We tried to stay open for G20…

June 28, 2010

We really wanted to be open this weekend, we were open on Saturday then we saw what was going down the street on King, then on Queen so we decided to close early at 5.

On Sunday we did open in the morning but were told that there would be more protests and seeing as it took my staff hours to get home on Saturday, we made the decision to close. Most of the businesses on King were closed, even the Starbucks as far away as the Libery Village was closed on Sunday.

As a business owner, the G20 was a day of lost business. Saturday we did half of what we normally would have done and my staff lost their wages for the day. If you multiply that by the number of businesses that had to shut down this weekend, or were empty because people were afraid to go out (most of the bars on King closed early on Sat), then add on the property damage costs, I would say that Toronto business owners lost millions. The governement, however, spent a billion dollars and the main thing we got out of it is a happy Harper and an agreement to reduce the world’s deficit, that I’m sure all the nations are going to adhere to… kind of like the Kyoto Agreement.