As the war in Afghanistan enters its eighth year, more Canadians oppose the war than at any time since the country entered the conflict in 2002 (according to polls). Last Saturday, several hundred protesters gathered in Queen's Park to send Stephen Harper a message: bring the troops home. The protest was part of a pan-Canadian day of action organized by The Canadian Peace Alliance. Protests took place in sixteen cities across the country.......

PROTEST: Anti-Scientology group Anonymous is having another planned protest at the Church of Scientology today. If you haven't been to one before, hordes of people typically disguised by masks congregate outside the Scientology building and chant things like "Fuck Tom Cruise!" and encourage cars to honk their horns! Meanwhile, the staff at the Church of Scientology chill out in their foyer, have a potluck luncheon, and watch the festivities occur. We're not really sure......

Tibet supporters demonstrated outside the Chinese consulate in Toronto yesterday, marching with the Tibetan Freedom Torch, which is supposed to be the symbolic opposite to the Olympic torch. Which doesn't make sense, because how can a torch be the opposite of another torch? Shouldn't it have been a large bowl of water instead? The Victoria Day weekend produced record fatalities, with eight dead as of Sunday night. The OPP stated that they were not......

Forgive us if we're breaking rules 1 and 2, but it didn't take us long to figure out that this fake Wii Battletoads website (site has changed, see Google cache for original) was a viral marketing campaign against the Church of Scientology's "Fair Game" policy. This past Saturday marked the latest "in real life raid" against the Church. This wave of protests focused on a memo issued by L. Ron Hubbard in 1965, which......

180,000 people have applied to buy tickets for the eight games that the NFL's Buffalo Bills will be playing at the Rogers Centre between now and 2012. The tickets will range as high as $295 (pre-scalper), which is still better than having to go to Buffalo. Because it's such a long drive, we mean. Geez, stop being so sensitive, Buffalo. Ontario is planning to crack down on bootleg cigarettes by launching a public education......

Last we checked on a group who have now been dubbed the "Fight Fees 14," they were loudly chanting "Shame on you!" to police officers because they were slightly annoyed over increasing residence fees at New College. According to an online petition and press release, fourteen of the students are now facing criminal charges. After turning themselves in, the students were released under strict bail conditions that prevent them from associating, except in class......

In one of the more surreal moments from Streets are for People’s Tuesday visit to Queen’s Park, Rosario Marchese, the NDP MPP for Trinity-Spadina, donned Captain Planet–style superhero digs, made with a few go-get-’em words about public transit, and took flight into the Legislative Assembly’s inner chamber to save the known universe. Except he didn’t, but the cape is fact. Sort of.......

Following demonstrations on February 10 and March 15, Anonymous once again occupied the sidewalks across from 696 Yonge Street on Saturday. This time, however, the windowshades of Scientology’s Toronto outlet were drawn, its ground-level offices apparently vacant; with the exception of one lonely camera jockey, Hubbard’s loyal army of hyper-vigilant paparazzi were conspicuously absent. Maybe they called their day on account of rain. By noon, April showers had made smeary messes of one or......

Every year, U of T's student newspaper The Varsity publishes at least one joke issue, and every year in recent memory, it has managed to either seriously offend a few people, confuse a whole lot of people, or just not be funny. Enter the quest of AlwaysQuestion. There was, if you remember, a protest and sit-in over rising student fees, and a video accusing police of "police brutality." Then there was President David Naylor's......

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve. Untitled BY ATDACHILL......

Over a thousand demonstrators marched through downtown Toronto Sunday in an emotional protest to demand freedom for Tibet and to draw attention to recent crackdowns by Chinese forces that have reportedly resulted in the deaths of over 100 Tibetans. With international attention focused on China and the upcoming Olympics in Beijing organizers called for Canadian politicians to boycott the opening ceremonies.......

Man stabs himself with katana. People may wonder how such a ridiculous accident came to occur, and our response is "he lived in Scarborough, what else is there to do?" Torontonians rally for a free Tibet. In response, the government of China immediately said it was very, very sorry and immediately began withdrawing troops and establishing Tibetan self-government while declaring May 17th to be "The Dalai Lama Is Awesome Day" in China. Painkillers and......

