Rally planned against Olympic torch

The Olympic torch relay willpass throughsouthern Ontario on Sunday afternoon,withdemonstrators continuing torally against it.

Activists plan to greet the torch with a peaceful protest when it arrives for a celebration at city hall in Kitchener.

The activist group AW@L said it expects about 100 people to attend what it is billing as a family-friendly rally andmarch against the Vancouver Winter Games, which begin in February.

The group argues thatthe Olympic venues are on traditionalaboriginal land, that thesporting event's show of being eco-friendly belies Canada's poor environmental record and that Games organizers have broken promise after promise about leveraging the Olympics to build social housing.

"In Vancouver, in preparation for the 2010 Games, neighbourhoods have been brutally gentrified, drastically increasing homelessness and the marginalization of the urban poor. And to make matters worse, new bylaws have been passed in Vancouver that essentially criminalize homelessness and poverty," the group says on its website.

The torch is on a 45,000-kilometre journey to more than 1,000 communities across the country ahead of the Vancouver Games, with additional stops Sundayslated forLondon, Ingersoll, Woodstock, Stratford, Cambridge and Waterloo. Protests have greetedthetorchat manyevents along the way.

While the Olympic flame dates to ancient times, the modern torch relay beganwhenNazi Germanyhosted the Summer Games in Berlin in 1936.