Smaller throngs march through city
Mood mainly festive with few problems
A phone booth, a tiger and a deer’s head were among the imaginative and creative costumes donned by students Thursday as they held yet another parade-like march to try to stop tuition increases.
Students dressed in mardi-grasesque garb fanned out across the city along four colour-coded routes before converging first at Place des Arts and then at the Université du Québec à Montréal building at the corner of Sherbrooke and Jeanne Mance Sts. for a picnic-like gathering.
The turnout was much smaller than last week’s demonstration that drew tens of thousands of people, many bused in from other cities.
Students – and others – are calling on Premier Jean Charest’s government to scrap a plan that would have tuition fees increase by $1,625 over the next five years.
Plumber Sylvain Beaudet blew on a red horn as he marched along the “green” route Thursday, saying he was staging his own personal strike to support the students.
“Education has to be for everyone, not just for the rich but for the poor too,” he said, adding he never attended university.
Céline Mainville and André Taillefer came out in support for students like their son, who is working on an MBA at UQÀM.
They said their son has a 35-houra-week job with the city in order to pay for his education, and still lives at home.
“There’s a lot of waste (in this provincial government) so there is money for education,” Taillefer said.
Marlo Turner Ritchie knows what it’s like to graduate with a large debt load. She’s been struggling to pay down $20,000 in loans since coming out of Mcgill University in 2002 with a liberal arts degree.
“Carrying this kind of debt is suffocating,” said Turner Ritchie. “I’m privileged, educated and have family support and I still feel held back.”
As the few hundred students in the “green” group headed east toward Papineau Ave., people waved from the sidewalks, cheered from balconies and accepted red squares – the symbol of the movement – handed to them by students adorned with tulle, feathers, wild masks and face paint.
There were fewer signs than last week – this march focused more on the costumes.
One sign read “I’m allergic to peanuts; I can’t eat peanut butter all my life.”
Montreal police said a decision by organizers to provide them with the routes helped keep the numbers of arrests and traffic chaos to a minimum.
The “orange” march, themed against police brutality, had a couple of tense moments as protesters faced down police deployed on René Lévesque Blvd. near Station 21 and again outside police headquarters on St. Urbain St.
In both cases, protesters eventually moved away with no violent incidents.
When the march ended, three young women were arrested for mischief for spraying red paint on two police vehicles near headquarters, a city bus and three buildings.
Police followed them throughout the march and arrested them when it ended, to avoid a possible riot, said Montreal police spokesperson Daniel Fortier.
When arrested, the women were changing their clothes on the sidewalk and didn’t put up any resistance, he said.
Things got a bit tense when some protesters threw food at a banner hung at Place des Arts by the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, which represents about 125,000 students. But the festive mood quickly returned once the banner was removed.
Revellers continued partying after the march at UQÀM, burning an effigy of Premier Jean Charest, eating sandwiches and dancing.