In spite of being really busy these days, I’ve been paying attention to the George Bush visit to Ottawa today. It seemed pretty tame this morning. I saw the plane land on CBC Newsworld and then after going to the bank and grocery store over lunch I watched George and Paul answer some questions. Around 2:30ish I hopped on my bike (maybe for the last time this year) and rode up to Parliment Hill because I heard that the protesters were up there.

When I got to the Hill, the protesters were walking on. I’ve heard there were 5,000 people there. Judging from those figures, when I was there on Canada day a few years ago, there must have been 50,000. It wasn’t an impressive crowd. As the protesters headed a few blocks down the street to the conference centre, I toodled down Sparks St. to look in at the new CBC building, but there wasn’t anything interesting going on there. So, I rode past the Hill again and down to the conference centre where the crowd had gathered. I heard the bells chime three as I rode by.

At the conference centre there was a better crowd, but I couldn’t see anything and the crowd was made up mostly of scruffy, young, rabble rousers. The people up on the lamp post behind me were excited to be there because it was “ground zero” and if anything was to happen it would be there. After a few minutes of looking at the crowd someone said that there were four buses of riot police on there way to “surround us.” Things seemed pretty peaceful, but I didn’t want to chance not getting home in time to pick up Jenn after work.

I got home between quarter and twenty after and saw on the TV that the riot police had come out and the “scuffle” had started. It’s only half past now and the worst seems to be over already. Pretty uneventful and a little disapointing to find a crowd of protesters gathering just to pick a fight with police. Meh — kids.