Two Montreal kids selling lemonade in front of their house to raise funds for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada said SPVM officials tried to shut down their kiosk on Saturday, Global News reports.
For the second weekend in a row, Ness (age 11) and Ariel (age 8) Bartoch-Massa set up a kiosk in front of their home in Roxboro, west of Montreal Island.
Mother Ayana wanted to earn money by selling lemons because she had the cause at heart for her two children with Multiple Sclerosis.
Their mother was diagnosed with the degenerative disease in 2020 and has since had to use a walker or wheelchair to get around.
Thanks to their lemonade stand, Ness and Ariel raised more than $1,500, but on Saturday their effort was destroyed by SPVM agents.
The two kids sometimes used a megaphone to attract customers, but this technique didn’t sit well with a man who started insulting them and threatened to close their kiosk, saying he was going to call the police.
A few minutes later, a policeman arrived and asked the mother and her two children to close their kiosk.
“I told him, ‘Mr. Officer, give me a fine. I’m going to pay for it,'” says Ayana Maas, who wanted to let her children continue to sell lemonade.
“He said, ‘No, I’m not going to fine you. You believe you’re above the law because you’re in a wheelchair,'” says Ness and Ariel’s mother.
Ms. Moss also claims that the police officer threatened to arrest her.
“He had one hand in a holster and told me I was being aggressive. I asked him to leave my land, but he refused,” she says, adding that the agent finally left after three hours.
Ayana Maas notes that the policeman would have left the scene, telling the children that they could not continue using the megaphone. The officer reportedly returned and threatened to arrest their mother.
SPVM does not wish to comment on this intervention, confirming that further analysis of this story is necessary before issuing any comment.
The mother of two, for her part, should apologize to the police.
On Sunday, Ness and Ariel were back selling lemonade outside their house, but without their megaphones. In one day, they raised an additional $1,365, a cause that not only affected the community’s unity, but also benefited from Saturday’s incident.
