The Canadian Occupy movement changed fundamentally Wednesday with the removal of protesters in both the country's largest city and its capital.

This follows removals of camps in Quebec City and Victoria on Tuesday, and the threat of eviction hanging over other remaining camps.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has declared the Occupy Toronto protest over after police and city officials swept through the downtown encampment, clearing out tents and other structures to enforce an eviction order protesters had defied for two straight nights.

As city workers hauled loads of trash, wooden pallets and assorted camping gear into waiting trucks, St. James Park slowly re-emerged from the cluttered tent city that has stood for five weeks. Police expect to clear the park by the end of the day.

One of last remaining pockets of resistance was removed Wednesday afternoon after police broke down the front of a yurt housing a library and pulled out three men and brought them to a police van. Officers say they will be ticketed and released. Fifty officers surrounded the yurt while it was being dismantled

Shortly after 2 a.m. in Ottawa, police began removing tents and protesters from Confederation Park, which is blocks away from Parliament Hill and controlled by the National Capital Commission. The NCC had given the protesters eviction notices on Monday.

Police said that while the majority of the protesters had left the park Monday and Tuesday, there were still about 25 people in the park Wednesday morning, blanketed by the cold of the capital's first snowfall.

Eight demonstrators were arrested without incident and released on site, police said.

One person was taken to hospital after complaining of a pre-existing injury that got aggravated during his arrest, police said.

"All in all the cops were fairly peaceful. They were polite," said Mitchell Broughton, one of the protesters who resisted arrest. "It wasn't a very aggressive scenario, (but) it's never very pleasant to be arrested and dragged through snow at 2 a.m."

Occupy Ottawa protesters are considering setting up a camp somewhere else.

Occupy Vancouver returned Wednesday night to the Vancouver Art Gallery, where its protest began more than five weeks ago, but this time without tents and tarps.

The group has temporarily put its encampment model of protest on hold while it decides how to continue.

The protesters have been hit in the last week with two B.C. Supreme Court injunctions, against the long-running tent city it erected at the gallery and the one-day camp it set up at the Robson Square law courts.

On Tuesday night, the group shelved a plan to erect a camp at Grandview Park on Commercial Drive.

Occupy member Suresh Fernando said the court injunction granted the City of Vancouver last week bans tents and built structures, "but it doesn't prevent us from assembly at the art gallery."

Meanwhile, parents are outraged at a plan by Occupy Victoria protesters to politicize Saturday's Santa Claus parade and Christmas tree light-up.

Protesters, who were evicted from Centennial Square by police on Tuesday after a 38-day occupation, plan to march at the end of the annual parade and are organizing a flash mob to coincide with the light-up of the Sequoia tree in the square.