Protest organizers had hoped that thousands of Quebec students would rally in Montreal this afternoon against planned tuition increases, but according to the CBC News, only a fraction of that number turned out. Maybe it was the rain, but the event was a damp squib compared with the turnout and fervor of a student demonstration in March 2005.

This year the Association for Solidarity Among Student Unions had tried for weeks to drum up support for a student strike. It had some success among the French-language universities and colleges, with about 60,000 students voting to take action, but students at the English-speaking universities weren’t interested in walking out of classes. Both McGill and Concordia University rejected a strike, and only students at the English-language Dawson College opted to join a three-day strike this week.

As The Gazette, a local newspaper, reported, students clashed with the police earlier in the week at the University of Quebec at Montreal and at a vocational institution known as Cegep Vieux-Montréal, where more than 100 students were arrested after setting up barricades on the campus and turning fire hoses on the riot police. —Karen Birchard