Article content continued

Photo by J.P. Moczulski for Postmedia News

In January, more than 100 academics and former diplomats wrote an open letter to the Chinese president calling for the men’s release. Hicks is the first protester making this demand at the Chinese consulate in Toronto, says a 50-year-old businessman who lives beside the consulate, even though the site often attracts other protesters, including people who stand against China’s treatment of Tibetans and members of the Uighur and Falun Gong minorities.

“I’m kind of perplexed also,” said Brian Gold, a friend of Spavor who wrote an op-ed about the case for iPolitics. “There was sort of an expectation that there might be more follow-up interest,” he said. He read one article urging Canadians to “not forget the Michaels,” he said, “yet that’s what’s happening.”

On Wednesday, Hicks learned to lock his wrist and pump a picket sign. He decided to pace the length of the consulate’s hedge (“I will walk there, and then I will walk back,” he figured). He would not chant — “definitely not” — and would not block any driveways. “That’s verboten,” he explained, having researched his Charter right to peaceful assembly.

He nodded to a mailman, skateboarder and 24-year-old woman who installs furniture for a living. He received honks from three taxis and stares from Uber drivers, dog-walkers and people visiting the consulate deal with their passports and pension cheques.

One pedestrian, Destiny Dobson, a housekeeper, was in a rush to clean a home with her 11-year-old son. She had been following the detention case. “I think if it’s not in Canada, we give it five minutes, and we move on,” she said. “I don’t have a horn, but ‘honk, honk, honk.’”

Hicks will return to the consulate on St. George Street on Thursday morning at noon for a second shift. He hopes he will not have to march alone. “There may not be another person who, I don’t know, sees me with the sign (and says), ‘Look at that old goat. I’m going to go make up a sign and join him,'” he said. “I just don’t know, but I’m going to do it anyway.”