Hill security scrutinized after London attack

May 1966: Paul Joseph Chartier died when he accidentally detonated dynamite tucked into his coat, which he’d planned to lob into the ranks of “rich and greedy” politicians, while in the men’s bathroom outside the House of Commons. Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson was handed a note alerting him to the incident a few minutes later but question period continued.

June 1987: A middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt walked into the House of Commons, walked past MPs, grabbed the Speaker’s golden mace, and shouted: “I protest this treason. This country is under attack from within.” Turned out Michael Charette was protesting the Meech Lake Accord.

April 1989: Charles Yacoub, armed and reportedly demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, hijacked a Greyhound bus in Montreal and demanded the driver take him to Ottawa and onto Parliament Hill. Buildings for a three-block radius were evacuated during an eight-hour standoff in which Yacoub fired on a group of American tourists.

February 1997: An Ottawa school janitor who would later be found to be too mentally ill to be responsible for his actions drove a blue Jeep Cherokee up two staircases to just short of the main door of Centre Block, which “spurred a fierce but by no means new debate about security on the Hill,” historian Anne Dance wrote.

December 2009: Greenpeace activists weren’t detected as they scaled West Block and rappelled from the roof to unfurl banners protesting Canadian inaction on climate change and the oilsands. Twenty were arrested, and the RCMP boosted its security presence.