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Thursday

Today was the big day, I got up early, at 10 a.m., grabbed my tear gas goggles, a pair of devil sticks and my lucky protest respirator, just in case. Emerging from Honoré-Beaugrand Metro station, what I saw just floored me: an unending sea of face paint, red felt, drums and hand-painted signs. I haven’t seen spirits this high since the March for Genocide Awareness, or that time we covered the Syrian consulate with noodles to stop the civil war there or something. I saw groups that haven’t been out on the streets since the End Fiat Currency Now! march. Now I know how Nelson Mandela must have felt when he oversaw the end of Apartheid. But then, right when we’re heading back to the Metro some cab driver is like “Hey, I lost a day’s wages because I couldn’t get into downtown thanks to you guys.” Jeez, it’s like no matter how hard we try, some people just refuse to get the message.

Friday

The treachery of Jean Charest knows no bounds. He rejects all our demands and then insists his government “will never stop talking to students.” Budget crisis, ha! This province is swimming in money. By the way, I’ve got to remind demonstrators next time to reroute the protest away from Saint Denis since we’ve had problems with students getting unicycles and scooters stuck in the potholes. And I really think we should avoid the Jacques Cartier Bridge in the future; the decking started to bend whenever we had more than a few hundred protesters on that thing. Anyway, to celebrate a week well done, some of the organizers and I are going to hit up pitchers night at Zootopia. Afterwards, we can close out the Zinc Lounge over mojitos, hit up a roller-skating party in the west end, head to an underground place in the Plateau and then finish up over pancakes at the Belle Palais. I tried to invite my roommate, Han Li, but he was all like “I’ve got to study for my advanced calculus class.” He’s from Hong Kong or something and I haven’t seen him at a single demonstration this week. Look Han, some things are a bit more important than your precious mechanical engineering degree: We’re trying to create a better world here.

National Post

thopper@nationalpost.com