Urbanism Lessons from the Canadian Trucker Protest

People don't usually pay attention to Canada, let alone its capital city of Ottawa. This was upended over the past few weeks as protests over public health measures took over the downtown of the city, centred around a primary site on Wellington Street in front of Parliament but also extending into shopping, office, and residential districts.

Ottawa is no stranger to protests, being the capital, but this one was uniquely disruptive because of how long it lasted and because of how vehicles were used. You don’t come to this channel to hear us talk about news or politics though, so as this surreal experience comes to a close, we want to talk about some observations on the event from an urbanist perspective.