just in time for the end of summer

this new video by exploding motor car, for the acorn, is so summery it hurts. mainly it hurts because it's supposed to be freezing cold next week, so summer is basically over despite the heat waves that punished the city this summer.

besides being a really beautiful video, nobody does puppets like these people!

it's about time

seriously, the recent admissions on the parts of the vancouver police and rcmp are not really news to anyone who has been following the picton case in any way at all.

those missing women didn't have to be missing at all, maybe some of them would still be alive today if the police hadn't treated them, the people who were missing them, and the people who knew about (and reported) picton like garbage.

i agree that there needs to be a public inquiry, because what that inquiry says about how the police acted in this case (and how is was a gross and egregious abuse of their position as "police") will have a lot to say about Canadian society as a whole and how most people didn't give a shit about those women until this became a huge "Serial Killer" case.

also, maybe a public inquiry will light a fire under the police's ass to try to find out what happened to all of the other missing women they've been ignoring for years.

why marijuana should be decriminalized

if marijuana were decriminalized or maybe even made legal, people wouldn't be able to do this: use BEARS to guard their pot plots.

for real.

letting a boatload of refugees stay in canada? why wouldn't we?

since when do the "majority of canadians" not want to allow refugees into the country?

harsha walia reminds readers that "there is more reason to be mistrustful of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews than of the migrants."

Their regime has advanced an agenda of corporate bailouts and economic austerity; ballooning military, police and prison budgets; unmitigated resource extraction and environmental destruction; and an immigration policy that is moving toward the repressive Australia and Arizona models of accepting fewer refugees and jailing more asylum seekers and undocumented migrants.

These politicians sell us strange paradoxes - military occupation as liberation, refugees as terrorists."

it always blows my mind when people bang their drum for canada occupying afghanistan but then say that refugees and immigrants shouldn't be allowed into the country. but then, of course they do that. occupations like those in afghanistan reaffirm the military might and colonial status of canada, the "this is for the women and children" bullshit is just a more convenient banner to carry.

remember refugees?? remember what that means?? refugees don't just go "hey, you know what family? canada looks nice, let's pack up and move there."

no, usually they don't pack and usually it isn't a decision. these people have to leave their country of origin because they can't remain there any longer safely.

sri lanka, for instance, is a country whose government is under investigation for war crimes against tamils. it is a well known fact that tamils are persecuted in sri lanka and atrocities have been documented widely. according to walia's article, canada has accepted more than 90 % of refugee claimants from sri lanka in the past two years.

you know what, canada? we've had a lot of shitty things happen the past few years in this country. mainly because we were stupid enough to allow a conservative government to happen.

let's just calm down and think for a second about the kind of country we really want to be. do we WANT to be australia??? the united states? maybe the people who do want regressive policies like australia and the united states should move to those countries because the rest of us think that turning away a boat of refugees is just gross.

ah, having an opinion makes me uptight and a geek.. how original.

today on facebook someone said that my inception article made me a " geek with a major sci-fi hookup - and a stick stuck up their ass."

they also said that they agree with me about nolan's conception of the human mind being "far too rational/logical"

then they went on to say that i missed the fact that " Ellen Page noticed Di Caprio's emotional issues soon after meeting him, while all his long-time buddies seemed completely oblivious - that one struck me for sure."

actually, reader, i found if sexist that ellen page automatically noticed those issues, considering women are often thrown into taking care of men's (and everyone's) emotional needs.

i think it's sexist that ellen page was supposed to be this brilliant architect, but they made her a caretake of leonardo dicaprio above all.

i just didn't put it in the article because i thought i had griped enough.

said reader wrote: "I just think that it's incredibly easy for someone to critique a movie and make it sound terrible, because it wasn't what they wanted. There are a million different ways and focuses to choose in a movie, and you could conceivably critique every one ever made for some failing or another.

I don't think Inception was bad enough to make such a terrible hoopla over"

true. but then what's the point of even being alive or watching movies? so we can all just silently keep our opinions to ourselves?? what's the fun in that? why make a "hoopla" over anything then? was inception worth making a hoopla over in a hype way?? why not comment on that?

sorry i said i didn't like a movie that you didn't like, but you're entitled to your opinion and i'm entitled to mine. that's the whole point of the internets.

having an argument/debate with someone about something doesn't always have to be seen as insulting. it isn't always trying to cause something bigger. maybe if once in awhile we opened our minds to having more debates, we'd actually learn something?

let's not critique anything from now on.

my new hero

this dude, quit his job in a way that most of us only dream of!

