Thousands of Canadians take to streets to mark Earth Day
In Montreal they gathered by the tens of thousands for a peaceful march to mark the event. In Windsor, Ont., they planted trees and cleaned a cherished park while in Vancouver they held a parade with the intent to send a clear signal. From coast to coast Canadians came together to mark Earth Day in a variety of ways, in events that sometimes sought to send clear messages to politicians.
A crowd of some 250,000 people inched its way through downtown Montreal and onto Mount Royal Sunday afternoon in what was Quebec’s largestever Earth Day march.
Capping a week of raucous student demonstrations, Sunday’s event was a peaceful, family-oriented rally that drew activists from around the province, who had come with a variety of complaints about the federal and provincial governments’ handling of environmental issues.
They waved Quebec flags, carried banners that read “La terre n’est pas a vendre” (the Earth is not for sale) and “Harper = dictateur” and blasted Quebec Premier Jean Charest for his Plan Nord strategy for oil and gas exploration in the North. Plenty of Montreal families joined the rally as well; parents with little children in strollers who stopped to eat picnic lunches, and senior citizens who came by the busload. Many said they had never before attended an Earth Day event.
Montreal police don’t provide official crowd estimates, but individual officers said they thought numbers had topped 200,000. Earth Day organizers themselves were stunned, pinning the number of participants at 250,000 or 300,000, given that for a solid 2-1/2 hours marchers inched their way toward Jeanne Mance Park, where they formed a massive “human tree” to be photographed from above. For hours, downtown streets remained closed to traffic and there were lineups to get into the subway.
In Vancouver opposition to the expansion of oil giant Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline reached a fever pitch Sunday as thousands of people jammed Commercial Drive to rally for Earth Day.
The public gathering was the first of its kind since the April 12 announcement that the Texas-based company will seek to more than double the amount of crude oil that flows from Alberta to Burnaby, B.C., to 850,000 barrels a day from the present 300,000.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has said he is firmly against the proposed expan- sion. On Sunday, he told the crowd Vancouver’s mandate to become the world’s greenest city does not fit with a “massive expansion” of oil exports in Vancouver.
Meanwhile at Windsor’s Black Oak Heritage Park, a team of volunteers spent the weekend cleaning four Dumpsters worth of garbage carelessly strewn through the park.