A man in a white car gestured impatiently as security staff at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre halted his vehicle.

“What? I can’t park?” he said, continuing his complaints as a line of black cars came into view at the parkade?s entrance and turned left, vanishing behind concrete. A white limousine brought up the rear.

The man might be the only person unaware that two ex-presidents are visiting the Metro Toronto Convention Centre to debate the world’s political future for an audience paying rock-star ticket prices and upward. It didn’t appear to strike him that he was waiting for their motorcade.

A crowd of protesters, which peaked near perhaps 1,000, endeavoured to state their objections to Bush’s presence in Canada through chanting, protest singing and a ten-foot square tarpaulin painted with Bush’s face which was eventually destroyed by flying shoes.

Their slogans and signs named Bush as a war criminal for the actions he presided over in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay prison, where Canadian Omar Khadr still resides.

People accumulated in a slow trickle in late afternoon while police raised barricades, trotted around on horses and milled about in seasonal short pants.

Both police and protesters seemed easygoing to the point of casualness. The atmosphere seemed nearly festive as protesters held up hands inside red-stained medical gloves and proclaimed, “Blood on your hands!”

Other political theatre included human props dressed in prison orange, heads covered with black hoods like abused detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

The protest’s leaders praised the gathering for being peaceful, stating solidarity with non-violent Tamil rallies.

At only one point did the event, initiated by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, reach an intense pitch. As 5 o’clock passed, protesters unfurled “the unwelcome mat,” a long banner covered in red hand prints, which announced, “Bush and Clinton - War Criminals Not Welcome In Toronto.”

Chanting reached fever pitch as the dissenters called out, “Do your job! Arrest George Bush!” a statement intended for police, who suddenly became more vigorous about holding the line.

Shortly thereafter the action began to lose force. Calgary activist Splitting the Sky, not admitted to the podium for scheduled speakers, pulled focus to a speech made with a megaphone, attracting a handful of listeners as he railed against the protest’s organizers as well as Bush.

One-by-one, people drifted away and breaks between sloganeering got longer and more chatty.

As the attention of activists drifted from the mute windows of the Convention Centre, the unspoken question lingered about whether the ex-leaders had ignored their words against them completely.