cope with several chronic pain conditions. Prior to that, she had been prescribed Dilaudid, a synthetic opiate.

“I’ve been on narcotics since I was 11,” she said. “Before I quit two years ago, I was on 360 eight-milligram [tablets] a month.”

“I would take one, wait 10 minutes, and throw it up, then wait an hour, take another one, throw it up again. And I’d do that until my throat was raw.”

She said that medical marijuana has made her a better parent.

“It’s helped me relax and see things differently,” she said. “My memory that I lost over years of narcotic use is coming back.”

But parents who are medical marijuana users sometimes face scrutiny from the authorities.

“When I got my medical marijuana license, I had Children’s Aid come to my house,” said Shaw, “and I was lucky, because I got a very decent worker. She left a little bit more educated and I’ve never had a problem since. The problem is when you get people who don’t want to learn.”

Kareem Bruzual was the parade’s head marshal, and was responsible for organizing volunteers.

“Crowd control isn’t an issue here,” he said. “The only issue on the parade itself is to make sure everyone’s safe.”

“I’ve never seen a mad stoner. They’re all too laid back,” he added. “I’m just here to make sure the parade goes off without any hitches.”

Unfortunately, Bruzual didn’t get quite get his wish. While the crowd was fairly well behaved and did a decent job of cleaning up after itself, about half of them opted not to move once the parade started. Instead, they continued hanging and lounging under the trees, listening to music, chatting, and getting stoned. Every so often, a group would get up and amble up the sidewalk in an attempt to catch up with the larger parade. Most seemed okay with missing it.

“Oh, the parade went already?” said one man waiting in line at a hot dog vendor. “I guess no one told us. We’re all the way at the south end of the park.”

Torontonian pot smokers were treated to a new, improved 4/20 celebration this weekend, after the marijuana legalization protest in Yonge-Dundas Square received a gift from a wealthy benefactor.

4/20 is an unofficial marijuana holiday, observed each year on April 20 in places around the world. (The number 420 has long been associated with pot, but nobody’s exactly sure why.) In the past, Toronto’s 4/20 event has been held in violation of both drug laws and city bylaws, with demonstrators occupying the square and using sound amplification without permits. This year, the Toronto Hash Mob, which organized the gathering, was able to get enough money for permits, security, and insurance. All of this was courtesy of British Columbia lotto winner Bob Erb.

Erb—yes, that is his real name—won a $25 million Lotto Max prize last fall. A marijuana smoker since the 1960s, he used part of his winnings to bankroll 4/20 events across the country.

According to Hash Mob member Erin Goodwin, the gift from Erb was enough to transform the event.

“As he collected his large cheque, while smoking a big joint, he said he was going to donate a large portion of his winnings to the national 4/20 campaign and legalization movement,” she said. “He really came through with that. He gave us $15,000 to help make this happen.”

“Every year we apply for a permit, and most years we get turned down. This year, I guess due to the funding from Mr. Erb, they said yes.”

Goodwin said Yonge-Dundas Square officials had been remarkably easy to work with. “They’ve been amazing in helping us with this event,” she said. “They were friendly and accommodating…It gives me hope for the future that the laws are closer to changing.”

She added that she had been concerned that the just-above-freezing temperatures would affect attendance. Instead, she was pleasantly surprised when thousands of cannabis enthusiasts braved the cold to celebrate their favourite herb.

“Considering that there was a blizzard here when we were setting up this morning, we’ve done pretty well,” she said.

The crowd was remarkably well behaved, with no incidents of violence and most people obeying the no-alcohol rule put in place by the organizers.

Police presence at the event was near-invisible, with a few bicycle patrol officers at the east end of the square, and one court services van at the west end.

The celebration featured live bands, an hour of stand-up comedy, and several speeches from marijuana activists. The day’s host was activist, Hash Mob member, and self-proclaimed Cannabis Champion of the World Matt Mernagh. He was among the afternoon’s more impassioned speakers, repeatedly criticizing the Conservative government’s drug policies.

“We’re saying we want the laws to change now,” Mernagh said. “We’re not saying decriminalization is a nice step towards something. We want to grow marijuana, and we want to buy it in the store.”

Among the attendees was Fucked Up lead singer Damian Abraham, who lent his support to the legalization cause. Abraham didn’t smoke, drink, or use drugs until a little over two years ago when he started smoking marijuana to help him with an anxiety disorder after traditional medication failed him.

