Coincidence, perhaps.

Students of Vanier Catholic Secondary School led a march from city hall to the Elijah Smith Building at lunchtime Wednesday.

Their message called for the humane treatment of prisoners in Iraq and at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and for the release of those being held without just cause or legal representation.

Early this morning, word reached Canada that the two Canadian members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams and a British colleague were freed from captivity in a bloodless rescue.

The three were among the four taken hostage off the streets of Baghdad late last year.

The body of the fourth, an American, was found March 10 on the streets of the Iraqi capital. He had been shot to death.

Students from Vanier began organizing themselves in front of city hall shortly before noon, their rainbow-coloured flags announcing their presence and the placards stating their motivation.

As the students gathered, so did others from different walks of life. None were too shy to carry a flag or walk hand-in-hand with the students as they marched down Second Avenue and up Main Street to the steps of the Elijah Smith Building.

'I am here because of my concern for the war in Iraq, and the disregard for human rights,' said Cameron Eckert, a member of the public who came down to city hall to join the march as a sign of solidarity for the cause.

His is not just one voice, nor is it just the 50 or more who took part in the Whitehorse march, but rather it's the thousands upon thousands who have supported peace rallies across Canada and around the world who are standing up for the tragedies in Iraq, Eckert said.

While Vanier teacher Mark Connell was among the staff who assisted the students in planning the march, it was an initiative driven by the students.

The placards were made by the students. The students dressed the mock detainees in coveralls and placed hoods over their heads, and chains around their hands.

'I believe if we do not stand up and do something right now, even though these people have nothing to do with us, it is going to happen to us,' Grade 11 student Anna Schmidt said of the detentions in the war-torn country. 'It is going to happen somewhere else.'

The messages on the placards were to the point:

• 'No one is free when others are oppressed.'

• 'Who's next?'

• 'Killing innocent people is the problem, not the solution.'

• 'Read between the pipelines.'

• 'Fight truth decay.'

'Millions of people spoke out before the war began (in 2003) to say it was the wrong thing to do,' Greg Garcia, an Alaskan teacher on sabbatical in the Yukon, told the peace marchers before they began.

Last Sunday, he pointed out, marked the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

'Three years later, three years later, it is still the wrong thing to do.'

Garcia said the U.S. tried to justify the war to the world with visions of mushroom clouds ballooning from Iraq's warehouse of weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction were never found.

But 10,000 Iraqis and 2,300 American soldiers have paid with the lives, and thousands more have been maimed, he said.

As the peace marchers made their way along Second Avenue and up Main Street, there was the occasional honk of support from a passing motorist.

'Mr. Connell, we came to walk with you guys,' declared one Vanier student who joined the march midway, along with another student.

Aaron McKenzie said he'd helped with making the signs, but hadn't quite committed himself to the march until the last minute.

'I feel there are a lot of things that don't need to be going on there,' McKenzie said. 'There are better options than we are choosing to do.'

As the peace marchers circled around the five detainees kneeling on the steps of the federal government building, passersby stopped to listen as different speakers called for humanity and peace, and spoke in opposition to what they described as unlawful and inhumane detention in Iraq and at the U.S. base in Cuba.

The march, said Connell, was a peaceful statement from people who have a voice and want to stand up and use that voice for the people who are victims of the ongoing abuse.

'There are quite literally thousands of Iraqi families who do not know if their family members, their mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, are alive,' Dwyer Sullivan, Connell's father-in-law and a member of the Christian Peacemakers Teams, told the gathering.

'As citizens of Canada and the United States, it is essential we voice our concern.'

As a gesture of kindness, as a symbol of what so many prisoners and Iraqis in general do without, a bottle of fresh water was placed before one of the detainees before her hood and chains were removed.

Participants and those who gathered to witness the peace march were invited to send a postcard designed by Christian Peacemaker Teams to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

'I am here, as kind of saying to the world, that violence is never a proper way to deal with difficult situations or conflict,' Father Jim Bleackley of the Sacred Heart Cathedral said in an interview as the peace rally ended.