"He got on the intercom, let loose a string of invective, pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a dramatic exit not only from the plane but, one imagines, also his airline career.

On his way out the door, he paused to grab a beer from the beverage cart. Then he ran to the employee parking lot and drove off, the authorities said."

how long did 'inception' feel? oh "about 50 years" long.

the other night, due to my sweet new 'scene' card, i got to see a movie for free. movies in the theatre are a pretty big rip off, and most movies in the theatre suck right now anyway, so i probably wouldn't have gone had it not been for the free ride.

but the free movie was available so we thought we'd go see Inception. i mean, it didn't look great but how bad could it really be? certainly it couldn't be as bad as Hot Tub Time Machine? Or Grown Ups(two of, truly, the worst movies i have ever seen)?

it stars leonardo dicaprio and the guy from 28 days later! ellen page! it's an action movie with an indie star twist! it's directed by christopher nolan(who i suspect owes most of his success to his more literary brother), but i could overlook that. it was supposed to be sci-fi, i like sci-fi. and you can't really go wrong with action, right?

wrong. wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

we found inception so intolerable that we walked out of the movie at the two hour mark, forgetting to take the peanut m&m's with us.

a plot so banal that they needed to use the characters to actually tell the audience what was going on(ex-po-sition), to make it seem more complicated than it was, a scary similarity to the tensions in shutter island(dead wife, guilt, dealing with the trauma in one's subconscious) , no real sci-fi component, a complete lack of character development, boring effects, and two hours of mind numbing NOTHING made inception one of the worst movies i've seen all year.

for real, i didn't even walk out of the re-make of friday the 13th.

so, i don't know, where should i start?

let's start at ellen page. unlike most people, i don't love ellen page. her semi-lesbian-but straight girl thing does nothing for me because i'm not a closeted 15 year old girl(or just a regular 15 year old girl, since being bisexual is now totally cool).

i feel like ellen page's cool, 'kind of feminist' thing is used in films to sneak actual conservative ideas into the movie without people really noticing, and i don't like that. for example: juno. the girl juno is smart and has biting wit! she wears pants under her skirts! she likes MUSIC.

but really, juno the movie just used a cool smart girl to mask what the movie was all about--being pro-life.

did anyone else feel a strange shiver when juno decides to reject abortion because the crazy anti-abortion protester tells her that her baby has fingernails? something not based in fact, at all? something used by anti-abortionists to scare women and girls in real life by forcing them to think of that shit growing in their uterus as a person, a real live grown baby?

OR the movie whip it. whip it really pissed me off. mainly because it used all these tough, cool chicks to sell a movie that sucked. that really, really sucked. the only ellen page movie i really liked was hard candy, for the obvious reasons.

so, ellen page is annoying. also she looks the same in every single movie. i'm pretty sure they used her juno wardrobe in inception. does she have something in her contract stating that she can only wear dark reds and burnt oranges? that she has to wear a triangle scarf in every scene? and that her hair can never change?

so ellen page didn't fit into inception, at all. she doesn't translate into the action genre--which is what inception was. it wasn't sci-fi. it was action/thriller.

for a movie to really be sci-fi it has to do what regular movies don't --satisfy your inner geek. your inner geek is sitting on the edge of it's seat, clapping it's hands at the end of a good sci-fi. your inner geek is stimulated and thinking, and making connections with the rest of the sci-fi world.

during inception my inner geek was pushing its glasses up its nose, frowning at the screen, arms crossed yelling "where is the science!!! where is the philosophy!!!" my inner geek, spoiled once by the matrix, was mad at me for taking it to inception.

so on to the the matrix comparison.

half the people who have seen inception say that they didn't hear it was like the matrix and so they didn't expect anything of the movie. the other half say they heard it was the 'new' matrix, and had some expectations.

i am of the latter group, and so i was a bit dubious about the movie to begin with. i love the matrix. i love the matrix so much that i took a class on it once. a CLASS.

