MONTREAL - The clamour of anti-war protest will once again surround the Montreal hotel where John Lennon and Yoko Ono held a bed-in that helped define the peace movement of a generation.
But this time Ono won't be at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, where 40 years ago she and Lennon recorded the anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance."
There won't be any ex-Beatles present, either.
Instead, George W. Bush will be holding court this week inside the downtown building.
The former U.S. president will reminisce Thursday about his time in the White House and discuss challenges the world will face in the future.
He was invited by the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, which has been selling tickets to the event for between $200 and $400 each.
Bush, who left office in January, led his country into two wars and saw his popularity rocked by criticism of a campaign in Iraq that proved to be far bloodier than predicted.
Anti-war demonstrators plan to let him know they're still upset.
One protest organizer acknowledged the connection between Bush's speech and the 40th anniversary of Lennon's week-long stay at the Queen Elizabeth during the height of the Vietnam War.
"It's ironic," said Raymond Legault, spokesman for the group Collectif Echec a la Guerre, said of the link to Lennon.
But he said he's more focused on denouncing Bush for his role in, among other things, present conflicts. The irony of the setting is merely secondary.
"This is sort of very thin icing on our protest cake," Legault said.
"This is to protest, more or less, everything that George Bush stood for and still stands for -- meaning getting the U.S. and many other countries into two wars."
Legault's group collected donations from some 500 people to buy a full-page newspaper ad Saturday telling Bush he's not welcome in Montreal.
He expects a few hundred people to come out and blast Bush for his controversial record, which includes allegations of torture at military prisons in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.
Protests have followed Bush during his two previous visits to Canada this year.
In March, around 400 noisy demonstrators launched insults outside a Calgary convention centre, where Bush delivered his first public speech after leaving the Oval Office.
Four people were arrested in the tumult, when several people paid homage to Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi by throwing shoes at posters of Bush.
When Bush visited Toronto with former U.S. president Bill Clinton in May, hundreds of demonstrators swarmed outside the venue, many calling both ex-presidents war criminals.
It was a different story when Clinton appeared alone in Montreal last week. He drew an adoring crowd of 700 people that came to watch him receive an honourary doctorate at McGill University.
Bush is also scheduled to speak in Edmonton on Tuesday and Saskatoon on Wednesday.
The moderator for the Montreal event, which includes a 45-minute speech by Bush followed by a 45-minute question-and-answer period, said the anticipated rally doesn't surprise him.
"We may agree or disagree -- it's always healthy for the public discourse," said John Parisella, the former chief of staff to the late Quebec premier Robert Bourassa.
Parisella, who will take over as Quebec's delegate-general in New York next month, said the hotel happens to be one of the finer speaking venues in the city. The link to Lennon was accidental, he said.
"There's no symbolism in this and there's certainly no intent to be disrespectful to other parts in history," Parisella said.
"I think it just happened to be circumstance that brought us to the Queen Elizabeth."
The head of Montreal's Board of Trade said he invited Bush because there's significant interest from the city's business community to hear a former president of Canada's biggest trading partner.
"There's no point in saying there's no controversy -- there is controversy," said Michel Leblanc, who expects to sell out the 1,000-seat venue.
"From the Board of Trade's perspective . . . we do not endorse, we do not have (a) value judgement about what they say."
