By Michael Eddy



Hundreds of police advanced as a literal wall up the street, down the street, from all sides, scouring the pavement of the protesters and the passersby alike. My friends and I tried to hang back on some steps and watch the action, but were not spared. The police formed a huge corral with their bodies. They approached slowly and inevitably, their feet shuffling incrementally. They began to beat their batons against their shields in the simplest, most brutal rhythm. The spaces closed among the group of protesters, whose number now seemed so tiny; there seemed to be many times the number of police: hundreds closing off streets, forming support walls, growing by the busload. And yet they were getting so close that they became individuals, each with a different face, with its own pattern of sweat beads, noses and mouths, with their own capacity for laughter and smiles. They approached so near that people began to wonder if they intended on crushing us into a little ball; right there in front of the Just For Laughs theatre.

At some uncomfortable point, when bodies had begun to press together, the police stopped. We waited. To entertain myself I tried to find something buried in the serious faces of the riot cops, but found nothing, not even entertainment. A protocol had been put into motion: individuals from inside the ring were being picked out, handcuffed, asked their names and then loaded into buses. It was a very slow process, and I was among the last few to pass out of the ring, which had become progressively smaller as its contents were emptied out.

We were driven to some kind of jail. We ended up without shoe laces in groups of six or seven in small holding cells. There was a wood-topped bench jutting from each side wall and a steel toilet at the end of the cell. The air and all of the surfaces were cold. There were no windows nor any way to tell what time it was and the lights were permanently shedding light through the bars. It is an immediately disorienting place, and sleep is a welcome escape from it. To be able to achieve sleep on the concrete floor under the bench, I used my laceless shoes as a pillow and pulled my arms inside of my shirt. Such small feats of innovation are one of the only interesting things about being in a cell, although I am sure their novelty would wear off fairly quickly.

It had been advised not to talk about the events of the snake march too explicitly, as there were probably informants in the cells. I discretely scrutinized each character in there. Of course, they were all men. They were mostly Quebecois, and one young guy from France. I taught them the rules of the spelling game 'ghost' and we played it in French. We also fashioned a chess set out of a ripped up juice box, scratching crosslines into the wood panelled bench to make a board. Each person was brought to an interview in a tiny chamber in what seemed the middle of the night. A seemingly sympathetic interviewer asked a few questions whose gist I no longer recall, and we were returned to the cell.

At some other point, before or after, a lawyer visited us. He was helpful, but only filling in for the real lawyer. Before leaving, he assured us that we would be out soon, and that the charges would not be serious. Time stretched on, and later on we would find out that an entire day had passed in that small cell. Some momentum seemed to be forming; everyone was moved into larger holding cells. The guards served us oatmeal cookies and quite bad sandwiches, which some people refused to eat. Some hours later, a name was called out. This happened at quite protracted intervals, but gradually the large cell began to clear of bodies. The ones left would howl and bang on the bars, triumphant, each time the gates opened.

When it was my turn I adopted my handcuffs once more and followed the surly guards down some corridors to wait by a door. I was directed with two others to stand just inside of the small courtroom. Our real lawyer, who I was seeing for the first time, did all of the talking. In and out, three at a time. The bail process, managed through proxies and lending, is to this day a matter without conclusion. Nevertheless, we were relieved to descend the stairs to the open air and the street, and the natural light. There was food waiting, and those who hadn't been arrested had been working from outside. As part of the bail conditions, most of the people arrested weren't allowed back downtown, so there was not much else to do. We got on the bus and drove back to Nova Scotia.

Michael Eddy is an artist currently residing in Frankfurt Germany.