Rolling Thunder rolled into Ottawa over the last weekend of April. Approximately 500 mototcycle riders, including a mixture of military veterans and Freedom Convoy leftovers from the February occupation. One of the cited reasons for the gathering was to “reclaim the National War Memorial”. The “group of veterans” were upset about the fact that a fence had been erected around the Memorial during the February occupation, after a woman had desecrated the Memorial. There were counter-protests, with one veteran stating that “The tomb of the unknown soldier is not an appropriate place to express partisan political views… in some ways, to me, they’re poisoning the monument.”

A number of protesters gathered on parliament hill in the afternoon listening to a number of anti mandate speakers, who won’t be named because they don’t deserve the recognition.

There were a few isolated incidences over the weekend, including a number of arrests, 560 parking tickets, and 39 vehicles towed. A select number of roads had been blocked off to prevent a re-occurrence of what happened in February where streets were clogged by stationary vehicles for weeks.

By Monday, Ottawa was back to the Ottawa version of normal.