the matrix was a rare film in that it satisfied pretty much everyone's geek. the matrix drew on so much philosophy and science that it kept you thinking throughout the entire movie and beyond. hyperreality, simulacra, simulation, humanism, post humanism, anti-capitalism, revolution. baudrillard, derrida, marx, jameson, gibson . all of the ideas could be traced right back to their real world origin which made the matrix more than just a summer blockbuster. the matrix had solid footing in the culture that it was representing. the same can't be said about inception.

whether or not it's fair to compare any movie to the matrix, in this case the matrix comparison is important in highlighting the thing i disliked most of all about inception: it is a total slave to capitalism, in every way shape and form.

even in most mainstream movies there is a suspicion or a distaste for the corporate. corporations are usually run by the most corrupt and are usually brought down in the most spectacular ways. honestly, i don't even really remember the last time i saw a movie that didn't question how the corporation functioned in its plot.

the group of extractors works for corporations, and while they might explain in one line that this isn't always what extractors did, otherwise there are no moral qualms about being beholden to corporate power.

look at the ellen page character. what is her motivation for giving up her mind to corporate espionage? to ruining someone's life? well a) they don't motivate her in any way nor do they reveal her motivation to the audience in any way, and b) we're not meant to question doing things for the corporation any more.

in the matrix, "our use of the new technologies is not the indoctrination necessary to creating the consumers of late capitalism, whose consumption of commodified information fuels the global economy. rather, our utilization of the technologies is our pathway to freedom."

in inception, there is no liberation or freedom--there isn't even really a struggle for it. there is only self-interest and the feeling that the only way of getting anything done anymore is through the corporation. this is how life is now, even in "sci-fi."

in the new york times review, A.O Scott wrote that while "there is a lot to see in inception, there is nothing that counts as genuine vision. Mr. Nolan's idea of the mind is too literal, too logical, too rule-bound to allow the full measure of madness."

Scott also comments on how the majority of debate about the greatness vs no greatness of inception happened before the movie even screened.

ultimately, this is the problem with inception and movies in general right now.
based on hype people fork out lots of money to sit in a theatre with the expectation that what they're seeing has some kind of value. unfortunately, because people have to justify spending their money and time on a film i think we become more and more likely to try to find things that we liked about it even if there was nothing worth our time or money.

david edelstein wrote that "the movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself" and i think he's right. if we really think about it, what is left in the mainstream film industry but hype?

the whole point of seeing movies is to talk about them. who liked what, why they liked it, why they hated it. if you aren't arguing about a movie after you see it then maybe it wasn't worth seeing. so at least inception gave me something to talk about the past few days and i at least didn't have to pay to see it. but at the same time, should big directors like nolan be able to hype their movies up, release utter garbage, and get by on the merits of debate??

all i know is that peanut M&Ms are my favorite movie treat, and when i left inception at the two hour mark there was at least half a bag of those delicious little things left... and that's enough reason for me to shake my fist at the film.

swimming with sharks, on bikes. sharks on bikes.

how the hell are people voting for rob ford??

in this video, he talks about why he can't support bike lanes because cars are like sharks and people swimming with sharks deserve to die.

for real. he said that. here's the proof:




rob ford is not only spouting misinformation about bike lanes, but he's also doing a grave injustice to the sharks of the world.

"i compare it to swimming with the sharks, eventually you're going to get bit."

not so, ford, not so. haven't you ever seen sharkwater?? sharks are hugely misunderstood and vilified creature--they aren't just vicious man hunters and some people swim in the ocean their entire lives and never get a shark bite. why? because sharks aren't just out for a bite of human leg, they don't like human flesh so much and when a shark "attack" does occur it's often because humans resemble seals from below. big, juicy seals.

the same can't be said for cyclists in toronto. cars aren't sharks, and cyclists don't resemble their main source of food.

also, sharks share the ocean with countless other sea creatures. sharks regularly swim in close proximity to fish and other marine life without eating them--in fact, sharks have relationships with other creatures, because they all depend upon one another to help sustain the diversity that keeps the oceans thriving.

there are rules in the oceans, and sharks follow them. rules like "don't eat the fish that nibbles the parasites from your skin, because then your parasites will get worse" or "follow that current, because that's where your food is".

