Anti-abortion protesters with large graphic signs said they were threatened with violence and had a drink poured on them at George Brown College’s Casa Loma campus on Sept. 20.
Blaise Alleyne, who is not a student at the college, was one of the anti-abortion protesters threatened.
According to Alleyne, he was approached by a man and asked “have you ever been stabbed before? Have you ever been punched before? Well I have, I’m not afraid to do those things to you.”
Alleyne said that after speaking with the man who is alleged to have made the threats, police arrested him and placed him in the back of the cruiser.
Christopher Lambe was charged with two counts of uttering threats according to police. The Dialog attempted to reach Lambe for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
The same day, Alleyne said that another man poured a drink on his head, which was captured on video. The man has not been identified.
The allegations have not been proven in court.
Chris McGrath, vice president of student success at the college, said GBC can’t stop the anti-abortion displays as they are done in public space and don’t break the law.
“What we do is we tend to deploy people just to monitor the situation and make sure there isn’t necessarily, any conflict or any of those sorts of issues that arise,” said McGrath. “But by virtue of the colleges being publicly funded institutions, the public groups have a right to participate in this type of activities on campus.”
Caitlin Smith, a GBC student in the assaulted women’s and children’s counselor and advocate program, was active in opposing the same anti-abortion group when she was a student activist at Ryerson.
“I think they have a whole range of impacts on students, not just mentally but physically, emotionally,” she said. “At Ryerson, I talked to many students that felt that it changed their entire day, they had to miss class, they had to miss work shifts.”
Smith said that students can use social media to alert other students where these protesters are, so that they can be avoided, and that she’s peacefully counter-protested the anti-abortion group by blocking the graphic images.