“We were in Europe one time, and I felt like I was falling apart,” he said. “I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I asked the band if I could smoke a joint they were smoking, and you kind of heard the needle go off the record, but they passed it to me, and I don’t want to say it was immediate, but it actually was immediate. I really felt removed enough from the situation that was giving anxiety that when I wasn’t stoned any more, I could look at it objectively.”

Abraham added that marijuana has improved his life by helping him cope with his anxiety without all the side effects of prescription drugs. He’s currently in the process of getting a medical marijuana license, which is a complicated process that takes about a year.

“It would be easier for me to refill an old prescription for Ativan in 20 minutes than it would be for me to get a medical marijuana license in a year,” he said.

For her part, Goodwin hopes that this year’s better-organized, better-funded 4/20 will be an ongoing thing. She and other members of the Hash Mob are planning on flying to BC to meet with Erb in August.

Photo by cookedphotos from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Two years later, it’s easy to forget that what’s happening in Syria started with a series of street protests. It’s typical in 2013 to define the nightmare in Aleppo and elsewhere as war—naked, and devastating—but there’s little discussion of the human context that triggered it.

On Saturday, on the second anniversary of the Syrian uprising, several hundred Torontonians rallied outside Old City Hall, mostly to restore that part of the conversation.

Decidedly harder to forget is that 2011 was a year marked by furious dissent, then open revolution, in northern Africa and the Middle East. When Mohamed Bouazizi, a 27-year-old fruit vendor from Tunisia, set himself on fire in an act of final defiance against his country’s police state, his death set off a chain of events that would trigger the Tunisian Revolution. By the time the year was out not only was Tunisian President Ben Ali toppled by the waves of demonstration that resulted, so was Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Protests and uprisings began in several other countries, too—but in some of those cases demonstration was only part of that equation in the end. Two years ago exactly, in the interest of backing up Libya’s citizens with more firepower than was available to that country’s rebels, 14 NATO countries, including Canada, launched a military intervention to put an end to Gaddafi’s oppressive regime.

Though all these nations’ futures are uncertain, and in many cases turmoil continues, the dictators who used to rule have at least been dispatched. On Saturday, Syrian-Canadians and supporters rallied outside of Old City Hall, marking the second anniversary of their own uprising with a rather vocal reminder: the fight against the original dictatorships is still happening in some places, and it’s not going especially well.

On the streets of Aleppo, Damascus, Idlib, and Homs, events have progressed little beyond the deployment of Bashar al-Assad’s army two years ago to quell the rising protests, with soldiers ordered to fire on the even unarmed demonstrators. Months—now years—of popular rallies have been met with military siege, triggering the civil war that threatens to end the Syrian state altogether.

At Saturday’s rally, activists painted a picture of a country on the verge of destruction. 70,000 people have been killed overall, they said, citing United Nations statistics. More than 5,000 of those are children. A further 200,000 have been detained or tortured. 75,000 are still missing. And with 1,000,000 refugees and 4,000,000 internally displaced persons, the situation, they say, is nothing short of a horror. Doctors involved in relief efforts—”effort,” sadly, being the operative word—gave the stark impression that the on-the-ground reality shames any attempt to describe it.

“Media coverage and the general public now largely view the crisis as a civil war,” organizers said, “obfuscating the simple truth: it is a call for freedom from decades of dictatorship. And in times of conflict it is often the people caught in the crossfire that are first to be forgotten. The children, the mothers, the injured, the orphans, the sick, the poor.”

As the rally spilled towards Queen Street, up University Avenue, and across Dundas back towards Old City Hall, a chorus called for Western aid, and the crowd implored the United Nations, Harper, Obama, and all NATO powers to step up once again. Recalling the streaking volleys of missile attacks that hastened Gaddafi’s end, some in attendance called for the same, a dramatic show of Western power to bring Assad to justice. Others questioned NATO’s hesitation to get involved, knowing that a liberated Syria would strategically isolate Iran—its closest regional ally and the subject of heated, hawkish Western rhetoric for years. Others still suggested that it’s the tangled web of international interests at play in the Black Sea region (notably Russia’s, Syria’s only real international supporter and a nuclear giant already peeved with NATO over its anti-ballistic missile program in Europe) that are cooling the West’s heels.

And many activists were simply trying to put the issue before Western eyes once again, calling on individual Canadians for aid and support. UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, and advocacy groups like Canadian Relief for Syria were cited as good channels for assistance.

