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It was the PEGIDA debut that never happened.

About 15 supporters of the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam group that was founded in Germany and recently saw a branch open in Quebec were said to have shown up at a demonstration the group had organized in an east-end neighbourhood known as Little Maghreb on Saturday afternoon.

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They were hard to detect among the hundreds of counter-protesters who had shown up to PEGIDA Québec’s debut rally at a Pie-IX Blvd. shopping mall to tell the far-right group its message of intolerance has no place in Montreal.

Shortly after 4 p.m., which was the start time for the rally that PEGIDA Québec had posted on its Facebook page, Montreal police announced by loudspeaker the group’s rally had been cancelled. That drew cheers from the crowd.

The police, who also turned up in large numbers, were seen escorting two people with pro-PEGIDA signs away moments earlier.

I came because I like immigrants, because I am an immigrant and because I would not want a movement like PEGIDA in Montreal. — counter-protester Maria Teresa Zambrano

“I came because I like immigrants, because I am an immigrant and because I would not want a movement like PEGIDA in Montreal,” Maria Teresa Zambrano, one of the counter-protesters, said as she waved a sign that called for “Tolerance in Place of Ignorance.”