Tim Abray says the past week in Canada’s capital has been unlike any in recent memory.

Residents of Ottawa have been harassed and spat on; businesses have had their windows smashed; staff and volunteers at a shelter have been intimidated and called racial slurs; and healthcare workers and patients have said they had trouble getting to and from hospitals.

Abray, a communications consultant who lives in a residential neighbourhood not far from Ottawa City Hall, says these incidents and more have made the city of about 1 million people feel like “an occupation zone”.

“The fact that people don’t feel safe in the streets, the fact that we can’t walk freely in our own parks in broad daylight, when we’re not even saying or doing anything to anyone, has absolutely contributed to the feeling that we are occupied.”

Last week, thousands of anti-vaccine truckers and their supporters converged on Ottawa, a usually sleepy capital filled with bureaucrats and government offices. The so-called “Freedom Convoy” protesters were demanding the federal government lift an order requiring truckers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to cross the land border between Canada and the United States.

A protester in Ottawa holds a sign that reads, 'Castreau has got to go'

But even before the convoy arrived, the protest leaders – some of whom are well-known, far-right activists – said their movement went beyond the vaccine mandate alone.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/4/ottawa-residents-decry-anti-vaccine-trucker-occupation