June 21, 2000 Demonstration in Lac-Saguay, Québec

On June 21, 2000, Claire Joly and Pierre Lemieux spent the whole day (12 am to 10 pm) demonstrating in Lac-Saguay, Québec (a 300-inhabitant village in the High Laurentians), against a "help" session held in the village town hall by the Canadian Firearms Centre. (See the press release published by LUFA in English or French.)

The two demonstrators arrived there first. The two young students hired to do the dirty job for the Canadian Firearms Centre came a few minutes late. Pierre Lemieux gave them a little speech. Then a middle-aged SQ (armed) woman cop came in an unmarked car, and joined them into the room. Lemieux gave her his little speech, with a letter specially written for the cops. She obviously knew him and asked if they could talk privately. Lemieux said, yes, and they retreated into the municipal library room. Her main message was, "You should not get arrested, because this is not the best way to get your message across." Pierre Lemieux had scared them by letting it known that he expected to be arrested, as we wanted to "fuck the registration system," as said the former president of the Fédération québécoise de la faune (the main hunters' association in Québec). The woman cop tried to give him the impression that she understood the opponents' point, and was perhaps on their side. An hour later, Lemieux had a more tense exchange with her after, with her .357 magnum on her hips, she had told Claire Joly that a baseball bat is quite enough for self-defense. The cop told Pierre Lemieux that he should not "be escalating verbal violence", to which he replied that he was the one to decide that. But then, after another hour, the cop left (Claire Joly saw her driving away in her unmarked car), and never came back.

Joly and Lemieux were free to enter the main town hall room (where the students had installed their things) as they wanted, and had quite comfortable quarters under a roof at the entrance. It rained most of the day, with swarm of mosquitos during the rest of the time. The Secretary-treasurer had put the demonstrators' posters in an official bulletin board near the entrance. He told them, that if he ever had again a request to rent the room for a gun-registration kind of purpose, he would now think twice about it.

About 40 villagers came. It is estimated that at least 5 of them just turned back and did not go inside after Joly and Lemieux talked them out of it. Perhaps 15 went inside to get info, but did not fill in anything. Probably another 15 filled in the form for a possession license, had their pictures taken, etc., and left the forms with with the CFC representatives. Another 5 filled everything inside, had their pictures taken, but took the forms with away them, saying that they would wait until the last minute to send them.

Many of the town people were very upset with the law, and virtually all were against it; only three or four were openly against us and did not want to talk. At least two persons went inside just to give the "helpers" a rough time.