there are also rules of the road and in, you know, society. rules like "stop at that red light" or "don't roll through that stop sign". these rules are in place because cars are big and heavy, and human error(or mechanical errors) can lead to loss of life, and chaos.

rob ford says he feels really bad when cyclists get killed or hurt, but really it's their own fault for swimming with the sharks. what rob ford seems to be forgetting is that accidents involving cars and cyclists are (some of the time) caused by drivers of cars, or the shark.

so when i got hit, on my bike, by a hummer it was my own fault? my own fault that the hummer dude rolled through a stop out of a parking lot? didn't watch where he was going? well that's just stupid. what about pedestrians getting hit by cars? is it their fault too? for not driving?

people rode bikes before they rode cars, didn't then? so if we were going to follow the shark logic(which is shaky logic at best) the bike is really the shark, because the shark came before the person...

i don't know, but making a generalized statement about deserving death seems a little bit weird to me, and crazy. i've had my fair share of crazy these days, so i want to be as far away from rob ford when he's driving as possible.

rob ford for mayor?? if that happens i'm hopping on my bike and all my safety gear and driving my ass out of the creepy city.

hold on a second.

i'm sorry, but how is a president allowed to state their personal position on a polarizing issue and then think that it doesn't influence public opinion or legal battles?

white house advisor david axelrod told MSNBC that "The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control."

axelrod went on to say that president obama has always opposed prop 8 because "he felt it was divisive, he felt that it was mean spirited."

um, it isn't "mean spirited" to decide to take away someone's basic human right to a social institution... it's evil. as the president of the united states, doesn't obama have some kind of (at least) surface level responsibility to ensure that the "majority" of people don't decide to take away other people's rights? or, in this case, that right wing fundamentalists don't hijack a referendum?

and how does obama support "equality" for gays and lesbians while simultaneously opposing the right to marry the person they love? it just doesn't make sense, at all.

i've always had a problem with obama, and there's always something new to add to the pile. you can't just pretend to be progressive to get voted in. you can't just wave "yes we can" in people's faces and then be like "naaaaaaah" afterwards.

you can't put a motherfucking PRIDE RAINBOW on your official campaign buttons and not support gay marriage. you just can't. it just ain't right.

supporting same sex marriage shouldn't be something that you aren't into. if you want to discuss the ideology of marriage or all of the nuances of gay rights and marriage that's cool, but same sex marriage is a RIGHT and the president of the united states of american should not be opposed to basic human rights.

now, we party.

how exciting is this? how much does this renew your faith in humanity a little bit?

california judge REJECTS same sex marriage ban

the judge, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, rule that the ban was unconstitutional despite being decided by voters.

i bet judge walker is all smiles today, he's a hero!!!!

yess.....

gross.

maybe i'm being over sensitive, but i think this is just wrong....

end of history: roadkill beer.

it's real!!!

Conservatives to repeal metric system

in response to the conservatives latest move, which we consider to be pure genius, hans has decided that it's time to start reporting the real news.

meet the first installment of PNN- Pamphleteers News Network(now all we need is a logo and some catchy intro music):

Harper government announces plans to repeal mandatory use of metric system

Hans R.

Hot on the heels of the controversy surrounding government’s decision to end mandatory reporting of the census long-form, federal Conservatives have announced plans to introduce legislation that will end mandatory use of the metric system.

Deputy Minister of Industry Tony Spumante rebuffed criticisms that repealing the metric system would lead to confusion and reduce the government’s ability to rely on evidence-based policy-making. “We feel this represents a balanced, made-in-Canada solution,” he said in a press conference on Friday. “We’ve received numerous complaints from Canadians who don’t like the metric system. Other people like it. Our American partners would prefer us to switch to miles and pounds. In order to fairly represent the diversity of Canadian public opinion, we feel the reasonable middle-of-the-road solution is simply to repeal mandatory use of metric and leave it up to the individual to use whatever measurement system they want.”

He noted the new legislation was in line with other ongoing Conservative initiatives to promote deregulation in government policy. “Canada’s New Government has deregulated health and safety standards, labour standards, the telecommunications industry, and now measurement,” he declared proudly. “Research indicates deregulation is the best way to promote industrial growth.”
He also emphasized that it would remain up to the individual to use whichever system they preferred. “If a hard-working Canadian wants to measure their success in miles and pounds, who are we to intrude in their private lives and dash their dreams?” he went on. “That sort of liberal, socialist rhetoric simply doesn’t resonate with the majority of Canadians. The era of big government is over.”

