By Dan Horner
The face that glares down from the cover of the June 4th issue of Maclean’s is meant to be unsettling: A protestor scowls at us, his menace heightened by some digital tweaks that bathe the whole scene in a blood red glow. The accompanying headline plays to the dystopian gloom of the image, suggesting that the mob personified by the masked thug on the cover has overthrown the elected government of Quebec.
This is how English Canada’s mainstream news weekly chose to frame the Printemps érable– the wave of protests that began as a response to the Liberal government’s decision to impose a dramatic hike on university tuition rates in the province: As an attack on Quebec’s legitimate political institutions by a gang of masked thugs on the street. This sort of coverage points to the central role that the task of policing urban space plays in this discussion: As with so many past outbreaks of popular protest, the government’s ability to impose its own version of order on the street has become a political battleground. These tensions between crowds, protest and the state are not new. They reflect a tangle of anxieties about the limits of democracy that have persisted for centuries. Continue reading