Yesterday afternoon, a group named AlwaysQuestion organized a "day of action" protesting a fee increase for New College residence students at the University of Toronto. The day was to end with a sit-in at Simcoe Hall intended to garner the group a meeting with U of T President David Naylor, to get "the proposed fee increase removed from the University Affairs Board meeting," and to get fifteen minutes at that meeting for a "presentation......

Photo by exMOHAX Led by the group Anonymous and their ongoing campaign against the Church of Scientology, Project Chanology, protesters gathered outside the church's Toronto headquarters on Sunday to mark Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. It was the second such worldwide protest in just over a month; the last protest—a surprisingly massive one—took place on February 10th. More photos from our Flickr Pool after the jump.......

"Stop the torture—end the war," read one colourful placard at Queen's Park. "End the siege of Gaza," read another. Voicing solid opposition against the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq, immense columns of demonstrators took over Queen's Park and Bloor Street on Saturday. "From Iraq to Palestine," they shouted, "occupation is a crime!" When the demonstration reached the heart of Yorkville, you could imagine the neighbourhood's original war resisters seized by the......

Hundreds of people braved the year's worst storm to march along Bloor and Yonge on International Women's Day, Saturday. This year the march marked the 100th anniversary of a demonstration by 15,000 immigrant women in New York to draw attention to working conditions and child labour. The theme of the march was "The Rising of the Women is the Rising of us All!"......

A demonstration at City Hall yesterday by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty forced the Speaker to halt proceedings after the protest spilled onto the chamber floor. The action by OCAP was called after the discovery of a homeless man frozen to death in a downtown stairwell February 27. A statement by OCAP called the death a "preventable tragedy." Members of the activist group handed out statements to councilors as others rebuked them for their......

Raising banners, flags, and fists, a polyglot crowd descended on the U.S. Consulate with a deafeningly simple point: “Kosovo Je Srbije”—Kosovo is Serbia. Saturday’s demonstration comes on the heels of Kosovo’s secession from Serbia, a move that has sparked outrage among Serbs and many in the international community. Despite this, Kosovo’s declaration of independence on February 17th has been recognized by many Western nations, including the United States, Germany, France, Denmark, and Turkey. While......

Photo by Joe Lee (London, via Londonist). A spokesperson for the Church of Scientology labelled Sunday's protest outside its office at Yonge & St Mary—part of a worldwide series of protests—a "religious hate crime" and said that the "hate crimes of Anonymous should be condemned," as reported in Torontoist, CTV and the Toronto Sun, among others. That got us thinking. Accusing someone of a "hate crime" is pretty damning. Are the protestors guilty of......

If you passed the Church of Scientology’s Toronto chapter at Yonge & St. Mary on Sunday, you may have momentarily entertained a dark fantasy that Tom Cruise would emerge from the masked masses amid gales of manic laughter, igniting the dissenting throng with bolts of righteous lightning. Sadly, no such fun. Rumour has it that Mr. Cruise was under lockdown during Anonymous’ global day of action against L. Ron Hubbard’s brainchild. As the Toronto......

A protest outside the Toronto office of Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Thursday drew attention to the housing crisis in Canada, demanding that resources spent on military action in Afghanistan be diverted to provide an additional 1% of the federal budget for social housing.......

Earlier this evening, The Star reported on what might somehow rank as one of the strangest videos on YouTube. Recorded on Monday afternoon at the protests in Montebello, the video shows the tail end of a confrontation between Dave Coles (president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada) and three masked men who seem hell-bent on rilling up him, his fellow protestors ("old guys, grandmothers, grandfathers"), and the line of riot-ready police.......

Every weekday, we pick an image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! James Helmer has absolutely nailed the passion, anger, and drive in this protest photo, taken last Tuesday at Queen's Park at a rally organized by "Black Youth Taking Action" (that we mentioned in our news roundup). While an entirely respectable goal......

This afternoon's pro-Lebanon rally outside the Israeli consulate at Queen's Park & Bloor was, like so many other recent partisan efforts, riddled with contradictions. Some speakers called for an immediate ceasefire while applauding the deaths of Israeli soldiers in the same breath. Cameramen, reporters, and photographers were all treated like royalty (by eager protestors and organizers), while a speaker claimed that the war could not be just "another photo op for Stephen Harper." A......