The college student walkout called by a pro-Palestinian group Wednesday in Montreal denounced what they call the “ZIonist agenda” of Quebec’s Minister of Higher Education.
Organizers urged Dawson and Vanier students to leave classes and denounce Pascale Déry’s investigation into the climate at the two English CEGEPs, where she has highlighted a toxic and explosive climate on campus has seen students being bullied, anti-Israel activities with antisemitic elements, and abuse from the podium.
Such unrest has dominated the post-secondary education scene in Montreal since Oct. 7, 2023.
Déry had also inquired about specific courses being taught at the English public colleges that focus on Palestine—including a course titled ‘Nakba’—telling reporters she intervened “because the context was really explosive… I asked: to avoid adding fuel to the fire, could we have avoided talking about more sensitive and divisive issues in this French class?” Teachers, students and union reps pushed back, calling that infringement of academic freedom and censorship.
The groups slammed Déry for her prior association as a board member of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) for six years before being provincially elected with the governing Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ), adding up to perceived evidence of her conflict of interests with “Zionist lobbies,” especially given that CIJA had called for action on campuses.
The call went out to join the demonstrators at Dawson “to demand Minister Déry resign from her position, as she abuses her power for the Zionist agenda. The Ministry of Education’s biased investigation into Dawson and Vanier is an attack on academic freedoms and an attempt to repress the movement for Palestinian liberation” reads a post by the group Students for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance. (There was no activity at Vanier.)
The walkout itself was a less raucous and smaller affair than that which convened in front of Concordia University for the November student strike. This time, around 150 demonstrators gathered at Dawson, with about two dozen onlookers and more than 50 police officers around the sector as area streets were blocked for about two hours.
Students at @college_dawson walked out of classroom to protest on the streets of Montreal as opposed to, you know, getting an education. pic.twitter.com/nCuVYKlkH2
— Leviathan (@l3v1at4an) March 26, 2025
The protest by the presumed students—about half of whom masked, with a dozen older adults also present—wound its way through the west end of downtown, stopping for a few minutes in front of Westmount Square, which houses the Israeli consulate, for speeches that denounced “the occupation” before continuing down Sainte Catherine Street, effectively shutting down an estimated 20 to 30 square blocks to all traffic.
The crowd chanted slogans about divestment, Dawson and Concordia’s “complicity in genocide,” and repeated “Glory to our martyrs, glory to the resistance,” calling “Pascale Déry, espion Israel” (Pascale Déry, Israeli spy).
Outside the Israeli consulate a member of the Dawson Student Union spoke as a phalanx of police officers surrounded the entrance to the office towers—some of them armed with what appeared to be rubber bullet launchers.
Professors can’t force student attendance
Organizers had circulated a template online for students to ask teachers for a waiver from class assignments or presence for the day. Dawson is the Quebec public college that famously shut down last November during the “student strike for Palestine,” citing an inability to guarantee the safety of its students. This, after a very fractious student vote and after the school’s Muslim student association posted warnings to opponents of the strike, speaking victory and “triumph of Islam” along with references to caliphate and ongoing struggles.
The CJN asked Dawson director-general Diane Gauvin what preparations were in place, and if students would be waived from attendance requirements in class.
Gauvin replied that the school was working with Montreal police and Dawson hired additional security for the event.
“As for professors, they do not have the authority to keep students in class” she wrote. “This is not high school.” Upon further query, Gauvin then explained that save for two courses, attendance is not a requirement at Dawson, and that it is up to teachers and departments to make such determinations.
Outside, a dozen bicycle cops, three vehicles and two dozen special intervention officers walked along the route. One student from Vanier named Rubin told The CJN there was not even a hint of activity at his campus, and he came down to Dawson on his way home “to see what the fuss was all about. It’s the usual.”
Déry’s office would not comment on the protest or the calls for her resignation.
Outside the front entrance of Dawson, where the crowd hoisted banners proclaiming, “student intifada” and “Fuck Trump Fuck Israel,” a group of Jewish students gathered to watch. A masked protester standing nearby approached the students and asked one to hold up his phone not to film her—with a calm exchange ensuing between the two—before the Jewish student replied, “You’re doing all this, and you don’t want to be on camera? Take off your mask if you’re proud of what you are doing here.”
Soon afterwards, a group of protesters approached the Jewish students with a large Palestinian flag attempting to block their view. Some two-way verbal jabs ensued before they left, and then a police officer approached the Jewish students and chided them for their presence. “Why are you here? What are you doing here?” he said. “You don’t have to be here, why don’t you go somewhere else?”
