Naturally there’s been a lot of talk about the G20 coming to town and how, overall, it doesn’t seem like there’s going to be any benefit for the city from this crazy assembly. Costs have gone up almost ten-fold to about a billion bucks (how does the government manage to get everything so wrong all the time?), all of which is going toward making the G20 leaders’ visits nice and comfortable. Chunks of downtown are being completely shut down, much to residents’ chagrin, and not a penny of that exorbitant sum is being spent to help locals or businesses with lost profits, protest damage, etc. Organizers aren’t even hiring local security for the job.

Basically, unless someone can come up with one tangible benefit, the summit will end up being a huge middle finger to Toronto as well as the taxpayers of Canada. Nebulous statements of “benefits to the city” made by officials are not very convincing. Like, what benefits, exactly?

Well, there is one that I can think of, and it applies to only a very small group of Torontonians. Like myself. :)

I’m talking about the global media coverage that the G20 will invariably get. It’ll do nothing for local businesses, and I’m fairly certain most Canadian tax payers don’t give a flying fuck if the summit makes headlines in Brazil. But for anyone in the media, stories like this are akin to a sundae with whipped cream and a cherry on top, especially if shit really does go down and the protests start to get violent. For insignificant bloggers who happen to live near the turmoil, that’s especially true.

As crass as that may sound, it’s the truth. Tragedies, disasters, protest movements – they’re all headline fodder extraordinaire.

Take the recent seizing of Palestinian aid ships by the Israeli army, for example. Israel, Palestine, and the ships may all be half a world away, but thanks to Toronto’s Palestinian population the story came right to my front door. And thanks to an unfortunate series of events that resulted in the pro-Palestine demonstration yesterday, the topic can happily fly under the Toronto City Life flag.

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It’s fair to say that most people in Toronto have at this point at least heard of the Michael Bryant thing. If you haven’t, allow me to catch you up.

Basically, Bryant was driving his car down Bloor Street on Monday when something – no one’s quite sure exactly what —  happened between him and a bike courier. Probably a collision of some sort, but obviously not serious because the courier got up. Then he leapt onto Bryant’s Saab convertible. The female passenger (his wife?) called police while Bryant hit the gas.

He swerved into oncoming traffic and drove up on the opposite sidewalk, purposefully running his car up against trees and mailboxes to try to get the courier off, screaming the whole way. Eventually, he succeeded. But the courier got bashed to death in the process. Possibly driven over. Guess all those wonderfully gory details will come out in the trial.

But it gets better!

Michael Bryant was the attorney general for Ontario. I believe that title means pretty much the same in most places; he was the legal bigwig of Ontario.

Also, the courier had been drinking. A lot. In fact, he had had a long history of unhappy addiction, and had about an hour earlier been stopped by police for trying to enter into a former girlfriend’s place wasted. Perhaps to visit with one of his kids?

The biker had been sober for about eight days, but the day of the incident, well, let’s just say he had indulged. The police are taking flak for telling him to go home from his girlfriend’s instead of letting him to stay. He shouldn’t have been sent home by the cops to ride drunk, they’re saying. Yeah, I say; he should’ve been walking his bike home. And in retrospect, the cops had the situation pegged; not a good time for a family visit.

Anyway, the whole thing quickly turned into a two-ring circus with all sorts of people sticking their causes to the event:

This morning, bikers got together in the spot where the courier died and staged a demonstration. Or protest. Or something. Some of them shouted out “murderer”, referring to Bryant, but made some strange remarks in a quieter voice (I was within earshot), “Yeah, if murderer means crusher of dreams, you back-peddling son of a bitch.” And so forth.

How come that kind of thing never makes the evening news? Ah, but that’s okay. I don’t think we should give the gathering too much credence. Most of the messages of condolence stuck to the spot mentioned, in one form or another, how this death was a just another demonstration of Toronto’s anti-bike streets. There was also plenty of promotion for United Messengers‘ Bloor bike lanes campaign. Guess they figured, if that bandwagon’s coming, might as well hang off the back:

So if the purpose of the gathering was to remind us about bike safety, I’d say absolutely! We could probably start by educating some of the bikers, huh?

I did an impromptu tally of helmets on cyclists for about six walking city blocks (major intersections). I counted only cyclists who were riding and on the road. Out of a total of 263 bikers, only about 45% were wearing helmets. I would like to do a follow-up study on how many also have earphones stuck in/on their ears. And coast through intersections on reds without a peek to either side.

I wouldn’t go so far as to totally let drivers off the hook either, but their infractions haven’t been as audacious as some of the stunts I’ve seen bikers pull. The only attempt at an explanation I’ve heard so far is, “We’re more vulnerable.” Umm … is that it? That’s why you don’t have to obey the rules of the road? Because you’re more vulnerable? Okay. Yeah.

I’ve been known to go out without my helmet now and again. Sometimes I also leave behind my lunch and name tag, the one that people can use to help me find my home again. But I usually get back from my walk okay because I always look both ways before I cross the street. There still seem to be so many bikers out there on whom this lesson is lost.

Oh, and the lesson about not getting pissed out of your gourd and picking a fight with a moving vehicle. Also an important lesson.

Dear reader, it’s not been easy trudging through the trenches today.

I was trying to avoid the roadside carnage by keeping the camera lens pointed upward, but I was met with an umbrella in the face when I attempted a snap of a film shoot on Queen Street west. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t raining horizontally wherever I chose to stand. I considered that maybe he was trying to hide his face, but guess what?

