Robert Phillips The recent G20 conference in Toronto may indeed have generated some positive results, but for the average resident of the Greater Toronto Area, it’s likely to be a bad memory for many years to come.

This was largely due to the perceived action of police who were assigned to keep order in the streets of the city near where the conference was being held.

The negative impressions will probably last a long time for a Bolton man who found himself confined (along with many others) without charge or even formal notification that they had been placed under arrest.

“It quickly turned from a G20 demonstration to a human rights movement,” commented Robert Phillips.

Phillips, 22, was raised and educated in Bolton, having attended Pope John Paul II School, as well as Robert F. Hall and Humberview Secondary Schools. He’s also seen military service, through the Lorne Scots Light Infantry and the Royal Canadian Regiment.

Phillips was in Toronto for the Saturday and Sunday of the conference weekend. He stressed there was no particular issue or political motivation that attracted him to the activity, although he realized there many topics of interest to those taking part in the demonstrations, including rights of women. And he said there were thousands of people who were opposed to the idea of a central government.

“It was an amazing experience to be down there and hear it all,” he remarked. “I was more or less a concerned citizen with a camera.”

“I wasn’t there to protest or demonstrate,” he added.

What ended up happening was Phillips found himself detained at the intersection of Queen Street and Spadina Avenue for about four hours the Sunday (June 27) in the rain.

Phillips said he spent part of the Saturday (June 26) at Queen’s Park, where a “freespeech” zone had been designated. He said there were a number of motivational addresses, followed by a march through the area streets. He said the police knew the march would be taking place and where it was going.

“It was a very good march,” he said. “There wasn’t an ounce of violence in it.”

Phillips said police on bicycles were guiding the march, adding at intersections there would be police in riot gear a couple of hundred metres to the south, blocking things off.

The march returned to Queen’s Park at about 3 p.m., shortly before the violence started.

“With my camera, I took off running down University (Avenue),” he said.

At the intersection of King and Bay Streets, he said saw three police cars with their doors open and their engines running, and then he saw a small group of people dressed in black. “They began trashing the police cars,” he said.

Phillips reflected this was taking place on probably the most valuable piece of real estate in the country, with the closest police about 50 metres away. “They were unable to stop no more than a dozen vandals, nor did they try,” he commented, adding he saw “every bit of it.”

He said it was a small group surrounded by media who were doing the damage.

“I was running with all the photographers,” he stated, adding a small group of people tried to take his camera and spray paint his lens.

Phillips also said these people did not seem to be organized terrorists. They were young, seeming to be mostly in their late teens or early 20s with small to average builds. Their ranks included both men and women.

He added he was not ready to assert they were members of the Black Bloc. “A small group of vandals who took advantage of a situation is how I saw it,” he commented.

The crowd then started heading north, with vandals smashing windows along the way, with no police resistance.

The throng returned to Queen’s Park, and Phillips said riot police were behind them. A small group of people, wearing bandannas, took off, heading northwest, and “completely left the scene.”

After that, the police started using rubber bullets and tear gas. Phillips said he took some of the tear gas, but added he had previously experienced it as part of his military training, so it didn’t bother him too much. But he also said he was with a group of three other photographers (the three had G20 media badges) who were beaten with clubs as they tried to get away.

“I was leaving the situation as fast as I could, hands in the air,” he said. “We were going in the only direction we possibly could.”

Phillips also said the police kept making charges at people who he said were peacefully demonstrating, singling people out and taking them behind their lines and beating them.

He said he spent Saturday night with his girlfriend in the area of College and Bathurst Streets.

The following day, accompanied by his brother and his girlfriend, they attended a prayer vigil in the middle of the intersection of King and Bay, then a march of upwards of 600 people started making its way to the area of King and Spadina, amid the sounds of chants of the “These are our streets” variety. During the march, he said there were several occasions when the police would block off parts of intersections, leaving the marchers no direction in which to go, other than west.

The group eventually arrived at Queen and Spadina, at which point people sat down in a circle, singing O Canada and holding peace signs.

Shortly after that, the intersection was blocked from the south and west, with a group of riot police who had followed the march blocking their exit to the east. Phillips said many people tried to leave by heading north, but they were met by riot police who were not letting anyone through their lines.

“No one could leave,” he said. “People wanted to leave. There was no resistance, no violence.”

The crowd stuck there included soccer fans who had been in local bars watching World Cup matches, and people who lived above the nearby stores. Phillips said there were women and children there too, in hard, cold rain.

“People were huddling in small groups, shivering uncontrollably,” he said, adding the atmosphere got rather social, as people became friendly as they tried to stay warm and dry.

The only ones who were able to get out were those who walked up to the police with their hands on their heads, and asked to be arrested. That worked for a number of people for a while, but police stopped obliging after a couple of hours.

The people were held for about four hours in the wet and cold before being told that due to a legality, they were being let go, and they were allowed to proceed their own separate ways. He said the officer who made the announcement said they had all been officially under arrest, but had to be let go because of the legal technicality. There was no explanation or apology, and Phillips asserted there had never been any warning prior to their confinement that the police were planning such action.

“We were never once asked to leave,” he declared.

Phillips said he exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses with a number of people he had been huddled with, along with the number of a civil rights lawyer he’s been in contact with.

As for what comes next, Phillips said he wasn’t sure.

“It was a sad weekend for democracy in Canada,” he commented. “For lack of a better term, it really lit a fire under my ass.”

He added he wants to keep talking about what went on. “Where ever you are in the country, you never deserve to have those rights taken away from you,” he observed.