The Furies in St. James Park: Batty v. City of Toronto as a Greek Tragedy

The Occupy Movement ended abruptly in Toronto on November 21, 2011, after a judge of the Ontario Superior Court ruled in Batty v. City of Toronto that protesters have no right under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to remain overnight in a public park without being subject to municipal by-laws and eviction notices. Counsel for Occupy Toronto failed to recognize that while legal narratives in real life rarely correspond to narratives about the law in fictional literary works, the perceived threat to the civic order posed by the Occupy Movement was as ancient as the one depicted in Aeschylus' play The Furies. Cross-examination of the City's witnesses might have helped challenge and change that archetypal narrative. Instead, the similar outcome in The Furies and Batty v. City of Toronto suggests that in a Greek myth and in Charter litigation, "law is prophecy and nothing more" (Oliver Wendell Holmes)