“Many fail to realize that a humanitarian crisis has developed,” organizers said, “and that it has reached catastrophic proportions.”

Photos by Todd Aalgaard except where noted.

CORRECTION: March 18, 11:05AM This post previously referred to the Black Sea region as the Baltic region. The correction has been made above.

Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tatawnawana/7305269612/"}Miss T{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/pool/"}Tornotoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Public elementary school teachers, early childhood educators, and some education support personnel will stage a day-long, province-wide walkout on Friday, according to a press release issued earlier today by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. The job action comes after the provincial government imposed new contracts on elementary and secondary teachers using powers granted to it under Bill 115. That was on January 3.

The walkout, according to the Star, will cause public schools to close down for the day.

Participants in the walkout will be protesting what ETFO sees as an undemocratic negotiation process that has saddled their members with unfair employment contracts. “Our members are standing up to say that democratic values must trump party politics in this province,” ETFO president Sam Hammond is quoted as saying in the press release. “What happened to educators must not happen to any other Ontarian. The stain of Bill 115, enacted four months ago this Friday, serves as a permanent reminder of that.”

Provincial Education Minister Laurel Broten has said that, now that contracts are in place, teachers are no longer in a legal strike position. This would make a work stoppage on Friday illegal.

CLARIFICATION: January 10, 2013, 10:45 AM This post should have noted that the ETFO maintains that their planned job action is legal, because, they claim, it’s protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Drumbeats echoed off the Eaton Centre as roughly a thousand protesters took over Yonge-Dundas Square on Friday for the Toronto edition of Idle No More, one of the largest Aboriginal protest movements in recent memory.

Idle No More started last month as activists took to Twitter, using the hashtag #IdleNoMore, to protest the federal government’s budget omnibus bill, Bill C-45, which they say includes language that would change the Indian Act. One driving concern is that the bill will loosen legal controls over how reserve lands are managed, making them easier to develop. While C-45 was passed earlier this month, Idle No More has has continued to grow.

The widespread support for Idle No More, both in the Aboriginal community and, increasingly, in the wider world, was evident on Friday. Charm Logan, one of the organizers, said the event was originally supposed to be a flash mob. By Friday, it had become too big to look spontaneous.

“There were so many people, we couldn’t really get that element of surprise to sneak up,” she said.

Joni Shawana, one of Logan’s co-organizers, said the turnout was far better than expected.

“Our Facebook group was up around 1,100 people when we woke up this morning, and we were kind of like ‘Whoa!’” said Shawana.

Nathan Boissineau came from Barrie for the protest, bringing his drum with him. He said that as a Native Canadian, he felt compelled to speak out against the changes contained in C-45, and to show support for Atiwapiskat First Nation Chief Theresa Spence. Spence has been on hunger strike since December 11, refusing to eat until she gets a meeting with Stephen Harper and a representative of the Queen to discuss treaty rights, and, more broadly, Canada’s relationship with its Indigenous peoples. She is currently living in a teepee on Victoria Island, in the Ottawa River, roughly a kilometre away from the Parliament buildings.

“She’s been on hunger strike for 11 days, and there’s been no response from Parliament, other than to say there’s not going to be a response,” Boissineau said. “Whether she continues or not, we’ve done our part and now it’s up to Stephen Harper.”

While Idle No More is a Native movement at its core, one of its goals is to improve Canada’s understanding of the issues facing First Nations.

“We want to engage Canadian citizens,” said Logan. “We want to work together to save our water and our environment and our homelands.”

She said that while the movement has faced a certain amount of racist backlash from non-Natives, there has also been support.

“I think a lot of [the racism] was just due to misunderstanding,” she said. “We’ve had our culture and our history not properly presented in the educational system, so by doing things like this, producing the brochures we did, and talking to people… I have noticed a significant change in people’s attitudes toward us.”

“With these flash mobs, we’re educating more Canadians,” added Shawana. “They’re going to go do their own research and see what it’s all about.”

Logan said that many of the issues the movement is tackling with regard to environmental protection on Native lands should be important to all Canadians. She added that Idle No More Toronto will continue to stage events throughout the city in the coming weeks.

“We need to unite with the rest of Canada to do whatever it takes to put this planet in a healthy condition,” she said. “We need a sustainable environment and a sustainable economy, and we need it yesterday.”

When I left the Jarvis Taskforce‘s emergency meeting this past weekend, I was fairly convinced that I wanted to protest the removal of the Jarvis Street bike lane in some way. It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, though, when I heard the scrub truck power-washing the lane away through my window, that I realized I was going to take the drastic action of sitting in the street to halt its progress.

