It only got louder the closer you got to the mass of people milling about in front of London, Ontario's city hall on Saturday. Cops had shut down the block and, while the dueling rallies weren't supposed to start until noon, the anti-racism protesters were there in spades by 11 AM to counter the rally planned by an anti-Islam group.

Saturday's event was organized by PEGIDA , a group that was founded in Germany and whose acronym translates to "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West." The main focus of PEGIDA is the idea that Islam, through both legal and illegal immigration, is slowly but surely taking over western society.

There are many reasons why far-right protesters would choose London. The southern Ontario city of about 400,000 has a checkered past when it comes to racism in Canada. It was the longtime home of the notorious Canadian neo-Nazi Martin Weiche who held cross burnings outside his home. In 2012, a year after Weiche's death, a white pride group attempted to hold a rally but were chased out by a much larger group of anti-racist demonstrators . So London is no stranger to this sort of thing—politicians connected to the city seemed to realize this and prior to this weekend's rally, the mayor of London, the city council, and a local MP spoke out against it saying racism has no place in the city .

On the opposing side it was another mishmash: there were religious groups, young people, old people, Communists, drummers, a few bikers for peace, and many, many people who have been sparked to activism after what happened in Charlottesville . The group sang, yelled, and drummed, drowning out the speakers of the PEGIDA rally. At one point, the mayor of London, Matt Brown, showed up on the outskirts of the counter-protest and spoke to some of the rally attendees.

The small gathering of people on the PEGIDA side—maybe 15 in total—came from an assortment of groups. Several members of III% Canada , a US-styled militia that recently formed in the Great White North, donned black attire with flack jackets and attempted to provide security. There were members of the Canadian Combat Coalition and even a few young edgelord kids who seemed to exist solely to flip off and make fun of the counter protesters. Notorious anti-Islam crusader Eric Brazeau , a familiar face at Ontario rallies like these, rounded out the crew.

While the majority of attendees were peaceful, it wasn't hard to see that some on both sides were itching for a confrontation.

The London standoff was the latest in a rash of highly emotional rallies taking place across the country. While the players change, the story remains remarkably similar: a group—almost always an anti-Islam one—organizes a rally over an issue such as "free speech", immigration, or, as was in London's case, the preservation of "Canadian culture," only to be confronted by a much larger rally of people disgusted by their worldview. In the past two weeks we've seen it happen in Vancouver, Quebec City (just months after six Muslim men were gunned down while praying), and now London. Earlier in the year we saw similar rallies—at the time focused upon Motion M-103—in Toronto and other major city centres.

Police estimated there were about 500 people at the rally and, at times, the far-right protesters were outnumbered by at least 15 to one. When the two groups interacted things were tense with insults and names lobbed about without inhibition, but the violence seen in Quebec City and south of the border was essentially non-existent at the rally.