In a meeting with senior officials on Saturday, Mr. A larger demonstration in Alberta caused the Canada Border Services Agency on Saturday to temporarily suspend service at the Coutts border crossing, according to its website. They included a modest demonstration in Saskatchewan, where a small convoy of truckers parked on a plot of land near a border crossing, according to reports. Other protests were continuing in at least a dozen Canadian cities, drawing crowds of varying sizes. The unrest was not limited to Ottawa and Windsor. Many residents have complained of being intimidated by protesters, who have forced businesses in the area to close and hampered the police’s ability to respond to 911 calls. On Saturday, frustrated Ottawa residents took the streets themselves, holding a sizable counterprotest to call for an end to the demonstration.
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And despite a court injunction obtained last week by a neighborhood resident, truck drivers were blasting their horns without ceasing.
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Some carried gas cans, presumably to supply the truckers parked in the streets, though the Ottawa police had said they would crack down on anyone giving “material aid” to the demonstrators. Those officers who were present, dressed in neon-yellow vests, strolled in groups past protesters who were openly violating the law. Calls of “freedom” rang out repeatedly.Ī day earlier, the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, announced a state of emergency and warned of steep new penalties for protesters - but few police officers could be seen at the Ottawa demonstration. Vendors set up along the edges of the crowd, making quick sales of small Canada flags and T-shirts that rudely told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau where to go. Music played on various corners, and people danced in intersections. Thousands of protesters flooded the streets so thickly that it became almost impossible to move. On Saturday, the protest there swelled in both size and energy, giving the downtown streets the air of a giant - if illegal - party as vastly outnumbered police officers stood by and watched. The arrests in Windsor on Sunday were the first major police action since truckers and other Canadians protesting vaccine mandates laid siege to the area around Canada’s Parliament three weeks ago, inspiring copycat demonstrations across the country and beyond.īut the police have done little to intervene where the movement began: Ottawa, Canada’s capital.
Russell Goldman, Catherine Porter and Vjosa Isai contributed reporting. Over time, the protests spread across Ontario and the country. The truckers’ occupation of Ottawa sparked a movement, drawing protesters of many stripes who flocked to the convoy in a party-like atmosphere.
“Many of the citizens and businesses in Ottawa have been cheering us on but we are also disturbing others. “The truckers here in Ottawa have always been about peaceful protest,” Ms. The truckers have for weeks kept their vehicles parked in Ottawa, including near Parliament, snarling traffic and disrupting businesses. In the capital, a pair of letters released by Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa, and Tamara Lich, a protest organizer, suggested that the truckers, whose grievances with a vaccine mandate kicked off the demonstrations, had agreed to a deal in which the truckers would move their vehicles from residential neighborhoods. The protest at the bridge was one of several that has unsettled a country unaccustomed to widespread demonstrations. “Border crossings will reopen when it is safe to do so and I defer to police and border agencies to make that determination. “Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge came to an end,” the mayor of Windsor, Drew Dilkens, said on Sunday. The bridge reopened late Sunday, just before midnight. The Canadian authorities appeared to be making inroads Sunday to end the large-scale protests that have roiled the nation for weeks, arresting demonstrators who had blocked a critical border bridge to Detroit, and suggesting they had negotiated a deal with the truckers who have occupied the downtown core of Ottawa, the capital, for weeks.īy Sunday night, the police in Windsor, Ontario, said they had arrested several people and towed a pair of pickup trucks that had been parked in an intersection leading to the Ambassador Bridge.
Jeff Kowalsky/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images The authorities said the bridge would reopen once conditions were deemed safe. The police in Windsor, Ontario, made arrests and towed pickup trucks, clearing a road to a key border crossing to the United States.
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