No Jab, No Service
Some Ottawa restaurants served everyone. Most did not.
Canadians are used to winter weather, but many of us don’t spend hour after hour outdoors in February. It was for this reason that hot beverages and hot food assumed greater-than-normal importance during the Ottawa trucker protest.
In Ontario, unvaxxed individuals were barred from consuming anything in restaurants, bars, fast food outlets, coffee shops, or food courts between Sept. 22, 2021 and Mar. 1st, 2022. That’s 160 days (44% of an entire year).
In Quebec, the unvaxxed were barred from indoor dining between Sept. 1 and Mar. 12. That’s 192 days (53% of an entire year).
Being told ‘We don’t serve your kind’ is a bit of a shock. But one carries on, adjusting one’s daily affairs accordingly. When you’re visiting from out-of-town, however, matters become more difficult.
The first morning we were in Ottawa, my friend Deb bumped into someone with whom she’d gone to elementary school. He and his wife had been there for days and could tell us which restaurants were serving social outcasts such as myself. (Unlike me, Deb had taken three COVID vaccine doses, the maximum number available to her).
The first meal in one of those restaurants was like heaven. No papers were checked, no masks were required. For the first time in more than four months, I was welcomed into an eating establishment. I sat there, drinking steaming tea as my toes thawed, knowing I would long remember that moment.
Before the Freedom Convoy reached Ottawa at the end of January 2022, non-vaccinated Canadians had little prospect of returning to a normal life. It was only after the truckers settled in, only after they made noise and refused to leave, that provincial governments from one end of the country to the other began backing away from vaccine passports.
Thank you, truckers!
In British Columbia, the unvaxxed were barred from eating in restaurants between Sept. 13 and Apr. 8. That's 207 days (57% of an entire year).
Between them, Ontario, Quebec, and BC account for 75% of Canada's population. This means that, in the parts of the country where 3 out of 4 Canadians reside, unvaxxed individuals were barred from restaurants for six months (averaged out).
During these same time frames, there was no govt requirement that restaurant employees be vaxxed. The unvaxxed could work a six-hour-shift in a restaurant, but they themselves couldn't consume a bowl of soup at one of the tables after their shift was complete.
Thank you for this reminder Donna. It is easy to think that the truckers were driven out by an oppressive government so they failed. The truth is that they started the repeal of the oppression and the spirit of that start is very much alive and active still. We wait hopefully and watch to see how it manifests itself. It will be good.