At the Oct 27 public hearing, a resident who works near the Rideau Centre shared her experience of the occupation.
“I was working the day that they had to close the Rideau Center. We had to evacuate my work as well, and it was about 4pm. I’m assuming a lot of people have seen the videos, there were a lot of people there without masks just filling the LCBO getting ready for the weekend. So I left with my roommate, she worked at the same building as me. So we’re trying to get home and we’re like oh we’ll just take the LRT, not a big deal. The swarms of people there, people were already drinking. My roommate and I were both verbally assaulted and then had sexual advances aimed towards us as well. Thankfully nothing happened.
My work was closed for 13 days throughout the occupation. I had my hearing affected from listening to the sound of horns and music and bass for about nine hours when I did work. The days I was there I couldn’t even sit in the back. I’m pretty much at the corner near Rideau and Sussex where they had many dance parties, lots of horns were there too. In my opinion, they pretty much took away all of our freedoms to enjoy the city to enjoy our local communities and to support local businesses.”
You can view the full testimony here.