Why do Jarvis Street’s bike lanes affect me so personally? I’ve lived in Toronto for 14 years. I’ve commuted primarily by bike for 10 years, and I’ve lived just off Jarvis for five. In all that time, I’ve been hit by cars on my bike three times—and two of those incidents occurred on Jarvis, before the bike lanes were installed. I was doored by a taxi parked outside the National Ballet School on one occasion, and I was hit by a taxi driver making a right on a red at Jarvis Street and Wellesley Avenue on another.

In 2009, an environmental assessment recommended that the reversible fifth/centre lane of Jarvis (a failed 1950′s-era traffic experiment not repeated elsewhere in the city) be removed. Subsequently, city council decided to install bike lanes on the street—something which had an immediate and very positive impact on my safety. Indeed, it did for all users of Jarvis. A City study found a year later that cyclists’ use of the street had increased by more than 300 per cent [PDF]; another showed that accidents had decreased dramatically [PDF], including a remarkable 89 per cent drop in collisions between automobiles and pedestrians. Other evidence made it clear that the street was functioning more effectively for all users. The only negative impact of the new design: driving the length of Jarvis Street by car at rush hour takes about two minutes longer.

It’s for all these reasons—and the fact that every consultant and urban planning expert I’d seen discuss the street endorsed the new street design—that I had faith city council would make the right decision and keep the bike lanes on Jarvis. Local councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre-Rosedale) had been advocating for them consistently. And leading up to that final council vote, centrist councillors like Ana Bailão (Ward 18, Davenport) and Josh Colle (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) made public statements in support of Cycle Toronto’s campaign to keep the lanes.

So when Mayor Rob Ford’s administration reneged on his promise not to waste taxpayer money and decided to remove the lanes, and public works committee chair Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) even reneged on his promise not to remove the Jarvis bike lanes until the new Sherbourne Street bike lanes (which are already having problems) were completed, I felt betrayed. I was shocked that all the jokes about Toronto being the only major city removing bike lanes were being so fully realized. I was dismayed that, in order to score political points with midtown commuters only concerned with using Jarvis as an urban highway, Ford and other councillors were willing to sacrifice the safety of the people who live and work along the street.

And that’s why, for the first time in my life, I became an activist.

As someone who lives and commutes along Jarvis, as a pedestrian, cyclist, and occasional driver, I urge all Torontonians to support the Jarvis Taskforce in their objectives. All Torontonians deserve to have their safety taken into consideration when it comes to major changes to urban planning.

A full environmental assessment was done before the fifth reversible lane was removed. Before council decided to put in bike lanes, it recommended taking out that fifth lane, creating wider sidewalks and wider curb lanes to accommodate cyclists, and re-establishing a sense of place for the people who actually inhabit Jarvis, as opposed to the ones who just use it as a thoroughfare. We shouldn’t reverse course on the bike lanes until the same due diligence is done, incorporating information about how Jarvis is working now, and unless that evidence indicates it is the best course of action. Councillor Doug Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North) suggested in an interview that we should count the number of cars “backed up” on Jarvis, and the number of cyclists using the street. I fully agree.

I urge the City of Toronto to properly consult residents along Jarvis, to assess how they’ve been affected by bike lanes. After all, how can Mayor Ford’s administration claim to respect taxpayers if he refuses to take their safety into account; to consult with the councillor whose ward such a decision most affects, or listen to her constituents; and claim that he’s listening to the people?

Steve Fisher is the listings editor for Torontoist. His writing can be found in several local media outlets.

Additional photos of yesterday’s protest are available here.

A smart dinnerware manufacturer would have sent a representative down to Woodbine Park on Sunday to observe the crowd at Soupstock. This rep would have been able to gather some fine competitive intelligence by watching people use every form of soup-holding implement known to humanity, from mass-produced mugs to colourful handcrafted ceramic bowls, all filled with tasty concoctions prepared by fine chefs from across the province.

An estimated crowd of 40,000 people showed up for the culinary event, which was more than just a bring-your-own-bowl food fest: it was also a protest against a quarry, proposed by Highland Companies for construction in the township of Melancthon. Dubbed the “mega-quarry” by its opponents, the project would directly affect an estimated 2,300 acres of farmland, located about 100 kilometres north of Toronto. Melancthon residents fear adverse effects on their water supply, and on the local economy.

