HALIFAX—On a day that saw 14 protesters arrested during the shutdown of a major city bridge, one of the people who helped make it happen said he considered the Bridge Out action in Halifax a success.

Adam Baden-Clay, a member of Extinction Rebellion, said he believes the planned closure of the MacDonald Bridge “went well.”

“It feels awkward to say that because, of course, by things going well it’s meant we disrupted a lot of people,” he said. “And nobody wanted to do that, but it was necessary.”

Baden-Clay said he believed the protest helped get the message out that governments need to take climate action before it’s too late.

The group of about 80 protesters were at the MacDonald Bridge from 7:30 a.m. until just after noon on Monday.

Extinction Rebellion, the group that planned the protest, announced the demonstration ahead of time. The climate advocacy group said the action was intended to force the government to act on the climate crisis.

Patrick Yancey, a co-ordinator with Extinction Rebellion, said while he empathized with commuters, disrupting the Monday morning commute was necessary to get people to pay attention.

“For decades, the environmental movement has been firing and petitioning and lobbying and using well-reasoned arguments and science, and our politicians have been ignoring all that,” he said.

Yancey was the first person arrested by police on Monday.

Nearly 50 officers were on hand to block the bridge itself off from protesters and the public, so the demonstration happened at the end of the bridge near the toll booth.

Just before 11 a.m., police issued a 10-minute warning to get out of the road. Those who didn’t move to the sidewalk were arrested under the Protection of Property Act.

Monday afternoon, Halifax Regional Police spokesperson Const. John MacLeod said the 18 people arrested have since been released. They face fines of $227.41.

While the protest was peaceful for the most part, some cyclists were disappointed that they couldn’t cross the bridge in the bike lane.

At one point, a verbal altercation broke out between two protesters and one woman who expressed frustration at not being able to get across the bridge on her bicycle, which she said she uses every day.

Later on, a man who was using a motorized bicycle said he needed to get to work to provide for his young son. He was also unable to get across the bridge.

Ahead of the protest, Extinction Rebellion planned to leave the pedestrian and bike lane unblocked, but Halifax Harbour Bridges (HHB) made the decision to close the bridge off to pedestrians and cyclists as well as motorists.

CEO of HHB, Steve Snider, said the decision was made in consultation with Halifax Regional Police as a matter of public safety.

“We didn’t know how many people were coming here, we didn’t know what their intentions were, and in order to control the site we thought it was safest to restrict access to the bridge in its entirety,” he said.

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Snider said in decades past, some protesters had climbed up the structure of the bridge, posing a safety risk.

While Monday’s protest was part of a larger global movement, Extinction Rebellion had some demands specific to Nova Scotia.

At the end of September, the group sent a letter to Stephen McNeil, demanding that the government tell the truth about the climate crisis and act immediately.

It also demanded that the province close the Alton Natural Gas storage project, enforce the Northern Pulp closure deadline in January 2020 and close all coal, gas and biomass generators by March 22, 2021 and replace them with solar and wind energy.

Jacob Fillmore, one of the protesters who was arrested Monday, said during the protest that he was willing to get arrested for the cause.

“I think that people, in other parts of the planet especially, are suffering much more than just simply being arrested by the police,” he said. “This is really a matter of life or death, and I guess this is my way of trying to tell people that that’s the case.”

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