Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa took place under heavy police surveillance on Friday, as thousands of protesters against health measures were firmly expected.
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Four arrests were made Thursday night near the National War Memorial following an attack on a police officer.
Ordinarily, the main stage for the big show on July 1st is erected on Parliament Hill.
However, due to ongoing renovations to the Main Parliament Building, the City of Ottawa has decided to move the whole thing a little two kilometers further west, to LeBreton Flats.
On Wellington Street, the scene of last winter’s “freedom convoy”, the demonstrators were heavily diluted into a crowd dressed in red simply coming to attend the party. The street has remained closed to traffic since that time.
Everything took place in an atmosphere of reunion, after two years of fallow.
In 2020, the party had been taken entirely to the web, while in 2021 it had been clouded by discoveries of burials of Indigenous children near a former Indian residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
Around noon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family, Governor General Mary Simon and Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez took part in a water ceremony with representatives of the Anishinaabe Nation.
The big concert on LeBreton Flats will begin around 8 p.m., with the participation of Charlotte Cardin and Ariane Moffatt, among others.