The writing on the wall

"O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!" – A Midsummer Night's Dream

The anti-protest barrier started going up in downtown Toronto on Sunday night in advance of the G20 summit of world leaders that will be held in the city in late June.

The wall consists of a metre-tall concrete base topped by about two metres of chain-link fence. When completed in two weeks, it will run 3.3 kilometres long, encircling the southwestern edge of the financial district, the CN Tower, the CBC's broadcast centre and, crucially, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where the heads of two dozen countries will meet June 26 and 27.

That's a lot of empty wall space in prime areas of the city. What will become of it?

Advertising

"That I am that same wall; the truth is so: And this the cranny is, right and sinister." 

Billboard space in downtown Toronto rents for a lump of loonies. With tens of thousands of Canada's financial and business elite treading the city's streets every day, prime advertising locations can go for $60 a square metre per week.

The G20 barrier that's being erected offers nearly 20,000 square metres of possible ad space, counting both its outer and inner faces. Even at a more typical $40 a square metre, and factoring in a steep volume discount, it could pull in more than half a million dollars in revenue toward a summit security tab that's already near $1 billion, or 5½ times over budget.

But so far, there are no plans for that.

"To put anything on there or to obstruct it is not something we've considered," said Const. Wendy Drummond, a Toronto police spokesperson. "It would block the view, and what's going up could be used to injure or cause damage."

Um, how exactly could miles of paper, plastic or, at worst, canvas posters be used by demonstrators to injure anyone?

"They could use it for anything. I'm not going to speculate," Drummond maintained.

Anything? Really?

Mural art

"O wall, O sweet and lovely wall, Show me thy chink."

The world's most notorious walls have attracted some of the winsomest art.

The West German side of the Berlin Wall had murals from French artists Thierry Noir and American Keith Haring. After the collapse of East Germany, a remaining stand of the wall became the site of the East Side Gallery, a stretch of paintings by nearly 100 artists from around the globe. The gallery includes Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel's Fraternal Kiss.

The Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank has material from British graffiti artist Banksy, who surreptitiously sprayed nine works on it in 2005, as well as homegrown talents.

Public forum

"Such a wall, as I would have you think."

This won't be the first time Canada has seen the heart of one of its major cities barricaded for the sake of a global confab. 

When Quebec City hosted the 2001 Summit of the Americas, police erected a four-kilometre-long blockade around much of the historic old town, barring the neighbourhood's residents from inviting friends to their homes and forcing them to show ID passes to enter and exit the area. In the provincial capital, the barrier became known as the Mur de la honte, or Wall of Shame, after the nickname for the Berlin Wall.

A barrier also immured downtown Windsor, Ont., from the public when the Organization of American States met there in 2000.

Residents and activists used both fences to post art and messages of peace and politics, even as they hurled toilet paper rolls over the top to express their outrage.

That could prove a headache for the summit Integrated Security Unit, the RCMP-led consortium of law enforcement and military charged with policing the conference. RCMP Sgt. Michele Paradis said the ISU has to return the fence "to the company we leased it from … in the same state we received it." That includes scouring away every last jot of graffiti, she acknowledged.

Tear down the wall

"That vile Wall which did these lovers sunder."

Of course, the most prominent chunks of Toronto's G20 barrier may not last long once the summit gets underway. Using hooks and rope, protesters needed mere minutes to remove a span of Quebec City's Wall of Shame in 2001.

So even if summit security officials were open to allowing ads — which they aren't, Paradis made clear in insisting that "this fence isn't meant as an advertisement" — advertisers might be reluctant to put up their message in a space where it could be torn down just as quickly.