37 Canadian cities protest war

From St. John’s in Newfoundland to Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, and in major cities like Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver, thousands of Canadians and some U.S. service members seeking asylum in Canada marched Oct. 28 to protest Canada’s 2,500 troops now fighting around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

In Calgary, the major city in Alberta and home province of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, protesters carried signs condemning Harper and U.S. President George W. Bush as warmongers.

In Montreal, under a hard rain, about 500 people marched to the U.S. consulate. Athena Skalko, 66, told a reporter for the Montreal Gazette: “I don’t like it when Canadian people kill for no reason, for big business. I don’t like it.”

In Halifax, Andria Hill-Lehr said, “Right now I am ashamed of wearing a Canadian flag on my back.” Her 22-year-old son has enlisted and is scheduled to go to Afghanistan in November. She continued, “I want to send an absolutely clear message: There is a clear divide between love and support for our family members serving, but it is not synonymous with support for a political agenda.”

The leader of the New Democratic Party, which is a center-left party in the Canadian parliament, marched in Toronto. He gave a TV interview in which he said that Canada’s goals in Afghanistan are not being achieved, and Ottawa is spending much more on the war effort than on reconstruction.

In Ottawa, Canada’s capital, marchers chanted, “Health care, daycare, anything but warfare.”

Organizers felt that the cold and rainy weather, with the first snow in some areas, kept the numbers down.

The Collectif Échec à la guerre; the Canadian Peace Alliance; the Canadian Labor Congress, the Canadian equivalent of the AFL-CIO; and the Canadian Islamic Congress all endorsed and organized for the demonstrations.

Email: gdunkel@workers.org