Crowd gathers at Old Port
CTV says there’s a large gathering at the Old Port Sunday evening in violation of curfew. I don’t know of a webcam right in the port, but there are a lot of cop cars clustered at the corner of Berri and St‑Antoine as I post – the closest city webcam on the map. Radio-Canada has the story now too. Video on Twitter from Giuseppe Valiante.
Update: There are reports of people breaking windows and setting fires around Old Montreal.
Another update: Seven arrests were made and more than 100 tickets given out.
MarcG 21:36 on 2021-04-11 Permalink
Basically they’re saying “We want a Covid Zero policy”. I don’t see the downside besides a few hard weeks of isolation, but if it’s well explained that the benefits outweight the costs, surely everyone will agree that it’s the best plan. Imagine the government could tell restaurant owners “You’ll be able to open in 6 weeks” – how many votes would that garner?
Mr.Chinaski 21:49 on 2021-04-11 Permalink
Kate, if you ever want live cam, the city itself has many!
https://ville.montreal.qc.ca/circulation/ville-marie/
Mr.Chinaski 21:52 on 2021-04-11 Permalink
Sorry, was going to add… but suspiciously they are all OFF
Kate 22:50 on 2021-04-11 Permalink
Thanks, Mr. Chinaski. The camera I linked to is from that map, but since they’re traffic cams, there aren’t any along de la Commune, which isn’t a big traffic route, or any pointed towards the Old Port. The Berri and St‑Antoine cam was the closest I could get.
There used to be one or two touristy webcams in the port area, but they’ve been gone for a long time.
Bill Binns 08:16 on 2021-04-12 Permalink
I wonder if a former Gazette writer is now working at CNN. Their article describing the protest as “mostly peaceful” at the top and very briefly mentioning the arson and smashed windows at the bottom was straight out of the summer of 2012.
Kate 08:20 on 2021-04-12 Permalink
That’s how these events tend to go, Bill Binns. Even hockey riots. Most of the crowd will be well intentioned, if excited. Then a small number of casseurs show up and break shit so that the riot cops have an excuse to move in.
Whether these people, or some of them, are agents provocateurs, is always under debate. In a few cases they’ve been proven to be exactly that. But I’m not saying they always are: mob action is bound to have an inflammatory effect on the nervous systems of some twitchy people.
Kevin 10:53 on 2021-04-12 Permalink
If I’m Montreal police, I’m looking at the people they rounded up in the Old Port Saturday morning and seeing where they were Sunday night.
Bill Binns 11:21 on 2021-04-12 Permalink
@Kate – Maybe, but given that criteria, every protest and most outright riots are “mostly peaceful”. The Tiki torch thing in Charlottesville was mostly peaceful. There was only one arrest. The incursion at the US Capitol was mostly peaceful as only a relative few people in that crowd committed any crime more serious than simple trespassing.
Every person in an illegal assembly has to own their part of any violence that occurs since the crowd serves as cover for those “bad apples” or whatever you want to call them.
Kate 12:10 on 2021-04-12 Permalink
Bill Binns, using that argument you could outlaw all protest because of the risk that the bad apples might cause damage.
We’ve had many big protests here that didn’t descend to destruction. Most of the 2012 actions were not like that – I went to several, and some of the biggest ones went off with no damage. Several big environmental protests since that time have remained entirely peaceful. The massive demo against the Iraq war in 2002 never turned to any breakage – I was there for that one.