At Sunday’s event, attendees paid to sample soups made by professional chefs and prepared with ingredients sourced from Toronto-region farms. The proceeds went to the Canadian Chefs’ Congress and the David Suzuki Foundation. Both organizations have been involved in fighting the quarry.

Soupstock was more popular than last year’s Foodstock, a similar event. The latter attracted only 28,000 supporters. Location probably made the difference: Foodstock was held in a field near Melancthon, a long drive from Toronto. Sunny skies and comfortable temperatures may also have boosted attendance this year.

The crowds weren’t too terrible. Woodbine Park is spacious and the soup booths were spread out. Long lines formed for soups made by celebrity chefs like Susur Lee and Marc Thuet, and at booths offering high-end ingredients. Meanwhile, other participants ladled out their creations to lines that were relatively short, or non-existent. Fall-harvest ingredients dominated the offerings, which together used over 12,000 pounds of local produce. Lovers of carrots, parsnips, and squash were in heaven. We found the secret to a happy stomach was balancing broth-based soups—like a clear hot-and-sour soup with Asian carp fish balls—with heartier stews and chili-like dishes, like a “Mexican Minestrone.”

Besides soup, the event also included speeches from activists and farmers battling the mega-quarry. All of them stressed the project’s potential to wreak havoc on the environment, and on the livelihood of area farmers. They shared stage time with a mix of musical acts headlined by Jim Cuddy and Jesse Cook, all hosted by George Stroumboulopoulos and Jeremy Taggart. The overall vibe, while firmly against the project, was more relaxed than excessively rah-rah.

CORRECTION: October 22, 2012, 4:15 PM This post originally said that proceeds from Soupstock went to the anti-quarry movement. In fact, the event was a benefit for two organizations—the Canadian Chefs’ Congress and the David Suzuki Foundation—whose activities include opposing the quarry. (The Suzuki Foundation has pledged to use all of its Soupstock money for anti-quarry campaigning.)

Protesters gather at St. James Park on Monday. Photo by {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/photopia/8092688906/in/pool-341900@N21/"}HiMY SYeD{/a}, from the {a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/torontoist/pool/"}Torontoist Flickr Pool{/a}.

Roughly two dozen protesters—and an almost equal number of reporters—gathered in St. James Park on Monday to mark Occupy Toronto‘s one year anniversary. The gathering, which featured all the flags, dogs, signs, and acoustic guitars that people have come to expect from the Occupy movement, felt like part protest and part class reunion.

“The goal for me is to just see old friends,” said Occupier Christopher Lambe. “I think this is a day where people are going to come to this park for years to come, for the rest of my life—to reconnect with all these old people and think about those 40 days. Because a lot happens when you’re living in such a small space with 200 other people, and it hasn’t really been done, and it was pretty interesting.”

Lambe said that no one organized the anniversary celebration, but that it developed in typical Occupy fashion out of a consensus in their online community. “We threw it out there and said ‘What do you want to do?’” he said. “’Do you want to come here and have an artful display? Make music, do paintings, have an art installation, and chat and reminisce?’ And everyone wiggled their fingers and said ‘Yeah!’ So we put it up on Facebook and did what we did.”

He added that the anniversary celebration was much more artistically minded than the original protest, with plays, music, and collaborative visual-art pieces. “Last year, roaming around with a bunch of signs and yelling our faces off didn’t really get the message across in the way we wanted it to, so this is probably a better way,” he said. “There’s going to be a play in the gazebo, and the script is all verbatim things that were said in the park over the 40 days. A journalist gathered all the quotes and put them together. So it’s our story, put together in a much better way than we could do it.”

While Lambe was upbeat about the gathering, other Occupiers were less sunny. Heidi Stoecklin was one of the members of Aurorans for World Peace who came down to commemorate Occupy Toronto. She blamed, among other things, the corporately-owned media for the poor turnout.

“The media didn’t give us any sort of lead-up or any sort of credit. If they’d talked about it, there would be way more people here,” she said, adding that some former Occupiers probably had their spirits broken in the past twelve months.

“The media is not there for the people, and the police are not there for the people. We saw a lot of the will of the people diminished in that time. The world saw that the corporations and the coppers and our fascist police state will win.”

Fellow protester Sonny Yeung seemed to disagree. He pointed out that many of the movement’s concerns have gained traction with governments over the last year.

