Sea louse crowd count crocked
Tom Fletcher, Victoria Secrets, May 10, 2010
This is one of the photos I took at Saturday’s fish farm protest at the B.C. legislature. It was taken shortly before 5 p.m., a few minutes before professional fish farm protester Alexandra Morton addressed the quasi-religious movement that has grown up around this issue.
At the peak, about one third of the legislature lawn is covered. I viewed this crowd from all sides and estimated its size at about 2,000, including a generous allowance for the hundreds of tourists strolling the Inner Harbour who may or may not have even known it was going on.
Then I spoke to one of four bored Victoria Police officers standing far away out on the street watching. He estimated 4,000 to 5,000 people, which may have been close if you include all the people who came and went during the course of the event. Inflated as I knew it was, that was the estimate I used in my story filed to BCLocalNews.com on Saturday.
The VicPD cops were also too far away to be aware of the confrontation between legislature security and the arrogant moron who galloped his horse across the lawn and up on the steps, refusing to retreat, daring security to arrest him, a large hunting knife prominent on his belt.
One of the speakers was ex-broadcaster Rafe Mair, who has been sending out a steady stream of emails afterward, fuming about the lack of mainstream media coverage, and estimates that the crowd was smaller than 1,000 people.
Mair and other speakers would have had no way of seeing the size of the crowd, because they were in the middle of it, spreading the usual bovine fecal matter that surrounds this issue. In the most hilarious claim, NDP MP Denise Savoie called it the biggest environmental protest in the history of B.C.
I’ve seen routine anti-government rallies organized by the Wilderness Committee with crowds as big as this one, although the unions usually bus them in for that. It was nowhere near Mair’s imaginary crowd of 10,000, let alone the 20,000-plus crowds that come out for really big union-sponsored events like the BCTF or BC Fed “general strikes” of recent years.
Of course facts aren’t the strong suit of this crowd. “The science is done” on salmon farms, said radio ads that ran in heavy rotation to promote Saturday’s rally. The exhaustive report of the Pacific Salmon Forum last year shows the opposite is true, which is why we have a judicial inquiry going on into the state of the West Coast salmon runs.
Mair and Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs president Stewart Phillip used the occasion to denounce their favourites, such as run-of-river power, the proposed Prosperity gold mine and of course the Enbridge pipeline project to Kitimat. Phillip allowed that he’s visited a fish farm, which is sufficient qualification for people with paper fish on their heads, swaying and chanting “Gaia” as Morton posed for the hired TV cameras and the scattering of actual reporters who showed up to hear this predictable screed.
Whatever the message, these folks don’t seem to be short of money
