Red Bandana around the neck - check
T shirt with heartfelt sentiments of a locally unpopular nature - check
Surrounded by young people of similar sentiments - check
Feeling ready for anything - check
Toronto bound. Where the G 20 is meeting and where thousands of others were converging this weekend to march and shout and make a stand.
Something different this time.
I was going to a soccer game.
Human Life International. Circa 1992
I'm on the wrong side of the barricade (long story), dressed as a priest (longer story), and the riot squad is beating the sticks on the shields and advancing along the thouroughfare, pushing us all into the narrow alleys of the old banking district. It doesn't look good.
I hustle back to the fence, up and over, and a beefy sort with a well trimmed moustache and a really nifty jogging suit sidles up to me.
"Are you a real priest?"
"Depends, are you a real undercover cop?"
We're on the GO train bright and early Saturday. The seven kids (two ours, five loaners) are having fun, being loud, showing off their coordinated Team Korea T shirts. All the girls have bandanas twined in their hair, and all the boys (self included) look like low rent Willie Nelsons.
Oakville, Clarkson, Port Credit. We call off the stops.
Korea is playing Uruguay. We're off to Koreatown, the Ma'ul, Christie and Bloor, to watch the game, "Be the Reds" and get some lunch and maybe pick up some walnut cakes and madelines.
The QEW is empty or almost as we edge past exhibition.
...and it slowly dawns on me that I have been really really dim these past few days.
Quebec City - Early 80's - "SHAMrock Summit"
In the courtyard of the Chateau Frontenac, the VdeQ and SQ riot boys shove all the reasonable looking Kneedippers and lefties off to the side, leaving the Marxist Leninists in control of the field. Their intentions weren't clarified until moments later: the US TV press arrives en masse. Great pix - all them red banners with boringly earnest quotes from Enver Hoxha.
Stage is set.
Then Windi Earthworm goes and ruins ABC's day.
There might well have been a burning American flag at the heart of the knot of punks and anarchists, I never saw, but the word raced out that a captured US flag was burning, and you could see the flying snow as the US cameracrews beetled their way over for a money shot...Evey well coiffed screen bot thinking EXCLUSIVE confirmation of the designated narrative!!!
And Windi shouts out "No pics today!!!" and a phalanx of mohawks stands in their way.
They were slow to get the full message until the chants started, then they hightailed it out.
Lots of smiles on the few people out and about. The GO station at Union is deep inside the exclusion zone. I really start reviewing what an idiot I have been.
Ya see - I've been ignoring the demos. Marching and marshalling and Civil Disobedience and actions are something I remember from my twenties and thirties, and I'm fifty now.
I knew there was a G 20 conference this weekend. I read the papers. I still don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows... But in my 50's I've compartmentalized my life. Union politics here, work life there, cause work somewhere else, and family life paramount.
My wife had organized this trip. I'm sure she had mentioned the time and the date to me - she always does, and I remember most of the - okay, some of the time. If I had bothered to transfer from short term to long term memory I might just have processed the facts enough to realize that the proposed game watching might coincide with serious direct action in Toronto - but I didn't.
Union Station was empty - some uniformed cops, but not many. A Saturday morning in Toronto masquerading as a sleepy Sunday morning in Saskatoon. We go through the mousemaze of corridors to the TTC station. Streetcars are running.
Down on the subway platform the kids stand too close to the edge (by my books) or suicidally close to the edge (by Melissa's and Paris') and when the train rolls in we all get on. A lonely old guy strikes up a conversation. He asks where we are going, teases my youngest.
We transfer at Spadina for the short jog to Christie. There is a young teenager walking ahead of us. I am walking with Hanna, our oldest. I lean down and say to her - "That's how I want you to walk when you're older - confident and fearless."
The long tunnel acts like a sound chamber, the girl turns around. She flashes a bright smile.
The kid kicks at the lights until they shatter and spark. A cinderblock is embedded in the windshield. His mates try to talk him off of the top of the cop car, the riot squad is approaching. He seems oblivious. In the street a whole line of protestors is sitting down in front of the cops...
Koreatown is damp. There is a steady drizzle. Under the awnings there are red clad people staring glumly out at the rain. Our posse makes an impression. Halmonis remark on how pretty the girls are. There is a traditional Korean drum beating and a huge Tae guk ki waving, but the rain has stopped any walking on Bloor.
