Victoria Rains on Torch Parade
by C. L. Cook
 A day of unnatural warmth ended with evening rains in British Columbia's capital city Friday, soaking the anxious onlookers waiting for the great Olympic torch bearers. A bring down too to the much ballyhooed 2010 launch in Victoria was 500 determined critics of Vancouver's looming winter games.
They came out for a day of festivities, and to extol the people, reminding of the serious social crises being ignored by a brainless press and bedazzled business elite, even as B.C.'s governments blithely careen their budgets into a death spiral promising an end for the lot of us: a fiscal Oblivion.
The ghoulish, Zombie March theme, carried out by many in high Halloween style, also reminded: That Oblivion is growing; it's spreading like an escaped fish farmed salmon virus, infecting neighbours, colleagues, and families.
Now, the mere hundreds of thousands of lives discounted as a cost of doing business in the current economic model meltdown are coming into millions and your government's coffers when needed will be bare!
It's capital letter scary stuff.
In Centennial Square, events had gone on since early afternoon. I've been to a lot of these kinds of events, and they've all been entirely orderly dissent. Victoria City Police, (now branded, VicPD) cooperation with various proactive citizen demonstrations over the years has been excellent, and I'm not aware of a single instance of political friction between them, but this event was apparently going ahead without the complete cooperation of the City of Victoria, and with the express cooperation of outside police departments; most notably the RCMP.
Close to fifty police were immediately evident in Centennial Square at 4:30pm, milling in groups within the small square, a pair with camera and binoculars on a roof. Notably absent in Centennial and along the march route, a twisting "snake march," (that is: a procession with a vague route, if not an unfocused destination in mind) was that most effective VicPD bicycle patrol, mainstay of marches here for years. But there were horses, and helicopters, and a lot of cars; trucks and cameras too.
As it turned out, the bicycle patrol was a part of the project to deliver unhindered wholly the torch of the Olympiad, staying tight to the runners and ready to defend against "dousers" along the route's multiple hand-off locales. A closer liaising with the march organizers would have reassured police making such a gesture was never planned or intended.
One such photo op., apparently destined for the tony Cook Street village, was derailed when it ran into the alternative torch parade, a nearly city block-long, 500 strong collection of drum-chanting, bell-ringing, devil may care contrarians and assorted others, replete with a nine foot high wood and paint torch, and tailed by an eight-strong mounted police contingent.
Arriving instead of the official fire, the raucous march received a chilly reception from most of the dampened waiting crowd. Though disappointed, Olympics run supporters did receive a show not seen everyday: hundreds in the streets, accompanied by scores of police, horses, helicopters and about a dozen flashing cruisers, SUV's, and trucks.
These, and the usual suspect hangers-on, agents provocateur, slack-jawed, happenstance participants, and chance initiates marched through, and ceased within, major downtown arteries, tying up British Columbia's second largest city in the middle of a global media event in an attempt to make clear the pernicious damage they feel is done the greater community through the agency of these games, and the bills due it will inevitably leave behind.
Though the proactive manifestation managed to P.O. a lot of commuters, and provided the six o'clock lead to local electronic media, the torch marched on to plan B, leaving some soggy torch relay fans disappointed on Cook Street, it failed to slow the momentum moving steadily still towards February's Olympics games in Vancouver.
I'm not aware, as of this writing, of any arrests or incidents between law enforcement and proactive elements, or other participants of the Zombie March, and did not witness any; but I can acknowledge the sensible approach taken by police during the event which, despite efforts by some determined jerks in the crowd to amp up the situation with idiotic foul-mouthery, remained calm and professional.
Ultimately, authentic dissent was aired in the face of uncertainty, (over-the-top intimidation via law enforcement's massive display) and with it the airing of issues deserving more serious attention and resources. So far, there seems there were no more injuries than bruised expectations along the spectator route.
Corporate source, 24H cites B.C. Civil Liberties Association's David Eby, one of a team of a dozen legal observers monitoring police saying;
“Aside from a few isolated examples of police officers being right in the face of some protesters, generally speaking it was low key.”
24H says Eby commented too that many police officers were; "not wearing identification on their uniforms."
[Update: Corporate champion, the Times-Colonist, organ of the insolvent print wing of the Canwest Global conglomerate, published an account of yesterday's march bearing little resemblance to what I experienced from inside it. Low-balling both participant numbers and the police presence, the T-C writers cited a charge made by a police source saying marbles were rolled under the feet of the mounted detachment following the march, suggesting this endangered the horses. I saw no such thing, and the horses looked anything but vulnerable throughout. -ed].
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