6:30 p.m.: Ottawa police found themselves patrolling increasingly empty downtown streets on Sunday as the “Rolling Thunder” protest made good on plans to decamp from Canada’s capital, but the force did open an investigation after the scene of the day’s only formal event was defaced with graffiti targeting demonstrators.
Unlike in February, when throngs of protesters opposed to COVID-19 public health measures and the federal government choked Ottawa’s streets for weeks, scant traces of this weekend’s rallies remained on Sunday afternoon.
Roughly a dozen people milled around outside Parliament following a Sunday morning service at the nearby Capital City Bikers’ Church, the final scheduled event of the weekend-long rally.
The event drew hundreds of worshippers as police launched an investigation into vandalism that allegedly took place ahead of the gathering.
Bikers, “Rolling Thunder” rally supporters and other worshippers arrived at the church to find its brick exterior had been vandalized with spray-painted messages including “fascists” and “no haven for fascism.”
The Ottawa Police Service confirmed it is investigating “an incident of hate-motivated mischief at a religious institution” on Carillon Street, the same one where the church is located.
5 p.m.: At the height of the convoy protest this winter, exasperated residents of Canada’s capital pleaded to “make Ottawa boring again.”
Mission accomplished with the “Rolling Thunder” protest of this past weekend. A few hundred motorcycles did orderly laps near the War Memorial, the police were out in force, and the first really nice spring weekend in Ottawa was, well, almost boring.
Sure, there were some echoes of the occupation of the city earlier this year: flag-draped protesters roaming downtown, the now familiar, if incoherent, chants about vaccine mandates and Justin Trudeau. But Rolling Thunder will be remembered more for what it wasn’t than for whatever it was supposed to be about.
Read the latest column from the Star’s Susan Delacourt.
12 p.m. Ontario is reporting 17 additional deaths linked to COVID-19 today and a decline in virus-related hospitalizations.
The Health Department says 1,410 people are currently hospitalized due to COVID-19, but it notes more than 10 per cent of facilities don’t share data on weekends and the actual number is likely higher.
More recent provincial figures have said the number of hospitalizations are more than 1,600.
The province says 187 people are in intensive care with a COVID-related illness, a decline of 1 from the day before.
8 a.m.: They’d been waiting for months.
In the heady early days of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, the spotlight on vaccine makers birthed a new awareness of branding and vaccine technology. In a country that regularly authorizes almost a dozen different flu vaccines with little fuss — they’re all, collectively, known as “the” flu shot — suddenly people were keenly aware of which COVID vaccine they were getting.
The first two vaccines out of the gate in Canada — both powered by a new technology that used mRNA — took on a veneer of cool in many circles, with people online showing off their postvaccination Band-Aids and jokingly declaring themselves members of the #ModernaMafia or #PfizerGang. (An audio clip declaring that “only hot people get Pfizer” briefly took over TikTok.)
Read the full story from the Star’s Alex Boyd.
7:45 a.m.: Percylla Battista said she last spoke to her sister, Maggie Quart Robitaille, a week before Quart Robitaille tested positive for COVID-19.
“She was feeling pretty good,” Battista said in a recent interview. “She didn’t think she would get COVID because she had already been vaccinated four times.”
But on April 13, Quart Robitaille died at age 82, less than two weeks after testing positive for COVID-19. She was among the 3,325 people reported to have died in the province from the novel coronavirus since the Omicron wave started in mid-December.
While vaccination and improved treatment have made COVID-19 less deadly, Quebec reported Saturday that there have been15,000 deaths attributed to the pandemic in the province — the most in Canada. Quebec’s death rate also remains the highest in the country, at 174 deaths per 100,000 people. In Ontario, there have been 86 deaths per 100,000 people. Across Canada, there have been 102.
Simona Bignami, a demography professor at Université de Montréal who studies population health, said less attention is being paid to people who have recently died of the disease, like Quart Robitaille, compared to those who died during the pandemic’s first wave, which killed more than 5,686 people.
It’s understandable, Bignami said in a recent interview, that people are trying to regain some sense of normalcy. But in doing so, she said, “there has been, unfortunately, less emphasis on the people who continue to die of COVID-19.”
7:43 a.m.: The Rolling Thunder rally is set to wind down today after arriving in Ottawa Friday afternoon, bringing large crowds to a downtown core that’s still tense after the three-week-long occupation in February.
Saturday’s protests remained mostly peaceful, with crowds taking part in a ceremony at the War Memorial in the morning followed by a motorcycle drive-by and an afternoon rally on Parliament Hill.
Ottawa police have called in backup from RCMP, OPP and a number of municipal forces.
Steve Bell, the city’s interim police chief, has warned the protesters they will not be allowed to start a long-term occupation this time. But Centreville Community Association president Mary Huang says the real test will be in seeing whether people actually leave.
Police say that since Friday more than 560 tickets have been issued for a variety of infractions, dozens of vehicles have been towed, and several protesters have been charged with alleged offences that include assaulting police.
A spokeswoman for Freedom Fighters Canada, one of the groups organizing the events, says a church service is all that’s scheduled to take place today.
Sunday 7:41 a.m.: Many Chinese are marking a quiet May Day holiday this year as the government’s zero-COVID approach restricts travel and enforces lockdowns in multiple cities.
All restaurants in Beijing are closed to dine-in customers from Sunday through the end of the holiday on Wednesday, open only for takeout and delivery. Parks and tourist attractions in the Chinese capital are limited to 50% of their capacity. The Universal Studios theme park in Beijing, which opened last year, said it had shut down temporarily.
The pandemic situation varies across the vast nation of 1.4 billion people, but the Transport Ministry said last week that it expected 100 million trips to be taken from Saturday to Wednesday, which would be down 60% from last year. Many of those who are traveling are staying within their province as local governments discourage or restrict cross-border travel to try to keep out new infections.
China is sticking to a strict zero-COVID policy even as many other countries are easing restrictions and seeing if they can live with the virus. Much of Shanghai — China’s largest city and a finance, manufacturing and shipping hub — remains locked down, disrupting people’s lives and dealing a blow to the economy.