On November 28th, Mike Harris cancelled his proposed trip to Kingston to open the new biosciences complex on Queen's campus. He claimed that he had a family emergency that prevented him from coming -- but we all know better. The reason Harris cancelled is because he knew there would be hundreds of angry Kingstonians ready to "greet" him. Maybe after watching the video of the Country Club demonstration when he was here last time his family begged him not to come. Maybe his "family emergency" was that his family urgently didn't want to see him get killed.

One sure indication that it was cowardice, and not a "family emergency", that prevented him coming was the fact that Harris reinstated his other scheduled events that day (including dinner with the Chinese dictator) shortly after the rally ended. Harris had only cancelled those other events to make it look good anyway. The fact is that no right-wing politician has dared to come to Kingston recently, and I think we can all pat ourselves on the back for making that the case.

During the last Federal election campaign, no right-wing leaders dared show up here. Jean Charest made a fly-in stop at the airport, but didn't dare come downtown. Certainly there were no appearances that were announced in advance.

Similarly with Chretien -- making a "lightning" appearance 10km out of town at Codes Corners -- totally unannounced ahead of time. He was then whisked off before anyone from Kingston (except his hand-selected hacks and the press) could see him.

Manning didn't even make the pretense of stopping here -- only managing to get as close as Napanee before his knees began to shake too much for him to stand. Manning had gotten "greetings" similar to those Harris has received when he dared to show his face in Kingston back in 1991.

Despite the weather, Harris' cowardice, the time of day (during work hours), and the presence of a huge number of police and security personnel -- hundreds of people came out to demonstrate against Harris. Estimates of the crowd ranged from 2000 (on the radio) to 300 (the police). Other media estimates were 500, 600, and 1000 people. So much for accuracy in reporting.

I estimate that between 800-1200 people were there. This makes this one of the biggest demonstrations in Kingston in the last 10 years -- not bad. It also shows the depth of the anger against Harris and the system. The phony "Canadian consensus" has broken down -- bring on the class war!