The group of six students were standing several metres from the edge of the crowd, none of them shouting or protesting. “We want to see what’s happening” said one of the students. “My teacher said they’re not teaching today because of all this, so I want to see why.”
“Stop bullshitting me” replied the Montreal cop, “you can go do something else.” Then a cavalry officer moved forward, prodding and separating the Jewish students from the rest of the crowd. “We have the right to be here,” a female student told The CJN. “It’s a public street, we’re allowed to stand here.”
The CJN asked the students, who would not be identified, if they felt intimidated by police questioning. “No, it’s so stupid,” said the one who responded to the officer.
‘College is to learn about the world’
The incident was reminiscent of the case of Montreal Rabbi Adam Scheier, who was famously asked by Montreal police to vacate a downtown sidewalk during a Nov. 24 pro-Palestinian protest, for fear that his presence would incite the crowd.
Montrealers, and many Canadians beyond, recoiled in horror at this revelation, much as they did a few weeks earlier when Scheier was asked by Montreal police to leave his Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, with people in attendance that night, via the back door to avoid engaging protesters who had gathered close to the front of the Westmount synagogue in violation of a Quebec court order that police reportedly did not enforce.
One of the students asked by police to leave the scene told The CJN, “We were just kind of standing here, not really moving. We were teasing back and forth about their masks and ‘way to go’ that type of thing. I get it, if we were running over to bother them, but we were just standing there, and they came to us.”
Another said, “We were standing peacefully, they had no reason to come over, they came specifically because they saw my friend who has a kippah, they identified him as a Jew and said, ‘Here look at this’ and shoved the big flag in our faces.”
As the crowd left Dawson towards the consulate, a police gang squad truck idled nearby along with two ambulances, and an unmarked van carrying officers with tactical gear.
“We are the intifada!” chanted one speaker, vowing to dismantle “the occupation of the Holy Land and all of Palestine. Glory to our martyrs and long live the resistance! Israel you will learn, in the millions we’ll return.”
A woman stepped out onto the sidewalk on Sainte Catherine Street and stood silently holding a small handwritten sign saying, “Free the Hostages,” as police officers on bicycle immediately surrounded her while the group passed.
One masked protestor named Reah told The CJN, in French, “College is to learn about the world, and we are here to act for Palestine which is a unifying element for all the world. This will never go away,” she said. “Even after liberation.”
A protest speakers said government investigators are coming into schools “interrogating faculty and administrators, trying to suppress Arab, Muslim and Palestinian voices on campus… They say now it’s for student safety but the same teachers that have made us feel safe are now the ones being investigated.” A student union rep also denounced the government investigation while cutting crucial funding for college maintenance and repairs. The union representative told the crowd the investigation “not only makes students question who the minister feels she is protecting but only reassures us students that she doesn’t have the interest of all students at heart.”
Another speaker said Muslim student associations have been targeted at Vanier and Dawson as investigators have been “going into our prayer rooms for reasons undisclosed in this investigation, violating student privacy to prayer,” the crowd responding with “Shame!”
“The oppression of Muslims and Palestinian students is not new, and the motive of the government is clear,” she said, “they are also attempting to ban the hijab in schools… the motive is clear, to erase all expression of the Muslim identity… The investigation (has) never been about a toxic climate, the government has made it a personal goal to create Islamophobia in the province.”
Police say enforcement has limits
As the protest moved along 2.5 kilometres of downtown roads that were shut down to vehicle traffic along with all adjoining side streets, The CJN asked one officer on site what the complete itinerary was. “I’m not sure” he said. “We just walk with them.” Asked If that could mean the march could continue to block all traffic, commerce and buses until 6 p.m., he replied “It can go on until tomorrow morning if they want. It’s their right.”
The bylaw requiring an itinerary and the prohibition of masking during protests was repealed by mayor’s Valérie Plante administration in 2019, following a court ruling that said the planning measure was unreasonable and the masking ban unconstitutional.
The CJN asked Montreal police for clarification of their demonstrations policy with regard to traffic blocking and duration. The force did not address the issue of blocked access to cars, trucks, public transit and commerce, but rather issued what has become a boilerplate reply, that their role “is to ensure that (demonstrations) take place in the safety of people and property, and that they are carried out in compliance with the laws and regulations in force.” Police confirmed, however, that there are “no regulations on the supervision of events,” and therefore, “no obligation to transmit an itinerary or a timetable.”
