The former US vice president Dick Cheney had planned to speak April 24 in Toronto. However, recovered memories of September protests convinced Cheney that "personal safety" was at stake in Canada, and both he and daughter Elizabeth will stay on the safer side of the border.
"On the advice of security, they were worried that quite simply Canada is just not a friendly country to them," said Ryan Ruppert, the president of the promotions company that booked Cheney for the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. "God forbid there was ever an emergency" he added, referring to Cheney's heart problems. Cheney, a former heavy smoker, relies on a battery-powered heart pump and has no pulse.
Cheney's turnabout should satisfy the StopWar Coalition, which led the 2011 protests. "We hope to set an example that Cheney doesn't see Canada as a safe haven," co-chair Derrick O'Keefe told the Globe and Mail at the time.
Not that Cheney isn't used to protests in his backyard. His book tour for "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir" has had Amnesty International on his back in D.C. and New York City, Code Pink in San Francisco, Illinois Coalition Against Torture in Chicago, former vets at the Nixon Library in Southern California.
Canadian critics as high up as Parliament, though, have accused Cheney of being a war criminal, for advocating tactics such as water boarding and sleep deprivation.