Front Street after the rain

Toronto, Ontario – June 22^nd, 2010

In the interests of developing as a human being, at the age of sixteen I instituted a personal policy of confronting fears whenever I identified them. I’ve done a pretty good job over the years of ironing out any phobias that came up. Thus:

Fear of the dark? Go out every night and run around in the fields without a flashlight.

Fear of bullies? Take a stick; beat the snot out of them.

Fear of bears? Hike for a week in the woods North of Superior… alone.

Fear of whitewater? Remote canoe expedition on a wilderness river. Shoot level III rapids and avoid waterfalls until cured.

Fear of heights? Rappel off a railway trestle into the river below. Stand atop of several different mountains. Then spend 5 years living in an 18^th floor penthouse and get back to me.

Fear of falling? Jump off a ten meter cliff into a lake. Repeat.

Fear of guns? Go to a shooting range and try some out.

Fear of the ocean? Go to the Pacific Rim and learn to surf.

After several years of living out this personal “no fear” policy, beyond the few usual and inescapable fears (death, America, rectum cancer) I don’t have much in the way of phobias left. Except one. I seem to have this persistent and poorly defined fear of organized armed forces, both police and military. A mistrust, shall we say? Because even though I’ve got friends and family in the military, intelligence and law enforcement fields, there are few things in life I like less than having to deal with police or soldiers or security on the job. Why? Because these individuals can arbitrarily decide to take your freedom away, regardless of wrongdoing… and while this country has a charter of rights and freedoms intended to prevent that, there are plenty of examples of abuse of power and rights violations out there. (If you don’t believe me, freaking youtube it.)

So this week, to combat my fear of police, I decided that it would be a good idea to go for a walk in the G20 security zone. An excellent exercise: I recommend it to everyone. Instead of staying away like obedient sheep, get down there and have a look-see ASAP, before the gates close on Friday. Because it really does have to be seen to be believed... and because everything in the area could change in an instant if Toronto suffers the kind of terrorist attack that these preparations are intended to forestall. (In that worse case scenario, this temporary police occupation could easily become our reality. See also 9/11 attacks, lingering effects of.)

A dramatic backdrop to any news report...

There are a lot of reasons to stick around and subject yourself to the security treatment. This is arguably the biggest and most significant international event ever to take place in Toronto. Isn’t the world “coming to play”? Shouldn’t we be elbowing each other aside for front row seats? Nobody’s breathed the words nuclear threat in this country since the final throes of the Cold War. So why are so many people heading for the hills now? Is it the relentless media drubbing, the threat of angry teenage males in bandanas, or just the sense of intimidation that the mass police presence inspires?

Pick one. Then consciously choose not to be a victim of your fears. Because frankly, if you have to get your view of this event through a mainstream media outlet’s hysterical news filter – you’re not getting a sense of the immensity of the thing at all. As journalists with far better credentials than me have opined - this is security theatre.

Sure, this security fence has nothing on the scale of a truly big wall— take China’s, the Berlin Wall or that iconic divider on the Gaza strip as monumental (and far more permanent) historic examples. Sure, it'll probably all be gone by Canada Day. But as of this moment, it’s a more significant barrier than anything Toronto has ever seen. And it’s only one of the manifestations this event has brought to TO. In a short five block stretch, I witness:

• Minivans on every block— inobtrusive except that they are mostly burgundy and all full of cops, sitting and waiting, posted on side streets.
• Surveillance cameras on every major corner, building and entrance, watching private and public property alike.
• Private security in full force; still outnumbered by cops, but visible inside and out at all major buildings.
• Side alleys full of SWAT teams, dozens of men and vehicles, marshalling for convoy training drills.
• Bank buildings literally surrounded by police.
• The Westin Harbour Castle, a barricaded fortress.
• Streets denuded:

-Of parked cars (with meter maids standing by, ticket machines in hand, should someone stop and idle).

-Of mailboxes, bus shelters and even some statuary.

-Of garbage cans, excepting those in the GO bus bays alongside Union, purposefully see-through (for easier spotting of suspicious parcels, no doubt) and in well lit and surveilled locations.

-Of trees, at least the uprootable variety (although they missed a few “saplings” on private property north of Union and some just to the south)

• Areas of pebble-in-mortar and loose rock near the Gardiner have been half heartedly surrounded with construction fence to deter stone throwing. (I say half heartedly because they missed more than a few sections. Crews also missed removing all the adjacent bike lock loops. Oh dear, street ammo.)

Dangerous pebbles.

A subtle shift has also taken place in the mood of people in the downtown core. While I never would have considered Toronto friendly per se, the demeanour of the public as a whole has visibly changed. There’s a palpable undercurrent of annoyance and suspicion.

