OTTAWA — A protest in Ottawa last week led by truckers against pandemic measures in Canada that has since paralyzed the country’s capital was expected to expand on Saturday with the arrival of hundreds more trucks. Police and officials in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, and Quebec City, that province’s capital, braced for similar demonstrations.

What began as a convoy of trucks and cars that set out from the province of British Columbia to protest a vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers has grown into a general protest against pandemic restrictions and a range of other political causes, including opposition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The police anticipated that 1,000 to 2,000 protesters would gather on Saturday in Ottawa, along with 300 to 400 trucks.

While a number of people had arrived on foot by midday, the size of the crowd remained well below the police estimate of 8,000 a week earlier. As of midday, there was no obvious sign of heavy trucks pouring into the city’s core, although a number of pickup trucks bearing full-sized Canadian flags were driving around the downtown area.

For many of the demonstrators, the atmosphere was more party than protest. Despite frigid temperatures, a band was performing on the street in front of Parliament Hill underneath a Canadian flag dangling from a large construction crane. Nearby, several inflatable bouncy castles were set up, and makeshift canteens throughout downtown were dispensing food. At a municipal baseball stadium parking lot that truckers were using for staging and camping, three saunas had been brought in.

On the streets, many people walking to the protest greeted one another with raised fists and shouts of “freedom.”

Workers blocked some major roads downtown with concrete barriers on Friday as part of a new “surge and contain strategy” that Chief Peter Sloly of the Ottawa Police announced. “The surge will deliver a clear message to the demonstrators: The lawlessness must end,” he said. “Our goal is to end the demonstrations.”

While there have been no serious injuries or uncontrolled violence associated with the demonstrations, they have nevertheless paralyzed Ottawa’s downtown core with traffic, noise and complaints of harassment.

“I’m receiving hundreds — and I’m not exaggerating — hundreds of emails telling me: ‘I went out to get groceries, I got yelled at, I got harassed. I got followed down the street, I’m so afraid that I can’t go out,’” Catherine McKenney, the city councilor for the area, said Thursday afternoon.

Throughout the area, many businesses have been closed for the past week, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in lost sales. Those that have remained open have struggled to enforce provincial mask rules.

About 200 to 250 trucks remained downtown from last Saturday’s demonstration, their drivers frequently honking their air horns. Supporters have been delivering diesel fuel to the truckers, who have stacked firewood in parks and built a small wooden canteen building next to a canal that serves as a popular skating rink in the winter.

Many residents of downtown Ottawa have turned their frustrations on the city’s police for not aggressively shutting down the protests. Chief Sloly, who initially had declared his force’s work a “success,” on Friday acknowledged the growing frustration with his department’s approach.

“I understand there is a wide range of opinions around the efficacy of our efforts to date, but we have done absolutely the best we can to keep this city safe,” he told a news conference. “We need to do better, we’re committed to doing better.”

Chief Sloly said that heavy machinery would be used to close streets and expressway offramps into the city center, and that all five bridges across the Ottawa River to Quebec might be closed.

In Toronto, protesters planned to gather at shopping malls before converging on the Ontario provincial legislature, which is in a downtown area that is also home to several major hospitals. On Friday morning, Toronto Police blocked off parts of the area with buses and barricades.

Chief James Ramer of the Toronto Police said at a news conference that the police would not allow protest vehicles to park around the legislature and warned that anyone attempting to interfere with access to hospitals or emergency services “will be subject to strict enforcement.”

Dozens of cars, pickup trucks and heavy trucks were parked along downtown Toronto’s high-end shopping district by midday, north of the closed-off legislature building area, with sounds of horns and shouts of “freedom” ringing out. Protesters held up signs of the Canadian Bill of Rights and used hockey sticks as flagpoles for Canadian flags and Gadsden flags. People scaled a dump truck, and one man climbed into a tree near the Royal Ontario Museum.

In Quebec City, the first protest trucks began arriving from other parts of the province on Friday. Protesters found that several streets were already closed for the city’s Winter Carnaval, a major tourist event that also began Friday.

There were only five heavy trucks parked near the provincial legislation on Friday afternoon, as several pick up trucks carrying Canadian and Quebec flags circulated in the vicinity.

At a nearby parking lot, the police were in discussion with protesters in about a dozen pickup trucks. The protesters said they had already been removed from four other parking lots by police officers and that the police were making it difficult them to open their large canteen trailer so they could warm up and eat.

Through GoFundMe, some of the organizers raised 10 million Canadian dollars, about $7.8 million, but the online service has only turned over about 1 million dollars of that. On Friday evening, it said in a statement that after speaking with police, it would not release any more of the money.

“We now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe said.

Ian Austen reported from Ottawa, and Vjosa Isai from Toronto. Peter Black contributed reporting from Quebec City.