By Joanne Stassen
“No blood for oil.” “Ferme ta Bush.” “Give peace a chance.”
Placard-waving protesters are a common sight in Ottawa. Lately, they’ve been gathering on a weekly basis at Parliament Hill and in front of a number of foreign diplomatic missions.
It’s not just the war on Iraq. Over the past decade, public protest has become one of the most popular tools in the political activist’s toolbox.
“It depends on the issue and the context, but I would say there are more people who come out to demonstrations,” says Aileen Leo, one of the founding members of Ottawa Witness Group, a volunteer organization that monitors police interactions with protesters.
The numbers back Leo’s observations. Twice as many Canadians said they participated in a public demonstration in the 1990s than in the previous decade, according to one international survey.
People are moving away from membership in political parties, Leo says, towards “more active expressions of their thoughts and feelings.”
Pippa Norris, a lecturer in political science at Harvard University, writes about this shift in her book Democratic Phoenix. The popularity of conventional political involvement is nose-diving, she says, and in most post-industrial countries , protesting, petitioning and boycotting are now more common than active party membership.
While public demonstrations may be more common than ever, they’re not a new phenomenon. The 1960s, ’70s and ’80s had their own protest issues, from the war in Vietnam to abortion.
The history of protest in Canada goes back even further than the ’60s, says Bill Waiser, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan. He’s currently writing a book about the “On to Ottawa” trek, a public protest that captured the county’s attention in 1935.
That summer, thousands of unemployed young men boarded boxcars in Vancouver and headed to Ottawa to demand the federal government do something about the chronic shortage of jobs.
“At the time they were really radical,” Waiser says.
“They gained a popular following. People went and watched the trekkers pass through their towns on box cars.”
Today’s protesters don’t ride on boxcars and if they have a following, it’s probably the nightly news, spoiling for a bit of window-smashing.
They do have some things in common with the “On to Ottawa” trekkers, however.
The trekkers managed to get their movement organized relatively quickly because they were building on the existing network of young activists who had formed a union in the relief work camps, Waiser says.
That’s a lot like the current anti-war movement, which has spread along networks developed for previous protests against the G-8, the G-20 and the WTO.
There are some differences, of course.
“Back then it took a lot more organization and work,” says Waiser. “I think it’s easier today to get the message out. When you want to call a protest today, you just put an ad on the Internet.”
Today’s protesters also have a wider target. The trekkers wanted to get the government’s attention — and action. Activists want the same things today, writes Norris, but they’re also targeting multinational corporations and trying to influence the public. They want people to think about how they vote, but also about what they wear, eat, drink and drive.
The faces in today’s placard-carrying crowds are more diverse. The “On to Ottawa” protesters were mostly young men from rural Canada. These days, it’s not unusual to see grandparents out demonstrating with their grandchildren and Norris’s research shows that today’s 30- and 40-somethings are just as likely to participate in a demonstration as their younger counterparts.
The trekkers never made it to Ottawa. Their adventure came to an end on Dominion Day after the RCMP and the Regina police, under orders from Conservative Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, attacked a public meeting of trekkers and their supporters. When it was all over, one person was dead, hundreds injured and thousands of dollars of property was damaged.
Clashes between protesters and police are not a relic of a bygone era. At the 1997 APEC summit in Vancouver, protesters got a taste of pepper spray in an encounter that developed into one of the spiciest scandals of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s career. In Quebec City in April 2001 it was tear gas, water canons and rubber bullets.
“At the APEC demonstration they used pepper spray,” says Waiser, “but the Regina police shot into the crowd.” You can bet they weren’t using rubber bullets back in 1935.
Ottawa has seen its share of confrontation and violence. At the anti-G-20 protests in November 2001, protesters accused police of using intimidation tactics and a few protesters vandalized a downtown McDonald’s.
Whereas the clashes between police and protesters brought an end to the trek in 1935, the violence at the G-20 summit in Ottawa started a whole new movement. After the police services board turned down their request for an investigation, some city residents formed a panel to look into the complaints of police antagonism.
The Ottawa Witness Group is a spin-off of the citizen’s panel. Sporting their signature purple T-shirts, the witnesses come to protests as observers and record the behaviour of the police towards demonstrators
“I think there has been a demonstrable change since the anti-G-20 protests,” says Aileen Leo, although she admits not everyone involved with protest movements in Ottawa sees things that way.
She gives credit to the panel, the protesters who told their stories, the Ottawa Witness group and the police themselves, who have made some changes to the way they handle large events.
“I’m glad the police are letting people express their views,” Leo says.
“It’s important for people to get out and express their views. This is what democracy looks like, taking your views and presenting them.”
That’s what the “On to Ottawa” trekkers believed in 1935. Although they never made it to the Hill, Waiser credits them with the fall of the Bennett government and, eventually, for the introduction of social welfare.
Public protest is a democratic tradition with a long history in Canada—a history that shows public demonstrations can have an impact, even if it isn’t always immediate. Ultimately, that’s what has brought protesters out in the past, and will keep them coming out in the future, whether they’re die-hard activists or ordinary citizens.