I apologize for not presenting my experience more clearly then. Ottawa is a city that is used to protest. Being the nations capital, they happen quite frequently. I am quite used to having certain aspects of my day distrupted by protest. So allow me to share some experiences that demonstrates what made this event unique:
- being unable to sleep for weeks due to train horns being blared at all hours of the night.
- having every single one of my friends and family who is some sort of visual minority having racial slurs hurled at them daily.
- seeing someone waving a nazi flag near the War Memorial.
- Having fireworks explode in between apartment buildings right next to where people lived.
- Daily harassment of any medical staff, sometimes coming directly into hospitals to shout conspiracy theories about doctors killing people with vaccines. Nurses self-organized into protection groups and were instructed not to come to work wearing scrubs to avoid harrassment.
- a group of grown men yelling at a kid who could not have been more than 17, who was unfortunate enough to be working at Tim Hortons, calling him a mask wearing faggot.
All these are personal stories either directly from myself or from those who were close to me. I share these because I am well aware of the those attempting to frame these types of stories as small, performed by a few bad actors,not representative of the movement, and that the media was highlighting a few isolated incidents to spin the image as negative. So let me assure you, these types of behaviours were constant, everywhere, and actively encouraged by many who were there. The supposed "media narrative" was quite real, as was apparent by anyone who lived in the area.
I believe in the right to protest, but there is a line where a "protest" becomes harassment to those around you. Let's recall that parliament was remote at the time, so the government who this anger was directed at was not even present at the location. Nor do government employees typically live in the city. So the justification of getting back at those who wronged you was not even present. They weren't even inconveniencing the people they came to protest. Instead they blared horns in residential areas, shot fireworks next to high-rises that were people's homes, threatened health care workers, and yelled at Tim Hortons employees. They had / have a legitimate right to protest. They instead chose to occupy a city who's inhabitants were not even those who they were angry at.