The Face of Protest, Then and Now

The 51st G7 summit is coming soon to Kananaskis, Alberta. From June 15 to 17, a group of world leaders will meet to discuss international affairs. Prime Minister Mark Carney will chair the summit, and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and U.S. President Donald Trump are among those expected to participate.

This isn’t the first time world leaders have met in these woods. Kananaskis Country was the site of the G8 summit back in 2002. The mountainous location afforded security and privacy for those participating in the summit; protesters looking to highlight global inequality with a focus on poverty reduction, environmental and monetary policy and to ask questions of the decision-makers in the conference were relegated to Calgary, the closest city some 100 kilometres away.

I travelled to Calgary in the summer of 2002 to capture the energy on the ground and photograph the different groups coming together around the G8, where leaders of the wealthiest nations in the world including former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and former U.S. President George W. Bush gathered in the context of a supercharged public mood.

Months earlier, 9/11 had shaken the world. In the years prior, growing protests around the world disrupted the status quo. Summits for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the G8 were all lightning rods for citizen action. People were organizing around the widespread impacts of “globalization” — a term new to many and whose definition was still crystallizing.

Now, with the 2025 G7 summit around the corner, I’m looking back on my images to see what the face of protest looked like then and what parallels they hold today.

In the spring of 2002, I was fresh out of photojournalism school in Calgary and starting my career in Vancouver. Following up on an instructor’s lead, I checked out Adbusters magazine and ended up working there in a variety of roles.

Finding work at a magazine in a new city felt like a dream job. Adbusters had been around for more than a decade, but the political realities of the early 2000s synced perfectly with the magazine’s vision. While our small team worked out of a house on West 7th Avenue, it felt like we were part of a much bigger movement beyond its walls.

The clarity of an imbalanced world and the global forces running these systems came into view. Linking up with people across the planet was suddenly possible with the increasingly widespread use of internet technologies.

It felt like together, we could remake the world to one that is equitable and just. I found this was already happening on a global scale — and it was time to join the party.

By the time I arrived at Adbusters, the public conversation about global activism was in the shadow of heavy-handed police responses to growing actions around the world. It led to an explosion of media hits about no-good disruptors taking over peaceful cities. There was the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999 at a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Washington, and what was called the “Bloody Battle of Genoa” at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy.

Images from the G8 in Genoa were indeed bloody and violent, and not at all what anybody wanted. First hand accounts from activists paint a different picture, one of non-violent civil disobedience, collaboration and community.

So when the G8 announced Alberta for 2002, I wanted to be there.

I know the Kananaskis Valley well. I spent my teenage years honing backcountry skills camping, fishing and skiing amongst the mountains off Highway 40. I have a deep connection to this place and recognize how privileged I was to have accessible, wild nature at my doorstep.

I could picture world leaders meeting with the familiar Rockies as a backdrop, the K-Country golf course and lodge gussied up for stately guests. A place so free and alive, now locked down and under surveillance from all angles.

Since the events of Genoa and the spectre of terrorism were now all around us after 9/11, the security zone in the Rockies meant nobody was getting anywhere near the delegates.

The Canadian Armed Forces, RCMP and local police were all out in force, creating the largest domestic security mobilization during peacetime that Canada had seen at the time, and which we can expect to see now as the 2025 G7 nears.

As a newly trained photojournalist, I followed the necessary procedures to register for a G8 media pass, but I was denied. I didn’t receive a reason. I noticed that other progressive media organizations and environmental groups were also denied.

With no time to play around, I decided to cover from the people’s point of view and leave the inquiries to freedom-of-information requests for later (and then, I received no real answers for accreditation denial).

Armed with my camera, six rolls of Fuji 35mm slide film, and a fresh reporters’ notebook, it was time to go back over the mountains to a most familiar place.

Our crew was young, curious and engaged in global perspectives. Most of us worked at the magazine. I suspect we were all still a little naive as well, but coming together with a diverse group of like-minded people encouraged us to believe we were right.

Looking back at the images of the protest signs of 2002, I see parallels to what people are calling for today.

Themes of globalization, free trade agreements, corporate rule and influence, excessive consumerism, social justice and the struggles to exist in an increasingly hyper-capitalist world are as relevant now as they were then. I spotted more than one “Free Palestine” sign in my images, another ongoing crisis we have collectively failed to solve.

There were all these people, all with one thing on their minds — a better world for everyone. In a protest movement supported by grassroots organizers, local unions and NGOs, the G8 summit was met with peaceful resistance, playfulness, education and community-based actions. It was non-violent as declared, it was riotous in a fun way and the few clad in black balaclavas were kept from staining an otherwise gentle protest.

Canadian activist and folk musician Bruce Cockburn played a free show, picnics and free food were arranged. In the lead-up to the summit, the media and government had raised concerns about a wild scene featuring mindless vandalism, but it failed to materialize, as the general sentiment on the ground was in support of civil disobedience but against vandalism and violence.

I appreciated the community outreach happening at every event. Organizers explained to onlookers the issues from our point of view while the press mostly called everyone anarchists and that the public should watch out.

There was a useful, common enemy at the time: George W. Bush. He stood for so much of what was going wrong, in our eyes. Revisionist history might call him folksy or funny, but his tenure was focused on war, surveillance, revenge. The world needed a flashpoint.

Today’s problems are similar, but exacerbated by the flight from truth as a bedrock of democracy and the erosion of trust in our neighbours and ourselves.

What would today’s main point of protest be?

In my shots, I see buttons with the words “USA: Trade Bullies.” I see signs expressing solidarity with farmers and unions. I see slogans like “No to War” and “Yes to Social Justice.”

I see the world we wanted then is the world we want now.