'We made a mistake': Ottawa gelato café shuts down after owner appears on leaked list of trucker protest supporters

Stella Luna Gelato Café in Ottawa was forced to close its doors this Tuesday after receiving a barrage of threats after the owner appeared on a leaked list of people who've donated to the anti-mandate trucker protest that's been gripping Canada, the Ottawa Citizen reports.

The shop's owner, Tammy Giuliani, donated $250 to the truckers on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. After her donation was posted to Twitter, staff at her shop started receiving threats.

“We got a call from the team saying, ‘We’re getting phone calls here,'” Giuliani said. “I said, ‘What’s going on?’ and they said, ‘They’re threatening to throw bricks through our window. They’re threatening to come and get us.’ We said, ‘Lock the door and we’ll find out what’s going on.'”

That's when she ordered her shop closed.

She says she had a different impression of the trucker protest when she made the donation, but now regrets it.

“When a group of people first decided they were going to travel across the country to spread this message of solidarity, it seemed like a beacon of hope for small businesses like us,” she said. “It’s no surprise that small businesses have been on the edge. Families are at risk of losing their livelihood. I’m a sucker for a grassroots cause."

“Never in our wildest dreams did we anticipate what has transpired over the past couple of weeks,” she said. “None of us anticipated what it turned into and we certainly don’t condone it."

“In retrospect it was bad judgment, but does that mean that people have a right to threaten our staff? Does it mean people have the right to threaten to throw bricks through our window and to threaten my family? We made a mistake. Who could have anticipated it?”

Giuliani said she makes regular donations to charitable causes. “We rarely say no,” she said.

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