“When I arrived, I asked if this was considered a public park, given that it wasn’t attached to the actual park and that there was no clear way to go from one to the other. He quite abruptly said ‘It’s a $700 fine.’ Then he turned around, without even making contact with me, got back in his car and drove away,” Martinek said in an email to this paper.

“Reflecting upon this, I just wondered if he was just getting the short end of the stick on all this. If he had been having many bad encounters with other individuals and simply didn’t want to spend any time discussing it with me. And I wouldn’t blame them, if that were the case. You just never know.”

Martinek wasn’t given a ticket but assumed he would be receiving one in the mail.

Martinek isn’t the only resident who ran afoul of Ottawa bylaw officers over the weekend. Officers ticketed more than 40 people, including one man who was fined more than $2,000 for refusing to identify himself. Corey Yanofsky was another, fined $800 for walking his dog near Britannia Beach.