At the Sept 22 public hearing, a Vanier resident shared his experience of the convoy.
“As the ‘Freedom Convoy’ was welcomed and given safe haven in the parking lot in our neighborhood at the Hampton Inn, which is located on Coventry and the Vanier Parkway, we the people of Overbrook and Vanier too were locked inside of our homes, unable to go to work or go to do groceries, see our families, or make it to our medical appointments because we feared an encounter with someone from the convoy who might go out of their way to hurt us.
We couldn’t help but tell ourselves that the reason the world allowed this far-right Freedom Convoy to park in our backyards was because the people of Overbrook and Vanier don’t matter to anyone in the world or the city. Day in and day out, during the entire occupation, I was on social media reminding people that when the trucks leave downtown, when they leave Confederation Park, or when they leave Elgin, or when they leave Parliament Hill, they come back to Vanier and Overbrook. They are our nightmare still. A lot of people celebrated when they saw some of the trucks move away and some of the streets cleared up in Centretown but those trucks came back to our neighborhood and clogged up our streets and made us less safe in return.”
You can view the full testimony here.
