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Join Me in Toronto

A small crowd has formed on the pedestrian walkway lining the Belt Line bridge at Yonge and Davisville on Tuesday (March 8). Passersby are strolling to a halt as the mass of Canadian flags, balloons and banners draw honks of support from the rush hour traffic below.

I find myself stamping my feet in the cold, but this is obviously the place to be International Womens’ Day, as two local DIY activists with no affiliation to any other grassroots group, create the Toronto version of the global Join Me On The Bridge.

The movement which started last year on the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo-when women from both countries marched to the Ruzizi Bridge that unites their historically combative homelands – has now spread to over 30 countries and signifies a new recognition that women make the best conflict resolutionists.

Women gathered on 119 bridges around the world in 2010 and distributed the message: “stronger women build bridges of peace.” This year, the event honours Afghanistan and the ongoing struggles for equality.

On Monday, hundreds of women gathered in Kabul, for a public protest, given the fact that females comprise only eight per cent of the nation’s peace talk participants.

“Peace without women doesn’t stand a chance, and the time to build peace is now – before the troops start withdrawing in June 2011,” said a statement issued by UK’s Kate Nustedt, organiser of the global campaign.

Okay, the turnout here on the Belt Line is humble only a handful at any one time, but people will be coming and going for the next few hours into the darkness, and organizers are ready to hand out candles.

“I would have been content with only three,” says a laughing Kavita Dogra, who found her co-organizer, Leigh Bowen on the Join Me on the Bridge website.

Last year, Dogra says she spent an “emotionally draining two weeks” as a volunteer for the Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival. It took the screening of The Greatest Silence-Emmy-award winning director Lisa F. Jackson’s doc on women from the Democratic Republic of Congo, sharing tales of kidnapping, rape, mutilation and torture by foreign and Congolese soldiers – to get her into bridge mode.

“We can so easily forget that we have more than our basic rights here,” she says.

Now the two women are handing out Bristol boards and markers. “Everyone has something different to say,” Dogra says.

Participant John Sakal, waving his peace sign, recalls stories his late English mother told him – about women walking around with scarves tied at their throats to conceal scars from suicide attempts. These women were usually unmarried, pregnant and received no social support, he says.

At 4:30 p.m., Dogra makes a run for Timbits.

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