I’m not going to do this topic justice, but I wanted to share some photos I took during the event. Please chime in with your own experiences, or links to articles and archives.

I have been living under a (burnout) rock and didn’t realize OCAP disbanded in 2023, but was pleased (?) that the Ontario Archive received a collection of documents which will help preserve their work. This made me think of my own photos from the time. They are hot garbage and not notable in any way, but cell phone cameras weren’t really a thing, so there aren’t tonnes of photos out there, at least on the scale we see today. I wanted the opportunity to share them with the new generation. I hope it shows how much worse things have gotten since then.

The G20 coming to Toronto was a big deal. Surveillance of activist groups was clearly increasing, and just a few years prior, the Quebec Police admitted to having undercover cops among the protesters, although they stopped short of admitting to being agent provocateurs.

Steven Harper was Prime Minister. Look, times have changed quite a bit but the man was scary. He didn’t get loud or angry, but he gave this air of absolutely not giving a fuck about anyone. His government enacted new surveillance legislation and the RCMP and other police orgs took up unprecedented undercover and spy operations on activist groups, including those who you would never associate with crime or violence. The way the city was shut down was chilling.

I had an afternoon off work, so I decided to head down to see what was going on.

I took this map from an article from the time, and it shows what parts of the city were closed off.

Now, that’s just fully closed off, like fenced in. Other places were shut down, maybe temporarily. But there sure were a lot of cops hanging out in those places.

These photos are from June 25, 2010.

First, the infamous fence in the area of Bay and Wellington.

The very core of the financial district wasn’t exactly popping on a 5 pm on a Friday back then, but it was unusual for Younge, just south of the Eaton Centre to look like this:

Might have been related to University being shut down with tonnes of riot cops at the intersection of University and Dundas (location of US consulate). They looked pleased as fuck to be there, and chances are if you looked in the window of any tour bus in the area it would be full of cops too.

The interception was blocked off at Dundas and University.

I don’t think I realized it at the time, but I managed to get a photo of one of the minivans the cops were using as unmarked cars during that event. This one is marked, but most of them were not.

I then walked over to Allen Gardens to check out the OCAP Tent City protest/meeting point. There sure were a lot of minivans following people as they left that site 🙄

The organizers had graciously set up designated “free speech zones” where you could protest, but that didn’t stop the cops from changing their minds and from beating people in those zones, then crying about it in court later.

I didn’t take any photos when I went down to Eastern to see the detention centre and protest the mass arrests. The cops advanced on protesters, and took out their “less than lethal” weapons to point at us. I did not want to draw attention with my camera, for obvious reasons.

BlogTO has photos from a media tour inside the facility after the event, which strikes me as such a weird choice by the cops, but I’m glad it was captured. I don’t recall what day I went down, but I think it was likely the 26th, the day before the cops did actually fire some sort of smoke canister into the crowd.

I did not stick around there for too long but did attend the Rally Against Police Brutality on the 28th at the headquarters on Collage.

People were nervous. The cops blocked people from heading to Younge (above), but would let people out at Bay. Maybe that was to direct the subsequent march to City Hall down Bay, but it still felt suffocating given the kettling that had occured days before. What I will always remember is the people looking down from the upper floors.

ACAB, the end.

OC by @Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online