“I think some of our issues have been addressed,” he said. “In Ontario, the NDP was able to pressure the Liberals so that those making more than $500,000 will be paying a 2 per cent surtax; in Quebec, the PQ government is interested in taxing the wealthy; and in the States, if Obama is reelected, he’ll let the Bush tax cuts expire.”

Lambe said that, 12 months after the fact, his major takeaway from Occupy Toronto has been this: Change doesn’t come from political systems. It comes from people.

“The solution to our problems isn’t about demanding change, or demanding something from those in politics. It’s about demanding something from ourselves; a more open heart, a more charitable heart, a more benevolent heart. It’s about changing within ourselves and who we are as a society.”

In August 2009, an altercation between former Attorney-General Michael Bryant and bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard on Bloor Street ended with Sheppard’s death and Bryant’s descent into public shame. Yesterday, just over three years later, around the corner from where the original accident occurred, Michael Bryant launched 28 Seconds: A True Story of Addiction, Tragedy and Hope at the Toronto Reference Library—a memoir that recounts the tragedy from Bryant’s perspective.

Outside the library, a group of bike couriers and supporters made sure that Sheppard’s wasn’t forgotten.

“We’re here because somebody died, and somebody wrote a book about it. We think that’s incredibly disrespectful to the memory of Darcy Allan Sheppard,” said the protest’s organizer, Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip, to the approximately 50-person crowd that gathered on the corner of Yonge Street and Asquith Avenue. “I’ve read his book—he begins the opening paragraph by comparing himself to Job and his suffering. That’s incredibly wrong, and as people we have to stand up and say ‘Enough.’ And remind him of who the real victim is.”

Using 11 paper gravestones bearing the dates of Sheppard’s birth and death, along with his bike courier number #140 and the quote “You never ride alone,” some of yesterday’s participants created a mini graveyard to greet guests as they arrived at the library. However, as Mueller-Heaslip suspected, there must have been an alternative entrance available: they never spotted Bryant or the guests who had been invited to the launch. Nonetheless the group, some dressed in their bike gear and others dressed in business wear, silently stood in remembrance while holding their signs, bouquets of flowers at their feet.

“Sorry it’s a little DIY, but we don’t have a PR company to help us out,” Mueller-Heaslip explained as he passed out the gravestones, referring to Bryant’s first move after the 2009 accident—calling public relations firm Navigator Ltd.

Bryant has been relatively silent in the years since August 2009 and charges of dangerous driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death were dropped. He appeared in Toronto this past March at the ROM, which also drew a crowd of protesters, but 28 Seconds—which chronicles his past with alcoholism, the breakup of his marriage, and the sudden death of his brother—marks a clear leap for Bryant back into the spotlight.

“The goal of [Bryant's PR campaign] from the start has been to demonize Al Sheppard,” said Mueller-Heaslip, about the bike courier who had his own history of violence and alcohol abuse. “And this book is the endgame of that campaign, as I see it.”

Bryant’s book has been a major headline in virtually all of Canada’s major news outlets, the commentary on and interviews with the 46-year-old former MP ranging from softball to scathing. Among those who aren’t buying what Bryant is selling are Sheppard’s past bike courier colleagues, who comprised of about one third of yesterday’s protesters.

One of these was Sonia Serba, also known as Sunny D. She was just starting to get to know Sheppard (or as she knew him, “Al”) when he died. Without many resources or funds, she and her fellow courier friends found another way to honour Sheppard, with a song they wrote for him called “Apparently (Al Sheppard).”

“We wanted to use our own talents. If we can come together and make something that people want to see and share, maybe it will go viral and that will battle this PR machine. Let’s say our point of view, do whatever little we can to counteract this storm that this murd— This killer has brought down on my friend,” she said.

Mueller-Heaslip also spent a few years as a bike courier, but says he left the job just as Sheppard was beginning. Staging protests like this and the one in March is more an act of conscience than borne out of any direct obligation to Sheppard and his family. Now that Bryant’s media tour is calming down, Mueller-Heaslip hopes this will be the last time he’ll need to organize a public demonstration.

“I take no pleasure in doing this. I love these guys, but I’d rather be at home playing with my son. But it’s something that has to be done. I hope this is his last stop in Toronto, and I think the way public sentiment has been going, it very well might be,” he said. “I think that this has been a long attempt for him to get back into the position that he had, I think that it’s not working, and I think that he’s going to be losing support. And I hope that he recognizes what it means—which is that it’s him, it’s not what happened.”