Reaction from the business community was mixed but cautiously optimistic. While some industry associations expressed concern that eliminating the metric system could lead to confusion and disarray, particularly in international trade, others saw it as opening new opportunities. “We think there’s potential, particularly in online sales,” said Biff Cardigan, spokesperson for the Industrial Manufacturers’ Association of Canada. “After all, if a customer purchases 20 units of hairspray online, but it’s up to the vendor to decide what unit of measurement to send them 20 of...we think there’s distinct potential for maximizing the profit margins of Canadian companies.”

The legislation will be introduced in the fall session of Parliament.

the world=the worst.

a few reason why the world is the worst today:

fourth horse dies at calgary stampede-national post

hip, hip hooray for the white G.G - toronto sun

university of toronto plans to decimate languages, humanities programs - rabble.ca

oil leaks into the st. lawrence - the toronto star

gaza bound ship ordered to change course- cbc

and, finally

oprah movie in the works- cbc

people who live in the beaches might be kind of crazy.

back in may i read about these people in the beaches whose neighbour was launching a kind of war against them. basically the story goes like this: a couple with some kids have their dream home, the wife gets very sick-can no longer live in dream house, they find a dream property where they can build an accessible home that accomodates sick wife's needs, they are happy. enter crotchety old neighbour lady: she is not happy, and she complains about the plans to build an accessible dream home to accomodate everyone's needs, she makes this couple's life very difficult.

at first i assumed it was just this one crazy lady in the beaches who was selfish and felt like it would end the world if the beaches changed at all.

but then i read this story in the star: "rental property splits neighborhood"

guess which neighbourhood? the beaches!!!

"Next door is 48-year-old Stuart Defreitas, who spent $400,000 transforming his home into a three-storey “dream house,” one he no longer feels comfortable in.

“I would love to enjoy my house but I absolutely do not enjoy it,” Defreitas said. “I’m harassed to the point where I don’t want to live in my house.”

Defreitas said his neighbour is constantly scrutinizing him and reporting every perceived bylaw infraction to the city. But deSousa says he has been forced to police his neighbour because he is the one feeling harassed — not by Defreitas directly but by the presence of the many people who rent out his five-bedroom home."

this guy is pissed because defreitas rents out his own home to short term vacationers--pretty standard practise, actually.

the neighbour defends some of his(creepy) actions by stating:

his neighbour’s house has become a “turn-key operation,” attracting “all sorts of transients” that bring traffic and noise to their quiet, family-oriented neighbourhood.

“What happens if my kids are in some way or another assaulted by someone who lives next door?” deSousa asks, adding he has reached a point of “desperation.”

“We are policing what is going on next door. We don’t want to be living next to that.”

he photographs the property and the tenants, and makes what his neighbour claims are bogus complaints to the city about noise and numbers of people.

seriously?? torontonians are notoriously weird and anal, but the beaches people? they're just plain crazy.

Activist Teacher: They’re not just pigs

a great, great article by activist teacher about why an inquiry into the police action at the G20 is necessary.

"Let us demand (publicly pressure) that the official public inquiry and legal disclosures include an investigation into police training and tactics regarding the profiling of activists and the intimidation protocols for demonstrators.

Of course the cops are people too. That’s why it’s not a waste of time to be straight up with them and to face them down and to expose them and to justly punish them and their bosses. They’re not just pigs."

read the entire article here:

Activist Teacher: They’re not just pigs

fuck rob ford. for real, fuck that guy.

after what the toronto star called an "emotional debate", the toronto city council has voted 36-0 to "commend" chief of police blair and the toronto police for their job at the G20.

rob ford, a city councillor and mayoral candidate, said that no review of police actions were necessary because the police were actually "too nice", "more than polite", and "more than accomodating."

yes, i'm sure that John Pruyn would agree. he's the 57 year older man who was at queen's park participating in a safe-zone peaceful protest with his daughter when toronto police decided to arrest them both. when pruyn couldn't get up fast enough for them--due to his prosthetic leg--they did him a favour and removed it for him.

