Pro-Palestinian activists protest on Montreal campuses

Tensions ran high on Montreal’s downtown campuses today as student activists led more than 500 protesters in support of Palestine.

The rally began outside of Concordia University’s Hall building and snaked through downtown towards the McGill University campus. As students were walking up Peel Street, on the east end of McGill campus, they began running to overtake a line of police that had cordoned off the road.

At least a dozen mounted police were on the McGill campus, and police with riot gear blocked the Prince Arthur Street entrance to campus and the entrance to the James McGill building.

Students amassed in the centre of campus chanting, at one point burning an Israeli flag with red handprints on it. They then made their way down McTavish Street and continued through downtown Montreal.

The Montreal Gazette reported that a protester dressed in black smashed a window at McGill’s Redpath Library shortly before 3 p.m.

Concordia University cancelled classes for the day in anticipation of the strike. In an open letter to the Concordia community explaining the closure of the downtown campus, President and Vice-Chancellor Graham Carr wrote: “With hundreds of protesters from other universities and cégeps expected — as well as counter protesters not linked to the university planning to gather outside our downtown campus this afternoon — the threat of extreme disruption is simply too high to operate as usual.”

He wrote that the decision was taken “with profound sadness” after a protestor who disrupted classes on Oct. 6 was found to be in possession of “a metal bar and several incendiary devices.” 

Classes went ahead at McGill.

The student rally was organized by Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) Concordia, SPHR McGill, SPHR Dawson, Cegep4Palestine, and Groupe de solidarité pour les droits et l’honneur des Palestinien.nes de l’UdeM. But more than 62 post-secondary schools in voted to participate in the strike.

Students at the largest Montreal universities and some CEGEPs voted to strike on Oct. 6 and 7, with a unifying demand for divestment from corporations and arms manufacturers involved in military activity in Gaza.

October 7 marks the two-year anniversary since Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages. Approximately 20 of the hostages are believed to still be alive. Israel’s war on Gaza, triggered by that event, has killed more than 67,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Peace talks between Hamas and Israel are ongoing, after U.S. President Donald Trump proposed a 20-point peace plan last week. However, no ceasefire agreement has yet been reached.

Protest action began on Oct. 6 at Concordia

On Oct. 6, striking students were invited by SPHR Concordia to meet at the Frigo Vert, a student-led cafe, to help organize strike actions and the rally planned for Oct. 7.

In mid-afternoon of Oct. 6, there were about 20 students in the cafe, many of them masked, with other supporters filing in and out. No students would give their name, some saying they were doing so out of “solidarity” while others said they feared the potential consequences of speaking to the media. On the tables were multiple megaphones, paints and paintbrushes for sign-making, and pamphlets outlining students’ demands and instructions on how to “mask up” to not be surveilled or identified.

About six students sat around a coffee table shouting: “Concordia complicit in genocide!” and “Stop class!” into a phone with a Zoom link connecting to a political science class. Other students walked in after disrupting a classroom, expressing dismay that they had been told off by the professor.

At around 3:30 p.m., eight student activists walked into Salinda Hess’s anthropology class where they thought a three-hour exam was taking place. One student, taking the lead, spoke to the class of about 30, urging them to join the strike to support “the students who no longer can go to school” in Palestine. An argument erupted between some of the students — who were in fact writing an optional quiz — and the protesters over whether student strikes are effective.

A Ukrainian student argued that the best way for her to stop war in the world was by getting an education and finishing her quiz. One student had his ears plugged as he tried to finish the quiz. Others began filing out of the room, handing their quiz in as they left. The professor was mostly silent as this was playing out before being called on to give her opinion. She replied:

“Nobody seems to have the power to get either Trump or Netanyahu to do anything. I don’t necessarily agree with disrupting students’ education, because I’m an educator, that’s what I do, and I think that it’s important for us to discuss these things — and that’s why I am pleased that you are here. I am not pleased that I am not able to have my class,” Dr. Hess said. “I mean, the government is cutting universities at the knees – I mean we are losing support. I agree with student power but let’s be on the streets, not closing our classrooms.”

Photography and videos by Hannah Liddle.