When I heard Coulter was coming to Canada I figured attending the event would be worth the entertainment value, if for nothing other than to witness the unhinged reaction that was sure to follow. Ottawa U didn’t disappoint.
When I arrived there was a line of a few hundred, maybe a thousand people outside the Marion building. A few of them were chanting in front of the cameras but the line was otherwise better behaved than for a typical rock concert. The size of the line was no doubt a bit of a problem because the room held no more than 400 (my estimate).
Since I had registered for the event ahead of time I had no trouble elbowing my way to the front, verifying my name was on the list, getting inside and chatting briefly with Ezra Levant.
After a while the fire alarm went off, the obvious false alarm having been dealt with we sat down expecting the event to start.
Instead Ezra announced that police told him it would be “physically unsafe” to bring Ann in due to the “unruly mob” outside. There was certainly no issue, or even noise, inside the auditorium.
Since I was inside at that point I don’t know how unruly they became outside. But this is the national capital, just a few blocks from Parliament Hill, the US Embassy, the Prime Minister’s Residence and countless embassies. The police surely have the capability to respond to anyone threatening a woman with dozens of TV cameras around. Instead, they chose to cancel the event instead.
After leaving the auditorium (from a side entrance, as the police insisted), I walked back out front to see what the commotion was:
A lone policewoman standing on the step asked me to leave after I took her picture. I did leave, after expressing disbelief that they canceled the event over what appeared to be a few dozen pathetic protesters chanting in front of the nearby cameras.
A truly pathetic situation all around.
The great news is, this proves that Francois’s letter incited hatred and violence against Ann Coulter.
Do you think the University of Ottawa provost was right to caution Ann Coulter in advance of what she might say?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/globe-online-poll/article1509263/
Another poll ready to go horribly wrong?
Exactly, Kyla.
What.
A.
Lawsuit.
Breach of contract, loss of income, not to mention the organizers’ expense $$$ now down the drain
Bwa ha
At least this stupid, vapid zealot didn’t get to spew her venom, hatred and racist messages in Ottawa.
“What.
A.
Lawsuit.
Breach of contract, loss of income, not to mention the organizers’ expense $$$ now down the drain”
Wouldn’t count on that. Galloway got nowhere on this front. Neither will she.
No T, we leave that for you to do.
brutal.
freaking fascist thugs
ashamed to be Canadian right now.
If people on the right do not fight back hard all of our believes will soon be labeled hate speech. Its time to stop turning the other cheek.
I was just outside the door to the auditorium waiting to get in since I had registered. Most of the students had not registered and were told they would not get in because their name was not on the registration list. Those students did not leave, even after the fire alarm went off (set off intentionally to disrupt the event??), and despite the request of security and the lone policewoman.
Most were polite and patient but there was a small but very vocal group agitating. If the doors had been opened I am sure there would have been a mad rush and several hundred kids would have streamed in. One organizer at the door said it was cancelled because it was not a safe situation. This remark was booed.
A contingent of police did come, I estimate about 5 of them about 20 min after the fire alarm. No firemen. We were then told after an hour of waiting, the event was canceled. Still no one left for about 15-20 min. I was told by security that Ann Coulter did not set foot in Marion Hall.
While waiting outside, a group of students were handing out anti-racism, anti-islamaphobia, anti-hate buttons and posters trying to get people riled up. Only about 1 in 5 or 6 accepted.
Not one student I asked had a read a book she had written or could identify exactly what hate speech she actually said. Clips of you tube videos of “hateful” things were cited.
Pathetic all around. Jaeger, at least you got to hear Ezra Levant.
Bill Good just reported that the event was canceled after “thousands of protesters prompted officials to shut down the talks.”
He also reported that Ann Coulter told a Muslim student that * he * could take camel if he has problems with airport security.
Sheesh.
Bill Good is a little slow, and that’s putting it mildly….
I have always maintained that the Left are the true haters and the true racists. The only thing they love is violence.
Now do you believe me?
No one’s putting a gun to your head forcing you to listen to her, T.
And no taxpayer money is funding her either. (Unlike some raving death-cult jihadist “Palestinian” groups I might name.)
Bill Good is a radical fence sitter, but everyone knows which way he leans. Just another political correct Canadian talk show host who is definitely past his “best before” date.