the police tore this guy's leg off and ordered him to "hop" to the police paddy wagon. pruyn also claims that the police gave him "kicks and little punches" telling him he was resisting arrest and he had a weapon. they then took him to one of their little homemade jails where they tossed him in a mesh cage with a cement floor and left him there, for another 27 hours. unable to make a phone call or find out where his 25 year old daughter was taken, pruyn describes the conditions of his prison here.

so yeah, rob ford, i guess the police were way too nice to this peaceful protester. this father, husband, who works for revenue canada. clearly this government employee with one prosthetic leg was asking to be humiliated, brutalized, and have his rights withheld. they probably should have just gone michael bryant on the protesters and driven through the city, plowing them down one by one.

how embarrassing for toronto. to have an entire city council justify such blatant abuse of police power is not just cowardly but completely and totally incomprehensible. and to think, some of these fuckers want to be mayor of this city.

we should've known!

about this time last year, i posted this blog about conservative tourism ministry diane ablonczy being "disciplined" for contributing $400'000.oo to to toronto pride at the behest of MP brad trost.

fast forward one year and we have threats to cut pride funding, then actual pride funding cuts, a huge pride controversy, and a pride victory.

here's the post from last year, as a reminder that funding cuts don't come out of nowhere and we have to be more vigilant.


"an interesting choice of words."


"PRIDE GRANT A POKE IN THE EYE"

apparently a conservative mp from saskatchewan, brad trost, got all pissy this week because the conservatives supported pride week at a federal level.

tourism ministry diane ablonczy has been "disciplined" for contributing $400'000.oo to to toronto pride.

according to trost, "the pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand the the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in toronto was not government policy, was not supported by... a large majority of the mp's."1

bitch, please.

bitch, PLEASE.

does he even have any clue how much tourism pride week in toronto brings to this country? this isn't a case of toronto reaping all of the benefits, people from all over the world come to canada for pride festivities and this douchebag has the audacity to claim that it shouldn't be supported by the government?!

tracey sandilands, the exec. director of pride toronto pointed out that $397'500.00 of the contribution went towards items such as "improved access for disabled people, infrastructure spending and 'top calibre' entertainment."2

so what is he complaining about? a lot of the gays at pride have families, probably some of them vote conservative even.

and, apparently the toronto pride application was so amazing that the tourism minister insisted on coming to toronto to present the cheque. her appearance "with transvestites" inflamed a lot of tempers apparently.

stephen harper should be thanking his fucking lucky stars that this woman decided to do what she did. toronto pride provides a HUGE stimulus to the city, the province, and the country and it would serve the conservatives well not to come across as such goddamned bigots once in awhile.

i can guarantee that if brad trost spent five minutes with my friend chad he would change his tune pretty quickly, tear off his shirt, rub on some glitter, and have a dance off with a hundred other sweaty, proud men."

how gross is this?

despite having an environmental catastrophe on his hands, obama took some time today to make sure that he isn't on the wrong side of another catastrophe: israel and palestine.

obama met with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu today for a photo op to dispel concerns that the united states and israel are on a break.

just like a marriage, allied nations have to work hard to make sure that their relationship doesn't crumble. so obama and netanyahu scheduled some 'them' time today.

in fact, obama said "“The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable" and went on to warn the palestinians against inciting the israelis.

last straw for this one on obama. after the flotilla atrocity to get together with netanyahu to prove to the world that the united states isn't mad at israel? childish.

committed to peace, obama? well then maybe you should take the peace option on this one and NOT back israel.

toronto: a reassessement

just as i was starting to develop my first ever toronto hate-on, hans stepped in.



"As a Newfoundlander living in Toronto, I spend a lot of time making fun of Torontonians. It’s not just me; making fun of Toronto is widely accepted throughout Canada (and its affiliates) as a bit of a national sport.

Last weekend however I saw a very different side of Toronto, and it’s one that may change forever the way I talk about Torontonians.

