Racialized Geographies and the Fear of Ships

It was during rush hour when two hundred white-identified individu-als in a forty-foot wood-framed boat descended onto the streets of Toronto. The people were dressed in white t-shirts and the boat was wrapped in canvas painted red and blue. Together they crossed Queen Street West and occupied four lanes of traffic in one of the busiest commercial districts of the city. The ship ‘docked’ outside of the flagship store of the Hudson Bay Company — a former fur-trading corporation that was once the de facto colonial ruler of the region.1Unlike any other mass action I had been to, the crowd seemed to take over the intersection effortlessly. During the fifteen minutes that they held the site, there was no police intimidation, no harassment from onlookers, and only mild frustration from the ebbing crowds.