Jon Macomb is much better, more grounded in reality.
Coulter is the best and I wouldn’t be surprised is this whole talk tour is a set up to get an HRC case going in the other direction. You did say Ezra was there. I think he is a vendetta kind of guy if you give him a good reason and the HRC sure gave him one.
Great entertainment.
The President of the University has a lot of explaining to do both for his letter to Coulter and for the cancellation.
The best was when going to my car, were 2 guys typing furiously on a laptop in the trunk of the car nest to mine. They said they were from Rueters.
I commented that this was a big story and it was unfortunate that Ann Coulter did not get to speak. They thought it was great the event did not happen and that there was no real news here.
I asked if they thought this would make first page news event in the US. They said sure…..after telling me this was not really news. I told them they were pathetic.
As Kathy says: Journalists our intellectual superiors.
Another example of the integrity of publicly funded ‘institutions of liberal learning’. (ILL)
We were chatting it up with the police. We were not violent. Unruly, maybe. Only because we would not leave after they lied to us saying the auditorium had been evacuated after the fire alarm was pulled. For God’s sake, a dude in a wheelchair was toting around among us waiting outside the doors. We are being improperly labeled by FAR.
Its nice to get eye witness accounts of these things. Looks like the event got canceled due to officials basically not wanting to be bothered with a ruckus from less than twenty jerkoffs. Sheer laziness, in other words.
We live in a country where not-very-important people, like campus security guards, get to decide who speaks and who doesn’t, at whim. I’d say that’s getting pretty far along the police state path.
I hope Ann sues the britches off ’em.
Mob rule.
This is what happens at anti-Israel rallies, Israeli “Apartheid” Week, etc. The threat of violence by thugs is enough for the police to shut down an event and make the law-abiding, peaceful citizens leave. The cops care only about keeping the peace and preventing injury or death: they’re not interested in fairness, it’s not their job to stand up for our freedoms and they do not care about what kind of message this sends to the fascists.
So how do we fight against mob rule when the cops won’t stop it?
I think Houle’s letter empowered the thugs. If the university’s administration had made it clear that the event would go on no matter what, would that have made a difference? Would it have changed the way the cops responded? (I have no idea.)
Let’s see if those same masked morons who gathered for the anti-racist rally in Calgary last Sunday show up for the Coulter speech.
These bandana covered cowards wouldn’t let others speak unless they held up their pathetic signs showed us what free speech has become in Canada.
30 demonstrators chanting “hey hey ho ho” is some how more dangereous than a thousands Muslims downtown Toronto chanting “death to Jews”.
I kinda miss the days when the cops were a little freer with their batons. It taught you to get the hell out of the way not get in someone face.
Gordon, what explaining? That implies that MSM will hold him to account in some way, in any way. No chance of that ever happening. They’re too busy gloating that she was shut down and trying to justify it by continuously replaying last night’s exchange in their reports, when they know full well that had that not occurred, the outcome tonight would’ve been exactly the same.
WAAYYYY MORE info on this here:
http://takebackyourschool.wordpress.com/
Phantom: Looks like the event got canceled due to officials basically not wanting to be bothered with a ruckus from less than twenty jerkoffs.
It might have been more than twenty, but it was certainly nothing a few assertive cops couldn’t handle if they’d had the slightest inclination to do something about it.
Conservatives are polite wimps. We will write a few angry blog posts and then go on with our productive fulfilling lives. The left wins again.
What should happen is that 10 more right wing speakers should be booked at this university and we should demand to be protected. Either that or we should shut down every speech from extreme lefties like Moore, Gore, Maher, etc.
I won’t hold mt breath.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/pointofview/2010/03/ann-coulter.html
Poll time!!
Hey “T” You just proved on your post that you are a shining example of what Ms Coulter has been saying about the extreme left…only what we say is OK, everything else is hate speech. Bite on that for awhile you dummy.
Josephine
Yes, the Houle letter mobilized the demonstrators but did get a large silent majority interested in Ann Coulter as well.
I heard the plan was to cross check the list of registrants against a list of “known security risks” or something similar to that..can’t remember the actual words…but there was just too many people.
