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The annual
Last Wednesday's Fête Nationale parade was widely hailed as a success, one of the best and most peaceful in years. The following night, however, it was back to St-Jean-Baptiste business as usual. Early Friday morning, an estimated 300 police officers, some in riot gear, pulled up at Mount-Royal Park in a convoy of buses and arrested 84 of an estimated 450 people celebrating there with bonfires on the grass. According to police spokesperson Alain Lefrançois, police asked the revellers to leave the site three times and only moved in when they were ignored. But Eric Tremblay (not his real name), who was present at the site, said police were confrontational from the start. "I didn't hear any warnings," he said. At a quarter to midnight, he said, scores of police cruisers were driving up to people on the grass, spotlighting them with their headlights and revving their engines. The 84 people arrested--30 of whom were minors--were charged with unlawful assembly, obstruction, illegal fires, assault and various municipal bylaw transgressions. --Jacquie Charlton
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