Hundreds people marched down Yonge Street Friday night calling on the Canadian government to accept more refugees and other migrants in the wake of the tragic drowning of several members of a Syrian family who wished to come to Canada.

The protesters started their rally with a moment of silence and candlelit vigil for members of the Syrian Kurdi family who drowned, and then marched from Yonge-Dundas Square towards the offices of the Immigration and Refugee Board on Victoria Street.

The demonstration was one of many planned across Canada between Friday and Thursday, Sept. 9.

“We want a total transformation of the Canadian immigration system,” Syed Hassan of No One Is Illegal told CP24. “We want the Canadian government to take responsibility for the millions of people they have displaced — we’re not just talking about Syrian refugees, we’re talking about Eritrean refugees, Palestinian refugees and temporary foreign workers.”

Marchers briefly blocked vehicle traffic at the intersection of Yonge and Queen streets with a sit-in.

On Thursday, news organizations across the globe carried the image of a three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, lying dead on a Turkish beach, after the boat he was travelling in with his family capsized in the Aegean Sea on its way to Greece. It was later revealed the Kurdi family wanted to seek asylum in Canada.

The story prompted calls for Canada to relax its restrictions on accepting refugees. It also sparked a renewed interest in the Syrian crisis, with some Canadians looking to see if they could help sponsor migrants on their own.

“It’s obvious that people in this country want to welcome refugees and migrants,” Hassan said. “The only people who are against it are a few politicians and they need to get on board.”

Conservative leader Stephen Harper has said he wants Canada to accept 10,000 more Syrian refugees, but both NDP leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau say the country should re-settle more than that.

"We've taken wave upon wave of refugees from other disturbances," demonstrator Kier Munn said of Canada's actions during crises in southeast Asia in the late 1970s or the Balkans in the late 1990s. "I don't understand why we're not doing more in this instance."