There was no mistaking it — the lineup of hungry people waiting for free food outside the Mandarin in Etobicoke on Canada Day.

By 3 p.m. Monday, the buffet restaurant was the busiest place by far at the strip mall near Kipling Ave. and the Gardiner Expressway, with all types of Canadians lining up in a queue that still snaked around an entire block hours after the location had first opened to serve free meals to anyone who could show their Canadian passport.

In the line, Celina Parks said she had been waiting for nearly three hours and wasn’t about to give up despite the mass of people ahead of her.

“I like Chinese food and it’s a holiday, so I don’t mind waiting,” said Parks, who was born in Saint Vincent and immigrated to Canada about 20 years ago.

Far behind Parks in line, Keisha Wilson and her 21-year-old daughter Ebony Holmes waited patiently for their turn, though the citizenship requirement meant that — at the end of the long wait — they’d be dining as a duo, not a trio. Holmes’ father is still only a permanent resident, so he didn’t come.

He doesn’t mind, Holmes said, but still, it would have been great to be waiting in line with him. “Especially for a country that was built by immigrants, I don’t think it’s fair,” she said.

The restaurant chain has heard both criticism and support for its decision to reward Canadian citizens with the free meals, but James Chiu, the chain’s 71-year-old owner, said it was never his intentions to exclude anyone.

“Our idea was never to make anyone feel like they don’t belong here — in fact, most of our employees aren’t Canadian yet,” he said.

Monday wasn’t the first time the restaurant has offered promotional free meals, he said — it also did so most recently when Canada celebrated its 150th anniversary. This year, 29 locations across Ontario were open and serving free food to citizens as the chain celebrated its own 40th anniversary, Chiu said.

“I can’t afford to do this every year, but any year that I can is a happy year for me,” he said, adding that extra food, beverages and staff had to be called in at all the participating locations.

Back at the Etobicoke lineup, Danny Dumbrowski, who was waiting in line with his wife Debbie and 7-year-old daughter Ellie, said he’s fine with the requirement, calling it “motivation” for non-citizens.

Not that the location was strict on the passport condition.

Location manager Jennifer Ji said the goal was to accommodate everyone, and nobody was going to be turned back if they couldn’t prove citizenship.

She said she’d seen a few examples where one member of a family who didn’t have citizenship had asked to pay — but that was a proposal she said she couldn’t accept.

“It’s about celebrating. We want people to enjoy this,” she said.

Toronto police Sgt. Jeff Zammit said the lines were much, much longer earlier in the day and some showed up well before the restaurant opened, bringing their own foldable chairs for the wait.

Elsewhere in the city, Rachara Chatterjee, 34, said she joined the line outside the Yonge St. location at 7 a.m.

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She said she and some friends also came the last time the chain had its free-food promotion, though the lines weren’t as long as on Monday.

“We all enjoy free food and you’re just lying if you say you don’t,” she said.