news The Fourteen Essential G20 Videos



Photo by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.



It’s been days now since the G20 ended, and the details and extent of what actually happened across downtown Toronto over the weekend—on Saturday, along Queen and King and Yonge streets and at Queen’s Park; on Sunday night, at Queen and Spadina; throughout the weekend, at the temporary detention centre on Eastern Avenue; and just about everywhere else—are still unfolding.

It helps, though, that video evidence is everywhere, shot by everyone from aspiring directors to pedestrians with cell phone cameras to professionally trained videographers. Here are the fourteen G20 videos that we’ve been able to find, or that have been sent to us, that we think are the most important ones for everyone in Toronto to see.



WHAT IT’S OF: The police car attacked and set ablaze on Saturday afternoon at King and Bay.

WHO SHOT IT: Ryan Walker/Torontoist.

KEY MOMENT: The whole thing, but especially after 0:34, when Walker gets out into the street.



WHAT IT’S OF: Some of the most dramatic action from Saturday, in a video that is (unlike many of the others included here) more heavily edited.

WHO SHOT IT: Miguel Barbosa of YEAH! Films, who also shot more peaceful protests over the weekend.

KEY MOMENT: 0:42, when black-clad rioters surround and start to attack a police car at Queen and Spadina, with a police officer still inside, and other officers rush in to help.



Click the image above to launch CTV’s video.



WHAT IT’S OF: Looters, Black Bloc–ers, protesters, pedestrians, cyclists, and media making their way up Yonge Street on Saturday, in ten minutes of unedited footage. As others who watched similar looting elsewhere have pointed out, there were no visible police.

WHO SHOT IT: A CTV cameraman.

KEY MOMENT: The whole thing, but especially everything that comes after 2:00.



WHAT IT’S OF: One man tackles a looter, on Yonge south of College on Saturday, about as politely as anyone can. [ : The man who tackles the looter is Roger Reis, a banker who also happens to have a black belt.]

WHO SHOT IT: Writer/director Corey Surge, whom we interviewed about the video on Tuesday. Surge tracked the mob throughout the afternoon.

KEY MOMENT: The whole seventeen second–long thing.



WHAT IT’S OF: Police officers alongside their bikes, advancing on a crowd of people sitting down in the median just south of Queen’s Park, on Saturday.

WHO SHOT IT: YouTube user Jehsin.

KEY MOMENT: 0:50, when the officers, batons at ready, march south into those sitting.



WHAT IT’S OF: Two men doing an impromptu strip-tease in front of a line of police officers on Saturday, as the crowd chants “you’re sexy, you’re cute, take off your riot suit.”

WHO SHOT IT: YouTube user tomekbuga.

KEY MOMENT: All of it. What’s important to glean from it is that the tone of most demonstrations were not anything like those that drew the most attention. Violent protests were still the exception, not the rule, this weekend, as another video from Saturday, by the Toronto Video Activist Collective, or TVAC, demonstrates.



WHAT IT’S OF: Steve Paikin, host of The Agenda on TVO, explaining what he saw first-hand (and tweeted about) on Saturday night at the Novotel Hotel protest.

WHO SHOT IT: The Real News Network.

KEY MOMENT: 6:43, when Paikin describes the apparent assault of Guardian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld by a police officer. Rosenfeld was arrested and charged with “breaching the peace.”



Click the image above to launch Global’s video.



WHAT IT’S OF: Police confronting, and as Global puts it, “fir[ing] blasts,” apparently smoke canisters, into a group outside the temporary detention centre at 629 Eastern Avenue on Sunday morning.

WHO SHOT IT: A Global News videographer.

KEY MOMENT: The whole thing.





WHAT IT’S OF: On Sunday, outside the Eaton Centre, an older man carrying a cart and a small megaphone sings a song he’s written about Toronto (to the tune of “This Land is Your Land”), and gives an interview explaining that he’s trying to create a “calming effect,” and that he served in the Canadian Armed Forces and just wants to make sure that “nothing happens to any one [of Toronto’s citizens].”

WHO SHOT IT: AM640 reporter Adele Newton.

KEY MOMENT: Both videos, in their entirety.



WHAT IT’S OF: In what has become for many in Toronto—and around the world—the iconic moment of the weekend, police charge into an apparently peaceful crowd who had just finished singing “O Canada” at Queen and Spadina on Sunday night.

WHO SHOT IT: Ryan Walker/Torontoist. Two other perspectives on the scene: one from Meghann Millard, who watched from above (a full ten minute–long version is here; a shorter one, showing just the anthem and charge, is here); and another from YouTube user atomcatt, who was on the ground below.

KEY MOMENT: The whole thing.



Click the image above to launch CTV’s video.



WHAT IT’S OF: What it was like inside the kettle at Queen and Spadina on Sunday, as it closed.

WHO SHOT IT: Jason MacDonald, a CTV viewer who was later arrested and taken to the detention centre. Justin Stayshyn (who was later detained at the intersection) shot another video nearby.

KEY MOMENT: 3:05, when the line of police moves to approach the crowd.



WHAT IT’S OF: Of the many allegations made about conditions inside the G20’s temporary detention centre at 629 Eastern Avenue, those from Amy Miller, an independent journalist detained there, are the most serious—she was told, she says, that she was “going to be raped”; she says she witnessed strip searches of women by male officers; and she also heard at least one allegation of sexual assault. Miller has filed a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director and is, along with Jesse Rosenfeld, now represented by Julian Falconer.

WHO SHOT IT: Vimeo user Darren Puscas.

KEY MOMENT: The whole thing.



Click the image above to launch Global’s video.



WHAT IT’S OF: Mayor David Miller’s Monday morning press conference (in two parts). Miller praised the actions of Toronto Police and did not call an inquiry into the weekend’s events.

WHO SHOT IT: Global News.

KEY MOMENT: Probably 2:00 in, when Miller says that “Toronto will be getting back to normal,” encouraging Torontonians to go to see the Tall Ships in Lake Ontario as part of the Toronto Waterfront Festival, as well as the Jazz Festival at Nathan Phillips Square. Toronto would soon after go to Nathan Phillips Square, but not for the reasons Miller asked them to.

Torontoist’s complete, continuing G20 coverage is collected here, including photos from Saturday and Sunday, and live coverage Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.