Toronto police officers render assistance to a young woman in distress during a protest at the corner of Queen street and Spidina avenue on June 27, 2010 in Toronto, Canada. Hundreds of people, including journalists, were arrested by police in downtown Toronto during the G20 Summit.Jemal Countess/Getty Images
Dear G20 Organizers,
Video-conferencing. Video-conferencing. VIDEO-CONFERENCING.
"Love,"
Globe Tech HQ.
As Canada's largest city prepares to celebrate a full 24 hours without mass detention of random civilians, we've decided to take a look back at an exciting weekend full of stand-offs, road closures and burning police cars. Also, some meeting apparently took place as well, we're told.
Some of the digital highlights from the weekend that Toronto Mayor David Miller wants you to forget.
There were many, many great photos posted over the past few days. This set by Flickr user Neilta is one of our favourites.
Torontoist has some good photos too, including a shot of Toronto's Eternal Flame of Hope - "Eternal" being a relative term.
And here's an amazing photo from Jonas Naimark of the scene Sunday at the intersection of Queen and Spadina, where hundreds of people were detained for almost three hours in what eventually turned into a massive downpour.
One of our favourite blogs, The Big Picture, dedicates a page to the G20 protests But the defining piece of multimedia from the G20 might just be footage of cops politely waiting for demonstrators to finish singing "O Canada" before charging them. Note to future protesters: singing our national anthem buys you about a minute or so head-start - stretch "We stand on guard for theeeee" as long as you possibly can.
Speaking of cops, the folks running the Toronto police Twitter feed deserve a special shout-out. Constable Scott Mills (and possibly others running the account) worked pretty hard to post information about what was going on, during a time when lots of people were very, very angry about what the security forces were doing. The account also re-posted Tweets from regular Torontonians, both in favour of and against what the cops were doing. It takes guts to re-post a message such as: "Less back patting, more responses to queries about excessive police tactics please & thanks, @mayormiller & @torontopolice."
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have federal Industry Minister Tony Clement. Mr. Clement's Twitter feed was a great thing to read if you wanted to pretend the G20 was taking place in Disney World, not Toronto. It all got off to an ominous start on Saturday night, when the MP Tweeted: "Decided against going into the #G20 Security Zone tonight. Consolation: Toy Story 3!"
A few hours later, Mr. Clement posted what is certainly a contender for "Most Unintentionally Ironic Tweet" of 2010: "# Toy Story 3 was great! Although all the damage & mayhem in the Daycare was concerning..." And so it went. Culminating with this post, just after the debacle at Queen and Spadina came to an end: "Wow, what a successful #G8 + #G20! Lots of substance on economic, security & devt issues. I'm proud of Muskoka, Toronto & Canada."
Yeah, that went really great. No complaints. But, you know, just as a fallback, maybe the most powerful nations on Earth could pony up a few bucks for web cams instead next time? We'll come over and install them for free, promise.