Wet’suwet’en solidarity demonstrators, who disrupted GO train service for the commute home Tuesday afternoon, were still camped out on a rail line in the city’s west end amidst a heavy police presence Tuesday night.

At rush hour, Union Station was jam-packed with frustrated commuters trying to figure out how they were going to get home. Regular service finally resumed at about 6:30 p.m., but not before thousands of passengers were delayed.

In a message posted to Twitter shortly after 4:30 p.m., Metrolinx said incidents on the tracks have “the potential to disrupt customers throughout our entire system.”

Earlier, protesters had blocked the commercial rail tracks, behind Lambton Arena, near Dundas and Jane Streets. The blockade started around 4 p.m., with demonstrators sitting on the tracks and singing Indigenous songs as they held up signs supporting the Wet’suwet’en and Tyendinaga protests.

At about 10 p.m., between 20 and 30 remained on the tracks surrounded by police. A short distance away, roughly a hundred protesters huddled around the fence that closes off the rail line, chanting, holding signs and raising their fists.

Hours earlier, police started removing the protesters from the tracks as supporters shouted “shame.” At least eight were arrested but police wouldn’t confirm the number to the Star.

Many of the protesters moved off the track and staged a standoff with officers.

Crystal Sinclair of the Idle No More protest movement told the Star she had come to the protest to support other Indigenous people across the country who are voicing their concerns about land ownership.

“This is about making a statement. Indigenous sovereignty is not being respected,” she said as the crowd of protesters grew larger through the evening. “They have to start paying attention, get off our land because injustice to one is injustice to all.”

A few metres from the tracks, Olivia Coombe was wrapped in a blanket, sitting on a small carpet with food and water supplies. Two fires were fully alight to keep her warm.

“I’m going to stay here until they remove me or until we’re free,” she said.

Throughout the evening, dozens of protesters and their allies kept chanting slogans of solidarity and of denouncing police and RCMP.

Just outside the fences leading to the rail tracks, a standoff continued between a line of police officers and a chanting crowd.

Wesley Victor-Sterling said he’s been an Indigenous advocate starting with Occupy Toronto. For him, this is about leaving Indigenous land to Indigenous people.

“I just want to tend my garden, light up a fire and be left alone in peace,” he said.

The protests caused major headaches from commuters.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins said there had been reports of disruptions at Kipling station on the Milton line, as well as at Guildwood on Lakeshore East.

Metrolinx tweeted at around 4:45 p.m. that the situation at Guildwood had been cleared and normal service was resuming, but customers could expect residual delays. At about 6:30 p.m., the first train to Milton finally departed Union after a two-hour delay but it was using a diversion.

“While we are beginning to recover service, with trains running on all GO lines, however we still expect delays and cancellations throughout the evening,” Metrolinx tweeted.

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Aikins said Milton trains would use a diversion along CP-owned tracks to avoid the protests. The route will take between 20 and 30 minutes longer than normal. She said Metrolinx was monitoring whether the diversion would be required Wednesday should the disruptions persist.

“If we have to, we’ll use it in the morning,” she said.

According to Aikins, Metrolinx deployed all available officers to help with crowding at Union Station on Tuesday evening as the delays caused large crowds.

Some train trips on the Kitchener, Barrie, and Lakeshore West lines that weren’t directly affected by the protests had to be cancelled because it would have been unsafe to allow more people on the platforms at Union, Aikins said.

“We just couldn’t run as many trains as we normally do,” she said.

The protests on the Lakeshore West line appeared to have been cleared Tuesday evening, and Aikins said CN was examining the tracks near Hamilton to ensure the line was safe to operate regular service on.

The GO Transit rail network carries more than 215,000 people per day. The Milton line carries 15,300 riders daily.

Aikins earlier said the agency was doing its best to respond to reports of potential blockages.

“It’s a quickly evolving situation, and information is coming swiftly and in limited fashion, and we aren’t able to as quickly develop a recovery plan when there’s this much of our rail (network) impacted,” Aikins said.

GO warned of severe crowding at Union Station as a result. Commuters were trying to figure out what platform their train — if it was still running — would be leaving from.

While the trains on the Milton line were the only ones that were suspended, there were severe delays for all others with the Lakeshore West and Lakeshore East lines being the worst.

Frustrating matters was that attendants who were trying to help passengers didn’t have the latest accurate information. Commuters who spoke to the Star didn’t share frustrations with the protesters. Instead they focused their anger on Metrolinx employees who couldn’t help them.

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Passengers were able to board on both sides of the car for some trains as officials tried to ease congestion on the platforms. Every time there was a boarding announcement, waves of passengers began moving to that platform.

Aikins called Tuesday’s disruption “unprecedented.” In 1987, a strike by CP and CN workers left 30,000 daily GO commuters scrambling to find a ride to work.

Aikins said the agency had been preparing for potential disruptions in the wake of protests across the country in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs in B.C. who are opposing the construction of a natural gas pipeline through their land.

“We have been working with our safety partners for the last few weeks, and have stepped up our efforts over the last couple of days. We have an emergency preparedness plan that we have put in effect,” she said.

“The first priority we have is to make sure everybody stays safe, so everybody has been working round the clock, especially the last 48 hours.”

Earlier Tuesday, Wet’suwet’en solidarity protesters forced GO Transit to cancel morning train service at its stations in Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Hamilton and West Harbour and instead run shuttle buses between the stations.

Supporters of Wet’suwet’en say they have blockaded trains east-west and north-south in and out of Toronto following the OPP raid on Tyendinaga Mohawk outside Belleville.

More than 220,000 people ride GO trains on an average weekday and more than 90 per cent of those commuters travel to Union Station.

The commuter service carries another 52,000 people on its buses.

It operates seven train lines across about 500 kilometres of track, the majority of which is owned by Metrolinx, the provincial agency that operates GO.

With files from Jacob Lorinc, Tess Kalinowski, Gilbert Ngabo , Sean Pattendon and Jenna Moon

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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