Thousands take to the streets on 100th day of strike
MONTREAL - A protest that organizers are describing as the single biggest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history choked the streets of downtown Montreal in the middle of Tuesday’s afternoon rush hour as tens of thousands of demonstrators expressed outrage over a provincial law aimed at containing the very sort of march they staged.
But within three hours of the march’s start, police were reporting that criminal acts were being committed as the windows of at least one bank were smashed.
Ostensibly, Tuesday’s march was to commemorate the 100th day of a strike by Quebec college and university students over the issue of tuition fee increases. But a decision last Friday by the Charest government to pass Bill 78 — emergency legislation requiring protest organizers to provide police with an itinerary of their march eight hours in advance — not only enraged civil libertarians and legal experts, but also seems to have galvanized ordinary Quebecers into marching through the streets of a city that has seen protests staged here nightly for the past seven weeks.
“I didn’t really have a stand when it came to the tuition hikes,” said Montrealer Gilles Marcotte, a 32-year-old office worker who used a vacation day to attend the event. “But when I saw what the law does, not just to students but everybody, I felt I had to do something. This is all going too far.”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Thousands+take+streets+100th+strike/6661077/story.html
CBC radio news has the number at 100,000 to 200,000.
