Local man’s view from the street at Ottawa protest

A Quinte West man has returned home from the protest in Ottawa and says the way anti-vaccine mandate protesters in Ottawa are being portrayed is highly inaccurate.

Dave, who did not wish for his last name to be used, says he is not a trucker but went to support the cause and slept in his car for over a week.

He says besides a few isolated incidents, there is no hate or violence and those protesting the anti-vaccine mandates just want the freedom of choice.

“Like these people, every street, every block, they have food set up, tables of food. Coffee, just giving it to people. They are feeding all the homeless people down there. According to the homeless people, they’ve never eaten so well. You know, the people are happy. There’s not the narrative of any kind of violence or hate.”

Dave adds he saw only one flag bearing a Nazi symbol and that person was told to leave and someone driving a truck with a confederate flag was only there at the beginning.

He says he doesn’t understand residents who say they are afraid to leave their homes.

“I don’t know who all these people are that were going around in the subdivisions and causing all these problems and threatening to make all these people scared to come out of their houses, like, nobody knows. Nobody down there who’s actually on the street knows or has seen or heard any of this.”

And, people are cleaning up after themselves.

“All the garbage from all the ten of thousands people that have been there over the week was cleaned up. There are garbage bags everywhere. And there are young lads goin’ around in cars and trailers and they are picking up all the garbage. There is, like, no garbage laying around, anywhere.”

He admitted the horn honking might have been hard for some people to take but truckers have been keeping the noise level down in recent days.

On Monday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean granted a 10-day injunction to prevent truckers parked on city streets from honking their horns incessantly.

But McLean says the injunction is temporary because he needs to hear more evidence.

Also Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly has asked the mayor to request 1,800 additional police and civilian personnel for immediate use until the end of the demonstration in the city.

That would nearly double the existing resources of the entire Ottawa Police Service, which has 2,100 police and civilian members.

With files from the Canadian Press