Red Zone Reflections

Posted by Mika on Jun 25, 2010 in International Summits | 0 comments

Since the G20/G8 preparations have started to get underway in Toronto and Huntsville, I’ve heard a lot of fat guys with neck beards, presumably from some kind of “independent” or “alternative” press, tell me that my rights will properly shat-upon as soon as the the Summits have arrived. Well, here I am, in my family cottage which is helpfully located right in the middle of the G8 Red Zone on Peninsula Lake. At the other end of this lake is Deerhurst, where Stephan Harper will officially open the 37th annual G8 conference in about twenty minutes. While I won’t say I haven’t been mildly inconvenienced here and there, the whole ordeal has been tame and well… rather cute. It’s been a little police-state, but with a very sweet police/military presence. Here are some reflections from the last four days.

Monday: Arrive in Huntsville with my sister and a friend. Since registration happened a year ago, I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d get my unregistered friend in, turns out it didn’t really matter. The police officers were all huddled around a big white tent with flood lights and little booths for strip searches in it, and that looked very promising to me, but after looking at my sister’s ID for about two seconds, the police officer just kind of, waved us in. It took us about five minutes to figure out that the OPP, RCMP and the Army were kind of just… chilling. Zooming around on their big ass army boats, flashing peace signs at the ladies, popping wheelies on their sweet motorcade cycles, they’re just having some laughs, oh, about a thousand of their police/army friends. It was not unlike a scouts jamboree, except with all these police officers around, you’ve got to wonder… who is watching Sudbury right now? If you want to commit a crime in North Eastern Ontario, now would be the time.

Tuesday: My sister wakes me up with a look of hillbilly glee in her eyes. Apparently we left our water-ski rope strewn in the lake at the end of our dock, and over night, we done caught us some reservists. Gabrielle woke up to find two grumpy old army men unraveling rope from the motor of their special army boat at the end of our dock, in the pouring rain. Of course, we see this as an excellent opportunity to stick a camera in their face and make hilarious jokes about luring them into our rabbit trap. They pretend to chuckle a little. This is when it first occurs to me that everyone is under orders to be nice to the locals.

Later in the evening we notice that they’re transporting a truck across the lake on a huge boat. There is literally no end of the lake you cannot get to by road. Just a few more dollars well spent. We pull out the boat and circle them a few times to see what’s up. Since we can’t get very close, we get my sister on waterskis so she could pull in a little closer.

Wednesday: My sister and friend left. Now I’m at the cottage all by myself listening to a swarm of helicopters. At first it was regular roundish helicopters, buzzing around in groups of two or three, then the American security helicopters came in. American helicopters became the Cadillac Escalade’s of the sky, burning up fuel to keep their huge rectangular asses up in the air as they chewed up the sky so the Canadian helicopters, like nice, sensible Toyota yaris, had to fly higher to make room. I sat like the Grinch in my cottage: Oh, the noise! Oh, the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! That’s one thing I hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! Then the earth started to shake underneath me and dishes started falling out of the cupboards and I raised my first to the sky and cried “CURSE you, American helicopters!!!” shaking my fist and scowling until my fist got tired and my face muscles started to hurt.

Only later did I find out that the helicopters did not make my house shake. That was just a minor earthquake. WHOOPS.

To be continued….

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