That’s the umbrella guy looking straight at us. Obviously not camera shy; probably just fiercely protective of the set; which was actually indoors. In fact, I have no idea why he gave me the facial parasol. Maybe he’s just angry because of the unforgiving rod that’s up his ass.

So to drive home my point, I crossed the street and took the photo. Zoom lens; they just don’t make umbrellas big enough. Plus, when I finally saw the photo, there was really nothing going on behind him. Not like this:

Merry Strikemas!

Strangely, no one would have stopped me if I had chosen to desecrate this unique war memorial. The “snow” looked a lot more convincing if you were approaching it from down the street. Even more strangely, the stuff piled up against the sides of buildings was real snow (cold and making a big puddle).

Umbrella guy’s motives and the reasoning behind using real snow in the middle of July caused me greatly disorienting confusion. I think this is what veterans describe as shell shock. I stumbled about for a while until the gentle pitter pat of rain on my forehead snapped me back to reality.

My mission to ignore trash was succeeding (mostly), but not as I had imagined.

I suddenly found myself in front of what used to be a convenience store, now lined with young people and a quick banner job around the front advertising the new Harry Potter movie. Everyone was there to meet Tom Felton. The fans seemed to be as old and uncomfortable as the actors in the film (what’re they, like, 30 now?).

Then, remembering my own boyhood love for thumbing through curried library books, I chided myself for being too harsh; I’m sure these gangly teens have a fond childhood connection to their Wiccan mistress. But I don’t remember them guzzling Red Bull at Hogwarts — or was that in one of the newer novels (newer than the first ten pages of the first one)?

A picture as confused as I was.

The rain was now coming down harder and, as I don’t much care for Potter and his kind, I decided to move. By the time I got to city hall, the sun had broken through the clouds and was shining down on a very orderly and polite Iranian election demonstration.

I spoke to one of the gentlemen holding a placard and we swapped war stories. I assured him that he had my support and he in turn wished me luck on the rest of my journey.

The encounter left me calm and peaceful. I strolled home slowly in the bright sunshine feeling lucky to be alive. Things could have gone so much worse; that umbrella could’ve gone right in my eye; all sorts of bad stuff.

Maybe it was General Miller’s inspirational, uplifting words running through my mind that got me through it:

“Get your donut-eatin’ asses back to work in the next five minutes or I will personally come down there and kick them out of the picket line myself you sonsabitches!”

The minority Tamil population of Sri Lanka is arguably the oldest of the island’s groups and, therefore, probably has the best claim to independence in the country these days. Unfortunately, they are also the minority in a land that was quickly populated by immigrants from the Indian mainland. Tamil leaders signed away some of the rights of their people back when talks between them and the Sinhalese (Sri Lanka’s current majority) leadership were still peaceful, but it’s hard to justify the treatment they’ve received in what is essentially their own country. The word “racism” is used quite often, if you need an idea of what I’m talking about.

Given these things and the clear danger to Sri Lanka’s civilian  Tamil population in the last remaining stronghold of the rebel Tigers army, I sincerely hope that the situation is resolved immediately, that media is allowed into the region, and help reaches the people in the path of the Sinhalese war machine right away. So far, the Tamil people have nothing but my sympathy and support.

Alas, the vast majority of the people who were demonstrating this morning  in front of the US embassy not only do not get my support, they get the thumb-behind-the-upper-teeth gesture. If there was a counter-demonstration, I’d wave a placard.

Here’s why:

Those flags that they’re flying are Tamil Tiger flags. The chants that they’re chanting are in support of the Tigers. This is not a pro-Tamil/pro-peace rally, this is a gathering of  people supporting a terrorist group. And it’s not just the Canadian government’s bumbling bureaucracy that thinks so; numerous other governments, human rights groups, and NGOs don’t think too highly of the Tigers either. I’m talking things like murder, abduction, extortion, and use of child soldiers. They’re even widely renowned for coming up with the idea for modern suicide bombings.

Still, it’s not a far leap to see why the Tamil people feel that the Tigers are their liberators. Who else stood up for them in their time of need? The situation isn’t too dissimilar to that between Israel and Palestine with the Tigers playing the role of Hamas. Most Tamil civilians are stuck between them and the Sinhalese army in pretty much the same way.

The recent large exodus of civilians (about 150,000), from the region when the Sri Lankan army moved in suggests, quite heavily, that the population was being used as human shields. They weren’t sticking around to support the Tigers, they were being forced to stay where they were. Looking at the Tigers’ track record, this is not a surprise. We even felt their tender caress here in Toronto in their donation campaign.

So why are we being asked to support them? Why are their flags flying all throughout the demonstration?

The Tamils gathered on University Avenue this morning (and in greater numbers in the afternoon) were, literally, marching under a banner that directly espouses and supports violence, even down to the imagery used on the flag — two rifles with bayonets crossed in battle behind a charging tiger. Heavens!

The Tigers still have their claws in but there’s not much left to grip onto. At this time, there are still about 50,000 people inside the little north-eastern bit of Sri Lanka; I recall reading stories about tent cities. It can’t last much longer, and it shouldn’t have lasted this long.

I’m sure the Sri Lankan community here at home wants this thing to end as swiftly and sanely as possible. The Tigers aren’t the route to that solution. Dropping these military goons would make the cause a lot easier to get behind.

And maybe get a nicer flag too; one that doesn’t want to kill everyone in the crowd.