I remember visiting New York City for the first time in 1991 and noticing the difference in how city-dwellers regarded each other compared to Toronto. In NYC, as two strangers walked towards each other, they performed what amounted to a quick and instinctive full body scan: checking and assessing each other for threats, weapons bulges and the like. (Even as a teenager I got a lot of double takes, for I had taken to carrying my camera under my coat in the same position as an under-shoulder holster. Imagine a rosy cheeked 17-year old female Dirty Harry and you get the picture. Yeah.) I'm used to getting looks just for being myself, but today was the first time I’ve felt that same constant civilian cross-examination in TO.

And I'm in the same boat. Walking around Union, seeing all of these preparations, I find it hard to control my reactions. Normally I try to maintain a bland and pleasant mask in public. I have a general policy to ignore cops… but walking through crowds of them it was next to impossible. I think I might have been grimacing like I was in pain. Or maybe my face was stuck halfway between the sneering and crying. I wasn’t the only one— moues of ennui were everywhere… except on the security forcers’ faces. Was I doing anything illegal, to actually warrant worrying about losing my freedom? Hell no. But I was taking pictures of privately owned buildings from public property, and in this day and age that sort of activity is at best… iffy.

Fortress Westin

So I did my thing and got some photos. Was I detained? No... not this time anyway. Unlike the many other guys who were stopped (or even arrested) for doing the exact same thing I was, some within minutes of my circuit. What with a minimum of two surveillance cameras and five security personnel adjacent to every shot, I doubt I was ever actually under the radar… so what was the difference in my case? Being female? Not shooting with a video camera? Not riding around wearing a mask? Or was it just because I avoided taking obvious direct shots of the police and their surveillance set ups? Could I have done this and gotten away with it? Well probably, but I’m not stupid enough to push my luck. Or angry enough. Not yet anyway.

Double walls on Front

More than anything else I'm angered by the apathy involved; I hate to think that more than two million people are staying home or leaving town just to avoid facing the reality of this. So here’s what I encourage my fellow Torontonians to do: park a few blocks outside the zone and go for a walk. Or take public transit; blah blah blah. Just stop pussing about and do it. Go for a stroll and check out this rolled-steel monument, the six kilometers of fencing that has galvanized Toronto— and become a handy visible metaphor. (You’ll probably want to do this before Friday evening, when the fence closes and universal security checks begin. If you decide to pass by after that, might I recommend subwaying into Union station and walking out the East side exit for a taste of the security experience. Prepare to be funnelled away behind crowd control barricades, of course.) And remember: "Being frightened is an experience you can't buy." (Anthony Price - Sion Crossing, 1984)

Gated landmarks

What will the next few days hold? Personally, I think I will exercise my freedoms of press and peaceable assembly… all in pursuit of photography, of course.

Am I scared of protesters? Hell no. I was going to protests as a babe in arms— some of my earliest memories are of watching anti-nuclear actions from the back of a bicycle. I was a whopping four years old. I’ve been bored by a lot of protests since then. (So much yelling… I’m bringing earplugs for the sound cannon, but they’ll probably get deployed in vicinty of a megaphone.)

And what about the anarchists? Are they the real threat in the equation? Nope, sorry, not even close. The whole “anarchists who want to destabilize our society” thing is a shuck. Let’s apply some common sense to the equation: weigh a bunch of bandanna-faced dudes frothing insensibly with rage against highly trained police and security forces equipped with the latest and most expensive “less lethal” armament. Who’s going to win? The guys in body armor who can’t talk to you without a media relations department? Or the dudes who can’t find a spell check?

Are the politicians the real threat? Naah. Politics and politicians are transparent. They’ll just keep doing what they do; same bullshit, different bunghole. (In fact I kinda feel sorry for them, dragging their asses from all over their world to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I go to a variety of events there every year, and believe me, it’s a shitty venue. Not world class at all.)

Is it the police force? Not really, because they’ll be busy dealing with convoys and crowd control and the angry young male contingent that’s rattling the cage. Doing their jobs, for the most part.

So what is the biggest threat to the City of Toronto— and summit security in general? What is the real elephant in our front room? Want to guess? Here’s a clue. It’s 553 metres high and weighs 130,000 tonnes. And it’s standing right next door to the visiting dignitaries.  

That could be dangerous. I’d recommend dismantling it ASAP.

View of the CN Tower from within the Metro Toronto Convention Centre

Will I be staying clear of the security zone this weekend? Fff. Only one thing’s for sure— I’ll be steering clear of the tower in Toronto that controls people’s minds.

My full set of images from the G20  (in progress) can be viewed here.

Not the usual rush hour street scene.