Rowdy truckers anger Canadian authorities during vaccine protest
OTTAWA, Ontario – Police in Canada’s capital are investigating possible criminal charges after anti-vaccine protesters urinated on the National War Memorial, danced at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and used the statue of Canadian hero Terry Fox to post an anti-vaccine statement.
Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Ottawa on Saturday to protest vaccination mandates, masks and lockdowns. Some traveled in convoys of trucks and parked in the streets around Parliament Hill, blocking traffic.
Many, including some American truckers, stayed on Sunday.
Ottawa police said officers are also investigating threatening behavior toward police and others.
“Several criminal investigations are ongoing regarding the desecration of the National War Memorial/Statue of Terry Fox,” Ottawa police said.
Some protesters stationed on the grounds of the National War Memorial and others carried signs and flags with swastikas, drawing widespread condemnation.
The statue of Fox, a national hero who lost a leg to bone cancer as a youngster and then embarked on a fundraising hike across Canada in 1980, was draped in an upside down Canadian flag with a sign reading ‘Freedom of the Mandate’.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau retweeted a statement from the Terry Fox Foundation that “Terry believed in science and gave his life to help others.”
Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Trudeau said Canadians are not represented by this “very disturbing, small but very vocal minority of Canadians who attack science, government, society, mandates and public health advice.”
Deirdre Freiheit, president of the Shepherds of Good Hope, which runs a soup kitchen for the homeless in Ottawa, said several protesters showed up at the soup kitchen on Saturday and verbally assaulted staff and volunteers while demanding that they are served. She said some protesters had been given food to de-escalate the situation and that in future meals would only be given to those who needed them.
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