Every year, right around springtime, Barrick Gold holds its Annual General Meeting at the Metro Convention Centre in downtown Toronto. With this event comes the inevitable confrontation; Barrick has been targeted by professional protesters for years. The protests are rarely peaceful, and involve protesters forcefully stopping traffic, pushing into police lines, making false accusations of police misconduct, and sometimes getting arrested.
When one imagines their child being sent on a school field trip, the last thing they’d think is that they’d be communing with convicted criminals, abusing the police, and risking arrest. But, for students of one Toronto District School Board institution, this is now a distinct possibility. At 11am on Wednesday, April 30th pupils at the Student School will be at the front-line of the fight against Barrick Gold- led by an American anarchist whose activities are closely monitored by a host of US and Canadian enforcement organizations.