Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to Montreal's streets on August 22 for the monthly protest march of Quebec's student movement.
The movement has organised big marches on the 22nd of each month since March of this year.
The march was an impressive display of militancy and determination just 12 days before the September 4 provincial election. Some members of the radical Broad Coalition of the Association for Student Union Solidarity (CLASSE) student association said that 100,000 people took part.
Montreal
In Occupy-style, they are pop-up and pop-out protesters on Montreal's streets.
A jester threw juggling clubs high in the air, a masked face beamed — the sweat of the warm day glistening over her make-up — and the nose of a clown tilting up to figures on stilts, occasionally twisting round in a dance-trot.
An impromptu band shook beans in glass bottles and beat drumsticks, while an accordion played old favourites.
Whistles tried to organise the crowd. Dogs menaced one another, tying themselves up in their leashes as their owners passed by.
The strike of post-secondary students in Quebec has taken a dramatic turn with the May 18 approval by the provincial government of a special law to cancel the school year at strike-bound institutions and outlaw protest activity deemed disruptive of institutions not participating in the strike.
Details of Bill 78 were unveiled the day before and debated in a special, overnight session of Quebec’s National Assembly.
The Fabio Di Celmo Committee for the Five, (CFDCF) of Quebec-Cuba Solidarity, has been organising picket lines in front of the US Consulate in downtown Montreal the first Thursday of every month for more than three years in solidarity with the Cuban Five.
The five are Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez, and Ramón Labanino and Fernando Gonzalez. They were arrested 12 years ago on September 12, sentenced to long prison terms and held in terrible penitentiary conditions.