McGill University was the site of the country’s first protest camp against the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Its dismantling this week raises questions about what pro-Palestinian activists in Canada will do next to make their demands heard.
McGill protesters vow to continue to pressure the university to end its investments in the Israeli military and cut ties with Israeli institutions.
“We will force McGill to divest. We will force all complicit institutions to divest,” promised Eric Rogers, who alleged that he was “forcibly removed” Wednesday from the grounds of McGill’s downtown campus, where dozens of tents had been set up since late April.
“Even though it’s the end of the camp, it’s not the end of the movement at all,” he announced.
Rallies and blockades
The removal of the McGill encampment follows a wave of closures of other campus protest sites across the country, leaving questions about how activists will make their voices heard going forward.
“I suspect this may be the end of the encampments for now, but there will be other ways to try to hold institutions accountable,” said Ted Rutland, a professor at Concordia University who supported the McGill encampment. “There’s no doubt that the spirit here is very engaged, and for good reason. This is our life’s cause.”
On Thursday, pro-Palestinian groups from McGill and Concordia universities announced an evening protest at Phillips Square, near the McGill campus. “Dismantling won’t stop us!” read a poster advertising the event.
Mr. Rutland expects more direct action in the future. “Whether it’s blocking highways, ports, railroads … I think everyone understands that’s the kind of action we need right now.”
On Tuesday evening, hours before the encampment was dismantled, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante was removed from a council meeting after she was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters.
Successive dismantlings
McGill is one of several universities where protests have been halted in recent days. Last week, an Ontario judge granted an injunction against a two-month-old encampment at the University of Toronto. The decision provided “a road map for other institutions” seeking to dislodge their own protesters from campus, according to University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.
In recent days, organizers of several encampments in Ontario have chosen to pull out, including at the University of Waterloo, Western University and the University of Ottawa. Encampments at the Universities of Guelph and Windsor are expected to close in the coming days.
Memorial University of Newfoundland has cited an injunction to evacuate a pro-Palestinian protest camp on its St. John’s campus last week.
Protesters at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver ended their encampment this weekend, saying they were leaving voluntarily.
A bygone movement
There are still some protests on campus, including at the University of Victoria in British Columbia and Dalhousie University in Halifax. “The idea that you can just occupy a space on a university campus for months, I think that’s definitely over,” Geist said.
Today, he said, people are “looking forward to seeing what happens in September,” when students return to universities across the country. If they try to reoccupy campuses, he warned, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that [les universités] would take steps to try to put an end to it fairly quickly.”
Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy at B’nai Brith Canada, hopes the era of encampments is over. “It’s frustrating that it’s taken this long […] for universities across the country to actually take action against the encampments,” he pleaded.
“I hope that the institutions have learned a lesson by allowing these [manifestations] to establish themselves, and that they will be more proactive in preventing them from moving forward,” he added.
The dismantling of the protest on McGill University’s campus was not a direct result of the University of Toronto’s injunction. Two Quebec Superior Court judges had already rejected requests for injunctions against the encampment, and the university was seeking another.
In the meantime, McGill hired a firm to investigate the camp and found that most of the people sleeping there were unsheltered. There were also health and safety risks at the site, including drug use. The university then decided it was “urgent” to dismantle the camp.
Still, Rutland believes the McGill encampment served a purpose, even if the students’ demands weren’t met. “I think it planted the demand for divestment in the public consciousness,” he said. “And I think it sparked a debate about how we unknowingly end up supporting things that are contrary to our values.”
McGill said it would consider divesting from arms manufacturers.
In nine months of bombings and offensives in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 38,200 people and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its tally.
In an October 7 raid, Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took about 250 people hostage. About 120 people remain in captivity, and about a third are believed to be dead.