Meow everyone. i have been working on a rather long article of Occupy Toronto for some weeks now and it is finally ready. Some of you will agree with it, others not , but hey, this written from my perspective as a person who was there, was involved and had some observations and serious concerns about it . It will be posted over several days as it is close to thirty thousand words and numerous images , both my own and images found online. I wish to offer my thanks to my friend EnGine who very kindly offer her editing skills for this series of articles.
The Rise and Fail of Occupy Toronto
For the past twenty plus years, I have had the opportunity to do something very few people ever get to do. I’ve been able to go where I wanted with respect to both employment and hobbies.
I took up photography many years prior to my present activities however; I did nothing concrete with it for years.
Indeed, for years, I didn’t even pick up my camera but my inside desire was strong enough to drive me forward and I began to pursue photography more diligently.
I had never really followed any of the great photographers, as I felt strongly that if I was going to make my mark I was going to do it on my own terms, developing my own style and not emulating the works of others.
Don’t get me wrong, I did see photographers who provided me with the inspiration to create. One photographer in particular really inspired me to shoot whatever felt right.
I never knew his name, never even saw his work, however, he was a very well known personality in Toronto during the late 70’s and 80’s.
This guy was always seen around the Queen Street West area, wearing his trade mark Canada Post uniform. With his long greying hair, full beard and moustache and his ever present Leica range finder camera slung around his neck.
I can only wonder what he shot and what he has seen over his many years but what ever it was, however many years he shot images, my imagination was left to the wonderment of his work.
Another inspiration was Salvador Dali who is of course one of the greatest surrealist artists of all time and my personal favourite. He worked in a variety of mediums.
Over the years, I began to develop my own taste and style. My work has a definite Gothic tone. I tend to use dark, heavily saturated shadowing, lots of reds and black, replete with all the usual Gothic trimmings.
Sometimes, I throw in car here, a motorcycle there to mix things up. Other times it’s the classic castle with Gothic garbed figures thrown in and voilà, something that resembles art magically evolved.
Since, one can only do so much with a single theme I realized I needed to broaden my subject matter. I had to find more… shoot it and then create it.
While on that evolutionary journey, I realized that I was moving in a new direction with my work. I shot anything and everything where ever I went and discovered that I was quite good at shooting “as it happens” events.
The above image is from the famous Empress Hotel fire about three years ago
The above photograph is from the Eaton Center shooting as it happened
The above photograph is from a shooting investigation over the Caribana weekend
Police calls, fires, EMS, in the moment situations all seemed to fall in my direction. Of course, being in the down town core on a daily basis, there was never a shortage of things to shoot.
One of the other things I spent a great deal of my time doing was working as an activist. I focused on changes needed for persons with disabilities and their accessibility issues.
I reached a respectable level of success doing this with some notable accomplishments that I am very proud of.
However, this story is not about my past accomplishments as an activist but rather a story about the means and way’s for making change now. It’s a story about how they are made, and also how NOT to make them.
There is a long history of activism in Toronto and as an offshoot, the protest movement / community over the last few years.
I will be mainly concentrating on the events from the 2010 G20 summit here in Toronto to the present day. Since there has been a huge shift in the way protests are being conducted now I’ll concentrate on how activism has been affected as a result of the occurrences of that one G20 summit.
The G20 summit did, however, help promote a new form of media now referred to as Independent Media. Today’s technology can afford anyone the opportunity to report on current events with ease and little expense which has opened up a whole new avenue of reporting.
The photographer now has wider avenues to pursue. The videographer has a new venture from which to produce real time news with an independent point of view and it was a blogger’s heaven.
Everyone had access to a camera. Either, a simple cell phone camera or higher grade equipment and for those with money to spare, top of the line professional grade equipment. Regardless of the equipment, news was about to become world wide, instant and hopefully, unbiased.
There were several good independent journalists that evolved from the protest movements across Canada.
Lawrence McCurry is a well-known and highly reputable, independent journalist based in Toronto. He is also an independent film maker and blogger who exposed many of the myths of 9/11 and the G20.
Ryan Elson from We Are Change Victoria is a tireless researcher renowned for exposing many of the extreme left wing infiltrators in the West Coast protest movements.
Greg Renouf is an internationally renowned blogger and independent journalist. His in depth exposes on one of Canada’s major aboriginal issues; the residential school travesty, helped uncover the fraudulent behaviour perpetrated on them by specific con artists posing as indigenous activists.
Greg has successfully advocated for the rights of children living with autism and has exposed the Anarchist and Blac Bloc actions in both the B.C. Olympics as well as the Occupy movements in Vancouver, Victoria and Toronto.
Fraulein Suzy Divine is an exceptional researcher and a personal friend. Her focused research and studies on mind control and manipulation techniques helped identify the tactics used by the Occupy movement. She was integral in discovering the links to social engineering groups such as OTPOR and Common Purpose among others.
Indeed, independent media was the catalyst that began the process of exposing many of the covert sub groups working within the activist movements for ill aims, an exposure that those revealed wish they could escape from.
The next article will focus on some of the main players involved ….. stay tuned ……….