We get into the supermarket. Smells of kimchi and all good things. The manager comes up and tells us that there is a special room at the back of the store already set up with a projection TV.
"The show will start in ten minutes," he assures us.
"Do exactly what I say - run when I run, walk when I walk".
My guide was quite serious.
We smell it before we see it. Then we hear it. Fire and smoke and tear gas. Chants and crashes. We come around the corner and there they are. Wall to wall cops, and facing them half a block away, wall to wall students.
They don't look like the cops and protestors I am used to. Both sides are young. The riot squad visors cover faces that have barely begun seeing razors. The Yonsei University protestors are too well groomed to fit with my presuppositions.
There are burning bottles in the ranks of the students. I get ready to run, expecting that there will be incoming... but no, the students start slamming the bottles down - practically at their own feet. They produce a sea of burning gasoline, diesel and plastic.
"Now the police can not charge them - neh?"
This was no protest culture I was used to. My reflexes were out of wack.
"Listen dear, after the game, lets eat and get back on the train as soon as we can."
A brief discussion. We have been seeing more and more unease. The manager's wife spoils our kids with shrimp chips and yogurt
The game finishes with a disappointment, but the kids are still cheerful.
Paris remarks that she could stay in Toronto and not have to speak English ever again. We dither a bit about what kind of lunch to get, but I press and the kids settle on noodles.
Mul Nang Myun, Mandu, Ramyun and half an hour later we are pausing by the bakery for a box of walnut cakes and madelines.
On the subway, off the subway at Union. Police everywhere. There is a man at the entrance to the GO transit area, non descript, plain clothes talking into a microphone.
"Who is he?"
"Undercover cop, dear."
Followed by an explanation of just who undercover police and plainclothes police are and what they do.
I see the familiar lights go on. Hanna has a new area of concentrated interest. She scopes out everyone in the concourse of the GO station for the next half hour.
Leah walks up to a benchful of riot gear toting officers and starts a chat. They ask her about how the game went. I send Hanna over to bring her back, the train is due.
These cops too look young. Not like the riot cop conscripts in Seoul, who were scarcely younger than me at the time. But young. Really young. A generation younger than me now. Its all relative.
Instead of wondering what it would be like to be a riot cop, why they chose to be on that side of the line, why I was on my side, I'm worrying about what their parents must be feeling.
The Secret Service Officer was barely out of his twenties. California tan, California weight suit in the frigid QC air, little widget in the earm sunglasses. Straight from central casting. The black clad mob was jeering him.
He was very professionally looking stonefaced.
I jumped up on a concrete traffic divider and held my arms in the air.
"Brothers! Sisters! Leave this poor man alone. Hey dude! How much do you make? 30 grand?
Stone Face
"And you're what - 28?"
Stone
"And he's what, 70?"
Face.
I turn to the crowd
"In what universe is this fair??"
He'd be around 60 now. I wonder if he remembers me? I wonder if there is still a file on me?
The train is posted, the cops follow us on to the platform.
Maybe twenty or thirty regular passengers, thirty or forty cops, most in riot gear.
Hanna spots a plain clothesman. I am afraid she is excited enough to go up and ask him.
Overhead, Marine One flies low towards the Convention Centre. The girls are thrilled that Obama is so close. My wife looks very pale.
A frightfully young cop walks up to us on our section of the platform.
"Excuse me, has anyone made an announcement to you yet?"
No, no.
"There may be "bad guys" coming in on the train from Oshawa. Please stand back."
There is no more nostalgia, no more identifying with these young alien officers, no more sympathy with whatever people may or may not be on the train. As for trouble makers - this officer is no less a troublemaker as far as I am concerned. My quiet and comfort are damaged, my family outing has warped, my middle aged parental fears just as awakened by his stern authority as any threat on the train.
I am a dad. I am my Dad.
I tell them all to hold hands and stay behind me on the far side of the platform. I assign buddies. I stand between them and the train.
Young officers go on the train to roust some young placad waving protesters.
Elsewhere in town four police cruisers are alight and dozens are injured.
Twenty priveleged men and women meet and hear not a trace of this.
It all comes down to perspective. Its all relative.
We were the last train out of Union that day.