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gary mason

Protesters march through downtown streets after vacating the downtown Occupy Vancouver site on Nov. 21, 2011.Darryl Dyck/ The Canadian Press

By early afternoon, a driving rain had turned the grounds of the Vancouver Art Gallery into a mud pit the colour of a dark French roast. Still, those who had erected a protest encampment there five weeks earlier soldiered on grudgingly, taking down their tents and throwing belongings into large plastic bags while stopping intermittently to exchange long, soulful hugs with Occupy colleagues.

As the work carried on, various protesters grabbed a roving microphone to voice their opinion about what was happening.

"This is not the end," one man told the few hundred people milling about the Occupy site. "This is just the beginning."

When it was her turn, a native woman in a motorized wheelchair railed against the injustice of what was happening.

"Now you can all see what it's like to be a homeless and landless person in Vancouver," she yelled. "Those of us here represent the 99 per cent."

But that was not true. Support from the 99 per cent that those who took over the gallery grounds under the Occupy banner purported to represent began leaking almost from Day 1. By the time the city went to court two weeks ago to seek an injunction, polls showed that the majority of those who originally shared the frustration over greed and inequality that spawned the movement increasingly disagreed with the group's tactics.

With the power of a court injunction, the city had given the group until 2 p.m. on Monday to vacate the premises. The evacuation of the site went about mostly in a peaceful and orderly way even as the deadline passed. As long as progress was being made, the city saw no reason to send in the cops. A band of protesters led a march in the downtown streets to scream slogans and stop traffic. By late afternoon, some protesters had moved to the provincial court house to set up tents.

With Occupy sites coming down across North America, the future of the movement has been thrown into doubt. Nonetheless, Occupy protesters in Vancouver continued to strike a defiant pose, even while conceding defeat in their bid to stay at the art gallery.

"We're not dead at all," said one young man, who identified himself as Doctor.

In many ways, he was the archetypal occupier. He said he'd taught sustainability in the Third World but was now jobless. At Occupy, he said, he'd found kindred spirits. He was earnest and almost breathtakingly naive, but also charming in his own way. He seemed a good and decent person at heart whose motives were genuine.

When I asked him what the occupiers accomplished at the art gallery, he said: "We built a family in a pretty short period of time. It wasn't easy. We had some troublemakers in here, some almost gangster types and most of them ended up changing in the time here. They ended up wanting to help.

"We had some internal issues and we didn't get as much done as we'd liked. But it's a growing process and we're not done yet. We will get through the winter and we look forward to spring."

The spring. Who knows what will be left of the movement by then. And if it does burst forth again with the arrival of warmer weather, what will it look like? Can it accomplish anything in the amorphous, ethereal form it has taken up to now? And what, if anything, does the movement have to build upon? What has it achieved beyond marshalling small groups of disaffected people in cities around the world who set up tent cities and tried to build a parallel society with its own language and unusual set of rules?

I can't think of much.

As protesters continued dismantling their utopian dream in the heart of Vancouver, the head of the B.C. Federation of Labour dropped by to offer his support.

Jim Sinclair said he thought the occupiers were making a good decision by obeying the court order and moving on. He rejected suggestions that the group failed to achieve much during its time at the art gallery.

"They put the whole issue of inequality on the agenda," Mr. Sinclair said. "They don't have all the answers, and it's not a perfect movement, but their hearts are in the right place. And if we don't fix the issues they're talking about, we're soon going to be living in a place that's not very nice."

As he talked the rain continued to pour. The Occupy movement was getting washed away before his very eyes.

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