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One city councilor, Catherine McKenney, spoke last week of being deluged with complaints.

“I’m receiving hundreds — and I’m not exaggerating — hundreds of emails telling me: ‘I went out to get groceries, I got yelled at, I got harassed. I got followed down the street, I’m so afraid that I can’t go out,’” the councilor said.

In Ottawa, the authorities warned that the noisy and disruptive protests posed a real threat.

“This is a siege — it is something that is different in our democracy than I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Peter Sloly, chief of the Ottawa Police, said on Saturday. “We do not have sufficient resources to adequately and effectively address this situation” while tending to routine policing, he said.

Throughout the area, many businesses have been forced to shut their doors over the past week, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in lost sales. Those that have remained opened have struggled to enforce provincial mask rules.

Other cities were also buffeted by the protests over the weekend. In Toronto, Canada’s largest city and financial capital, dozens of cars, pickup trucks and heavy trucks on Saturday were parked along the city’s high-end shopping district downtown. Some of the protesters honked their horns, and shouts of “freedom” rang out.

And in Quebec City, dozens of tractor-trailer cabs were parked two deep for three blocks along one of the major arteries through the downtown area, adjacent to the provincial legislature. Thousands of people lined the sidewalks, cheering on truckers as they arrived or drove past.