My daughter’s first protest started off with a fight.

We were standing in a crowd of vegans on the lawn before Queen’s Park, watching right-wing broadcasting bully Ezra Levant cross-examine a man dressed up like a chicken. (See note below regarding Levant’s response to this column)

Lyla asked what he was doing. I told her that he was belittling him, because Levant doesn’t believe climate change is being caused by humans.

“That’s like calling a blue car yellow,” she responded. “How can he not believe in climate change?”

She picked up her placard — a green car she designed, with sunflowers for headlights — and marched over to ask him why.

I let her go. I haven’t decided if this was a good parenting decision or a bad one. In fact, part of me wondered if bringing Lyla to the Jobs, Justice and Climate march would backfire as well.

When I was a kid, everything my mother pushed me toward repelled me on principle. Maybe Lyla’s inaugural protest would confirm in her mind that protests were futile. Maybe, when she is wrinkled and arthritic-kneed, she will tell her biographer that her climb to the pinnacle of Unfettered Capitalism began right here, at a protest her hippy mother dragged her to.

The reason I’d brought her: Returning from the zoo one day last spring, we got to talk talking about polar bears and climate change and what our family could do to stop it.

“Protests don’t change anything,” she’d replied to my suggestion.

Since then, I’ve been working to convince her otherwise.

We visited the Greenpeace warehouse in Leslieville twice so she could make her placard alongside some other young activists. This was a success. The activists were welcoming and fun, and she loves art. This was a warehouse full of art supplies!

And now we were here at Queen’s Park, surrounded by thousands of people with signs and banners and costumes and drums, and my 9-year-old was preparing to brawl with Levant, arguably the one person in the crowd who would confirm her doubts.

Instead he honed his microphone onto me. Did I own a car? Were my clothes made from synthetics? See, I was a hypocrite! Why did I think I was better than everyone else?

“You’re being mean to my mom,” Lyla whispered before Levant walked away.

The vegans rallied around us.

“We are not perfect,” one told Lyla. “But we’re trying.”

“He’s entitled to his opinions. But we all think otherwise,” another said.

I realized two things. One, I couldn’t control Lyla’s experience at the protest any more than I could control her time at recess. And two, why waste this precious time arguing? You can do that every day on the subway. The whole point of coming here was to be surrounded by like-minded people.

See, we are not the only people worrying in our basement about future floods and fleeing migrants and dying polar bears! There were thousands of others, spilling down Queen’s Park as far we could see. What a hopeful sight.

The power of a protest is not just the result, but also the process.

We marched down the middle of the grand avenue with a giant sea serpent swimming behind us, and Gloria Gaynor belting out “I Will Survive” from speakers attached to the back of one marcher’s bike.

Oh, what fun. We were in a parade!

“Hey, ho, Stephen Harper has got to go,” the women behind us chanted, and Lyla joined in. “This is what democracy looks like.”

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But still she had questions. My kid has a dogged mind.

“Will this protest change something?” she asked, while we were walking down Dundas St. W.

I turned to other parents in the crowd to give her their responses.

One father told her it will convince politicians that climate change is a big issue for the upcoming election. (Good point.) Another, walking with his two sons, said he thought it would encourage other people to get involved — people who are worried but haven’t done anything yet. (Agreed.) Change doesn’t happen swiftly. It builds up, I told her. You never know which crack will unleash the dam.

Parenting is similar.

We got to Allan Gardens, where volunteers offered us water and bananas, and a woman on stilts danced to the drumming of a samba band. An elder with the Chippewa of the Thames First Nations offered his eagle feather fan for Lyla to touch.

The city felt like a small, picturesque village.

We found a patch of grass in the shade, where Lyla did cartwheels and I lay down, listening to Joel Plaskett strum his acoustic guitar and sing.

A magician with a glass ball came by to tell us that a kids’ craft table had been set up.

Could you think of a better way to pass a Sunday with your kid?

“I like protests,” Lyla said, before settling down beside me. I thought of a snapshot of me, at her age, lying beside my mom — who, in the end, I agree with on most things.

Maybe I am doing something right.

Note – July 8, 2015: See Ezra Levant’s response to this column, “Ezra Levant begs to differ.”

Catherine Porter can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca .

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