The only counter-demonstrator at the Life Chain this year.
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The only counter-demonstrator at the Life Chain this year.
This year, the only counter-demonstrator at the Life Chain was Mister Wind! Fortunately, it didn't rain, but the weather was cold and cloudy, and the wind was ferocious.
Location where the pro-choicers normally are each year.
On the plus side, the wind blew away all the pro-choicers! Not a single one showed up!
Come and warm yourselves under my wings, my little chicks!
On the down side, several young children were painfully cold, so we encouraged the Bilodeau, Breheret et Lavoie families (15 persons in all) to leave ahead of time to avoid pneumonias! Excluding those families, I counted 55 pro-lifers. If the weather had been normal, we would have had almost as many participants as last year (70 in 2011, compared to 75 in 2010).
Overall view of the whole Life Chain (scroll to the right to see everything).
Since we never know ahead of time whether or not the pro-choicers will show up, and if they are going to be behaved or not, we asked the City of Quebec to supply policemen. They were there, so once again, thank you Mayor Régis Labeaume, and thank you to Sergeant Line Pelletier and her men! We deeply appreciate your presence, which allows us to encourage women and children to participate! (Too bad Sergeant Line Pelletier couldn't give a speeding ticket to Mister Wind!)
The crawling traffic gave plenty of reading time to the motorists.
This year, Mr. Royce Dunn (Founder of the Life Chain movement), had asked for an extra half-hour of silent prayer. We did it, fortunately! Indeed, around 3PM, traffic slowed down to a crawl on Laurier boulevard, so motorists had plenty of time to read our messages. (In the picture here above, the cars you see are bumper to bumper, but after the traffic light! Note also Mr. Drouin doing his lamppost impersonation in order to hold the other end of our banner!)
Father Pierre-Henri Gouy of www.fsspquebec.org
As usual, despite having invited all Bishops and Priests of the Quebec Diocese, only the FSSP showed up to save the honor of the Catholic clergy.
Pastor Bernard Westerveld
Evangelical Christians were well represented as usual, with among others Bernard Westerveld and several of his children.
In conclusion, I'd like to once again thank all participants who were "in the wind"! But I'd also like to thank all participants who were "in the heavenly clouds", i.e. all those who could not physically attend but who nevertheless united their prayers to ours, in order to stop the killing of the unborn children in Canada.
Policemen protecting a few prayerful pro-lifers.
(Source)
We didn't get any pro-choicers this year, but a few days before our demonstration here in Quebec City, the pro-life group called "SOS Little Ones" tried to quietly pray in front of the the Tenon Hospital in Paris. These pro-lifers would have been chopped up in bits and pieces if the riot squad had not been there to protect them.
(For the rest of this Appendix 1, see French side.)