I was walking along Harbord Street towards the Linux Cafe when I came across a woman screaming hysterically. She was screaming at the police woman that was trying to help her. As I approached her she saw me and assumed that I was a good guy cause I was wearing black.

She begged me to hold her. I wrapped my arm around her shoulder. She told me that she had just got out of the holding cell on Eastern and that seeing the cops was to much for her. She begged me to take her past the police, but she didn’t want to see them.

So she closed her eyes and I walked her by the dozen or so police that were milling around the independent media centre that was situated on Jersey Street behind the Linux cafe.

As soon as we were through, she found a friend and she calmed. The police presence and the memory of the gulag on Eastern Avenue is going to live long with that woman.