Grand Prix Protests: Montreal Police Clamp Down On Protesters After Attempt To Disrupt Formula One Race

MONTREAL - A weekend that brought Montreal's social unrest to the international stage ended Sunday with police clamping down on an attempt to disrupt the city's Grand Prix Formula One race.

Anti-capitalists and students upset about tuition fee increases held demonstrations throughout the four-day event, marking the arrival of the world's premier auto racing series. The protests gave visitors a taste of the dramatic scenes — sometimes joyful, sometimes violent — that locals have been witness to for months.

Montreal's Grand Prix party crashed by protesters

Hundreds of demonstrators besieged Montreal's Grand Prix street parties Friday night, as police used pepper-spray and reportedly rubber bullets, arrested a dozen people and forcefully pushed back crowds of protesters and bystanders alike.

Starting at around 9 p.m. ET, a group of about 200 demonstrators formed on downtown Crescent Street, right next to a street festival for Grand Prix revellers. A protest march of another several hundred people headed toward the same location.

Montreal police and officers from the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial force, spent two hours in a cat-and-mouse game trying to block the second group's approach to the area try to prevent a confrontation between demonstrators and Formula One fans.

Quebec student protests: Montreal’s Crescent Street becomes fault line in battle over Grand Prix

MONTREAL — On one side of the barrier they shouted about the injustices of global capitalism; on the other they sipped beer and snapped pictures of luxury sports cars.

A group of activists — protesting capitalism in general and Quebec's tuition hikes in particular — have been trying their hardest to crash the party on the Montreal street most closely associated with this weekend's Canadian Grand Prix festivities.

There have been some surreal scenes as these two ideological worlds collide.

Rage boils in Bahrain’s streets, but Grand Prix still on

Formula One drivers race in Bahrain on Sunday while rage boils on the streets outside, among protesters who denounce the Grand Prix as a gaudy spectacle by a ruling family that crushed Arab Spring demonstrations last year.

In the Shi’ite villages dotted around the capital, demonstrators hurling petrol bombs have clashed nightly with police during the past week, and security forces responded with teargas, rubber bullets and birdshot.

Black smoke from burning tyres wafted over Budaiya, a village outside the capital that saw mass protests this week.

For those inside the Formula One bubble, far from the scenes of protest, the unrest has had little impact. Teams assembled at Bahrain International Circuit amid the usual security precautions ahead of the race. At hotels where race participants were staying, guests swam and relaxed poolside in the morning. The highway to the circuit was lined with police cars.

The luxury sporting event is the government’s chance to show that life has gone back to normal in the island kingdom after security concerns over anti-government demonstrations forced last year’s race to be delayed, then cancelled.