Editor: On June 8th, at approximately 1:45 p.m., I returned home to find my business parking lot occupied with about a dozen vehicles and a crowd of people standing around. Apparently they were there for the celebration of the Chatham Maroons’ Sutherland Cup win.
I was not able to get into my parking lot to park my vehicle and nor could we get any other vehicle out because they had everything blocked in by their vehicles.
We had located the person in charge, to find out who had given them permission to set up on private property. They were using the parking lot as their staging area. The person didn’t seem to have an answer, and said everything just happened so fast.
My question is, who is responsible? The information I found out later was that the parade was to start on Elm Street. I know some of the people on Elm Street were not aware of the event.
If this was a 15-minute event, then I might overlook it, but from the time everyone started to gather there to the time they cleared out, it was well over two hours.
The other problem I have with what was going on is there was some garbage left on the premises, and some of people were urinating at the back of the property.
I find this inappropriate and disgusting for anyone involved, which includes the organizers and the city to let something like this happen.
I do have video of all that went on that day.
This is private property and there should been a request from someone during the planning. This isn’t something that was decided overnight to have a parade.
I would like to know who is at fault, and expect an apology, but that might be dreaming on my part.
Peter Wortner
Chatham
