Occupy Ottawa, the local version of the Occupy Wall Street movement, got off to a laid-back start Saturday, as an estimated crowd of 500, signs, flags, kids and dogs in tow, assembled in Confederation Park.

“Occupying” a public park, where the protest is unlikely to cause much inconvenience and disruption to the public, and hence garner their attention, might seem an odd choice. But it’s close to many busy downtown streets, Parliament Hill, National Defence headquarters and the U.S. Embassy. Marchers made their first sortie into the surrounding city yesterday.

Also, as one of the protest’s facilitators pointed out, public washrooms are conveniently located across the street at city hall. “Feel free to use them,” he added. “We’re paying for them.”

Uniformed police presence was light and unobtrusive, even friendly, as they circulated among protesters in ones and twos. Ottawa cops, after all, have seen more protests than most municipal police, and know that showing up in force can have the effect of ratcheting up tension – and cost. (The City of Ottawa is still waiting for the feds to reimburse them for the $900,000 in extra costs arising from two weeks of demonstrations by Tamil-Canadians, which blocked traffic near Parliament Hill in 2009.)

Occupy Wall Street has attracted celebs like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon. The local version boasted a couple of nationally familiar, if not famous faces, like Brigette DePape, the Senate page fired for her display of a “Stop Harper” sign in June, and Joey Keithley of Vancouver punk band DOA.

But what’s it all about? Apart from a widely shared conviction that 99 per cent of us are being hosed by the other one per cent, there’s little explicit common ground. It seemed everyone rode their own hobby horse to the protest, whether proportional representation, workers’ rights or limiting corporate power. One protester’s placard might have summed it up best: “Too Much S–t For One Sign.”

Occupy Ottawa, for all its enthusiasm, may prove lacking in dramatic confrontation with police or nice, neat messages for the media.

Meanwhile, though, this month’s provincial election set a new record for just not bothering, with voter turnout dropping below 50 per cent. An Occupy Ottawa sign interpreted that phenomenon too: “It’s Not Voter Apathy … It’s Discerned Futility.”

I find it hard to fault these protesters for getting off the couch and doing something, even if they’re still figuring out just what.