In one of the more surreal moments of Toronto's chaotic G20 Summit weekend, a videographer captured a lone man banging on the doors of the Eaton Centre mall and demanding to be let in to shop.
"Why are you closed? Tell us why you're closed?" he demanded in the video.
"Tell us the reason: Why? Why?" he yelled, pulling on the doors. "Why are you putting people through this?"
Some puzzled spectators looked on, but one young man rushed to a window near a Yonge Street entrance and adopted a pose that suggested he'd been splattered there.
"Who gave you the right?" the man, clad in a black T-shirt, continued as the young man writhed against the glass. "Who gave you the right to exclude the population? Why? Who are you? How dare you do this to us! We want to shop!"
He noted that the posted hours suggested the mall should be open until 7 p.m.
The man -- wearing a T-shirt with a red star with a peace symbol in the middle, and the word "resist" visible -- finally gave up and started walking away, asking if no one cared.
He then whirled and turned on the videographer. "It's just a spectacle to you? It's just funny?"
He then laughed in a manic, sarcastic tone before saying: "Let the police cut off my balls. I don't mind because it's the cops and they're always right!"
He asked the man to stop filming. He described the notion that the mall had been closed to keep him out as "crazy."
Cadillac Fairview owns the Eaton Centre.
When vandalism broke out during the massive G20 protest march on Saturday, the Eaton Centre locked its doors.
An attempt was made to reach mall management for comment, but it didn't respond.
The video, first posted Monday, had garnered 400,000 views before the original poster removed it from the video site. However, others have reposted the original while mashups are starting to appear.
With files from The Canadian Press
