Listen live (last para): Toronto Red Friday Rally for troops, Sept. 29

Things are moving ahead.

A sea of support is all we are after.

A massive sea of red is what we want the troops to see.

Friday, at noon, it will happen at Yonge-Dundas Square.

Get on board the bus because it is rolling. Judging from the e-mails and calls there will be more than a few of you wearing red and cheering on our Canadian military personnel.

It turns out we have a stage as part of this -- thanks to Greyhound Canada. "We are in support of the troops," said Brad Shephard, senior v-p of Greyhound.

With that in mind, he decided to give up their permit on the square in favour of this rally. They will hold their promotional event for a new bus at another time...

Meanwhile, the Friday Red Rally at noon at the corner of Yonge and Dundas is growing by the second. Justin Van Dette of Councillor Bill Saundercook's office has been unbelievable in his organizational skills in helping make it happen.

Same goes for Louise Gray of the Toronto Police Association, who is dealing with the media side of this. They have been putting out fire after fire. For example, when we ran into trouble needing to pay a permit fee, the association's board of directors wrote the cheque. Those are your cops, folks. Our troops here.

Special thanks also to Chief Bill Blair, who was the first person who called me when this started and said he was in -- 100%. These are good guys and we are lucky to have them.

MORALE BOOST

The media has also come through huge. They have put aside the competitive aspect of this business and have been pushing the event in a massive way. They just want the soldiers to know that people here are ready to give them a morale boost...

From an editorial in the Toronto Sun:

Radio stations CFRB 1010, AM 640 and Q-107 deserve kudos for getting behind the Red Rally right away...

Update: This post is going to stay at the top of the page until the rally's done tomorrow. I'll see you there, with red on. - Babbling Brooks

Upperdate: More in a message from CFRB--good on them, CFRA played a similar role in Ottawa--to Dr. Roy.

Uppestdate: Front page of Friday's Toronto Sun. Well done. And the rally will be live at noon Eastern on CFRB and AM-640 Radio. Listen up folks.