There has been an outpouring of support for a Montreal mother who was told she was not allowed to breastfeed in the middle of a shopping mall.
Isabelle Côté spoke out after her experience at the Eaton Centre downtown. She says she’s been amazed to find out how many people have her back.
“I actually went through a lot of emotion in a very short period of time,” Côté told Global News in an interview.
The 36-year-old former lawyer who’s now a psychiatric resident was with her sister and four-month-old son Léopold at the Eaton Centre last Saturday, when Leopold got hungry.
“We’re not deciding when baby is hungry. When they’re hungry, it’s right here and now,” she said.
Côté sat down on a bench in the middle of the mall and began to breastfeed when a security agent approached her and said she wasn’t allowed.
“She told me that it’s because it was a ‘private act’ and that I couldn’t do that in public,” she said.
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Côté knows it is her right to breastfeed in public, as she’s repeatedly done previously.
She called for the agent’s supervisor, who agreed that she should not be breastfeeding where she was. She says the supervisor invited her to go to a designated breastfeeding room. Côté chose to leave the mall instead.
“The point is that we’re feeding our child. We should just be allowed to do it wherever we want, whenever we want and actually whenever we need to,” the mother told Global News.
When her partner Wayne Choi heard the story, he was angry.
“If I’m eating a sandwich in the mall, they’re not going to escort me to the sandwich-eating room, right? That would be ridiculous,” said Choi, a Montreal emergency room doctor. “If a baby wants to be fed, why should they have to go to this other breastfeeding room?”
“We’re not shocked to see a big ad with a woman in a bikini to sell lingerie or perfume or whatever. That’s never a problem in the exact same mall. We see that too,” said Côté.
Ivanhoé Cambridge owns the mall and tells Global News it is sorry for what happened.
“Ivanhoé Cambridge remains committed to respecting and encouraging breastfeeding in all the common areas of its retail properties, as prescribed by the Quebec and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” said Julie Bourgon, head of Retail, Canada at Ivanhoé Cambridge via email.
Bourgon also said all staff had since been educated on the matter so it doesn’t happen again.
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After Côté went public she found out she’s not alone.
“Dozens and dozens of women messaged me to tell me that it’s still happening to them,” she explained, pointing to the need to promote the fact that breastfeeding in public is normal and necessary.
She’s hoping hundreds show up to the space between Uniqlo and Sephora.
“We don’t need to seclude ourselves to breastfeed. It’s something that’s completely normal and natural, and it should be normalized,” Laframboise told Global News. She said she has a child the same age as Côté’s and felt like the same thing could have happened to her.
Laframboise says the Eaton Centre has even agreed to provide seating and refreshments for the weekend event.