We often rant about Torontonians being diffident, blunt, insensitive, loud, demanding, and self-righteous. Normally, pretty non-endearing qualities. But last weekend I saw those same qualities deployed in defense of Canada’s human rights and civil liberties. With the same dogged and self-confident determination they use to defend their spot in the subway lineup or refuse to give up that lone parking space that a dozen other cars are vying for, they refused to give up their civil rights to a police force that didn’t explain itself, didn’t justify itself, and acted as though the law comes in a distant second to the barked order of a masked officer with a gun. Torontonians refused to give in to random searches, and were beaten and tossed into wire cages rather than surrender their rights. They refused to stay off their own streets even when menaced by hundreds of cops – more like soldiers, at this stage – on horseback or with clouds of tear gas rising from further down the road.

It’s hard to think of Torontonians as being heroic, but there actually was something heroic in the way they responded to the havoc being wrought by a billion dollars worth of riot cops let loose on their streets. Many such moments were captured on video and are circulating the Internet: a couple dozen brave souls singing the national anthem and waving Canadian flags as a platoon on horseback charges them down, clubs swinging. Unarmed protestors courageously challenging the vandals who were looting while hundreds of armed cops in body armour stood idly by and cowardly refused to lift a finger to help. Homeowners opening their doors to give refuge to total strangers fleeing down the street, pursued by cops firing teargas and potentially-lethal rubber bullets. Most Canadians are used to seeing such scenes in the movies that get filmed in this city; but this time it was for real and the bullets weren’t blanks.

There was even a palpable difference to the city’s nightlife on Saturday. The weekend nightlife went on, but in bars and clubs around the city, tables of clubgoers sat huddled in small groups around their Blackberrys and iPhones, reading Twitter updates to each other from the heart of the downtown. It was around midnight by the time the riot police descended on the last 300 protestors and bystanders they’d surrounded and trapped for several hours, but thousands of Torontonians were in bars reading aloud to each other the description of the final assaults as narrated in Tweets by TVO’s Steve Paikin. It was a surreal, and very Toronto moment. However much it must have seemed to them at the time, those 300 protestors were not alone in that moment.

Many of the protestors who came out the next day never had any intention of participating in a weekend protest. For many of them, it wasn’t the G8 or the G20 that brought them to the streets. It was their outrage at the police brutality and at seeing their streets transformed into a war zone by a seemingly out of control band of armoured soldiers. It wasn’t political ideology that brought them to those streets, but a sense of collective outrage and – possibly the first time I’d seen it in Toronto – a sense of shared humanity.

A friend of mine who was arrested pointed out that it wasn’t so much courage that led to her arrest, as just being there when the cops started randomly attacking people. And it’s true – many of those arrested and beaten were simply bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong time: people stepping out of their downtown apartments for a cigarette; employees trying to get home from work; transit users left stranded in the middle of the city when the TTC abruptly shut down. Many of them had no intention of being caught in a protest that day. Which makes their behavior all the more dignified and worthy of respect, when compared to the disgraceful and unconscionable brutality of a police force that was supposed to be trained and professional.

Something I realized that weekend is that Torontonians are raised with an almost insatiable need to protest. Not with banners and marches, normally, but protest as a way of indicating disagreement with the status quo is almost second-nature in Toronto. We hear it every day – Torontonians protesting about the streetcar being late, about the grocery prices being too high, about the taxes they pay and the gym not being open on a statutory holiday. It might be closer to grumbling than protesting, but Torontonians are not afraid to let you know when they’re not happy about something. And while we normally find it a bit rude and annoying, last weekend it became something completely different. It became the front-line in the defense of an entire country’s human rights and civil liberties. They were arrested by the hundreds; tear-gassed and beaten by the thousands; but they continued coming out of their homes to defend the streets of their city by the thousands and the tens of thousands. Armed only with their iPhones and their Toronto attitude, they stared down a billion dollars worth of violent intruders in body armour on their streets, and they held the line.

While the police chief parades an increasingly bizarre array of feeble and misleading excuses - which only insult the intelligence of Canadians and the integrity of his profession – and the mayor (curiously fearful of the chief for once) abdicates his responsibility to protect the people of Toronto by refusing to hold an independent public inquiry, they may both find that they have only succeeded in awakening a community consciousness in Toronto – and across Canada - that will prove a far more powerful force than any weapon in the entire billion dollar arsenal of the G20.

And while I now wish more than ever that I was home in Newfoundland, I certainly have a new respect for the Torontonians around me. And I don’t think I’ll ever make fun of them, quite the same way, again."