Wow — sure gives her good ammunition about the intolerant left. A sad day for freedom of speech.
Wow — sure gives her good ammunition about the intolerant left. A sad day for freedom of speech.
What a bunch of douchebags these loons are. I am right of center and do not agree with much Ms. Coulter has to say. However, she has the right to say it and the loons resorted to violence (yes falsely ringing a fire alarm is violence and against the law) and showed what they are really all about.
The only vapid, stupid zealot is you T.
Anderson Davies, have a peak at this
I love how lefties keep comparing this Galloway. Galloway was kept out of the country on LEGAL grounds. Coulter had already given a speech the night before without incident. Clearly Houle and the Houlegans had everything to do with this.
RG
Ashamed of our Canadian National Press Gallery!!
Why didn’t the Premier of Ontario pull out a page from Pierre Trudeau and have the Eevil Stephan Harpur invoke the War Measures Act if things were so out of hand.
As A Canadian these leftard creeps have shamed me and tarnished Canada’s reputation for tolerance. What we witnessed tonight was anti-intellectual intolerance of the most uncivil and subversive kind.
Question: who turned off the police capability to establish order in this nation’s capital?
I just feel disgust at this moment
This is how the left works. They bring a shouting crowd to a right wing event, the leftist leadership of the University then shuts down the discussion due to security concerns.
If the right did this, the University would call in the police to ensure that the event would continue.
I am getting sick of the fascist methods of the left in Canada. I sometimes think the right may need to resort to uncivil methods if the left keeps this up.
Lenin’s disciples and the anarchists are trying real hard to take over this country and academia is helping them by indoctrinating with Marxist filth.
I doubt anything will become of this, as the authorities are too afraid of the left-wing activists.
What the blazes did I wear a uniform for for so many years!
Arthur, the crowd didn’t bring itself. François Houle all but dared them to show up. It was probably extra credit work!
RG
On the Vancouver news tonight they described her as “rabid right winger” Ann Coulter….No bias there then! For a moment there I thought I must have been watching the BBC.
I seem to recall she got pretty much the same treatment at NYU in 2008 … the difference being that the organizers (Young Repubs) and the school admin were prepared to deal with the predictable protesters.
As opposed to the Ottawaste U admin inciting and abetting the predictable protesters.
No doubt also preventing the organizers from taking any action to secure the event.
LT – watching the CBC against my will at the gym this evening, I saw Coulter being discussed as if it’s evident to anybody with a pulse that she’s basically just Julius Streicher in a tight skirt.
I guess she’ll have to show up with a bodyguard next time.
Typical lefty on Twitter said Houle’s letter wasn’t a threat, dismissed the action against Coulter, called me paranoid and then “insulted” me by asking me if I was Liz Cheney (hardly an insult, but guess it is to him). Need I mention he’s from Toronto? And doesn’t believe that I am too?
Toolbag.
RG
Ann Coulter has managed to hold a mirror to the whole world focusing on the intolerance in the soul of Canadian Universities in regards to conservatives or free speech, for that matter.
Anyone expecting unbiased reporting of Ann Coulter’s Canadian tour from Canadian MSM is being delusional.
The few CTV yappers I watched, could not hide their animosity to Coulter.
Can you imagine the media reaction if “rabid left winger Michael Moore” had been similarly prevented from speaking on campus (although where I can’t really imagine, Medicine Hat Community College for Future Farmers, possibly?).
Or rabid left wing enviro-whackjob David Suzuki?
Yet Coulter, who makes far more sense than either of the above, cannot be allowed to speak for fear that the precious human capital of the slow-motion revolution might come to their senses too.
Well, Harper and Nicholson can’t play their usual hear no evil, see no evil game this time — they were almost within walking distance of this stage of the undeclared communist revolution.
Speaking of which, since the constitution is now apparently suspended, I’m wondering if I should be moving my files to a safe location and seeking asylum in a non-communist country?
There used to be one to my immediate south, until yesterday.
She’s like George Carlin, or Andrew Dice Clay. She provokes. It’s her shtick.
I’d even go further. Given the provocative works coming from the left (Piss-Christ, etc), I’d say she’s an ARTIST. She should apply for a grant.
Now she gets to put a “BANNED IN CANADA” sticker on her next book.