A Vancouver woman who visited the Pacific National Exhibition this month says she was yelled at for breastfeeding her five-month-old daughter in the market area.
The interaction left her feeling shocked, shamed, and then frustrated that the market vendor didn’t respect her right to feed her child — as enshrined in BC human rights law.
“This was the first time in my life anyone yelled at me in public, anywhere,” Atefeh Ghorbani told Daily Hive. “I was just breastfeeding my baby, who was hungry. I wasn’t doing anything bad. But they made me feel like I was doing something bad.”
Atefeh Ghorbani and her daughter play inside a bus on display at the Pacific National Exhibition (Submitted)
Ghorbani was at the PNE on August 21 with her husband and his family. They were walking through the market area when Ghorbani’s baby became hungry, and she started breastfeeding the infant while walking.
They passed a booth where massage machines were being sold, and one of the vendors invited Ghorbani to sit down and try the machine. She did.
But the second vendor in the tent apparently didn’t like that Ghorbani was breastfeeding.
“He just came up to me, and he was visibly angry. He yelled, ‘If you’re done, go and do that somewhere else,’ and he was pointing to me and my baby,” Ghorbani said. “As I was getting up, I told him, ‘That was very rude,’ and he replied back, ‘Excuse me, I don’t come to your house to do that.’”
Ghorbani’s family heard the exchange, and Ghorbani’s sister-in-law told him that it was the law that women could breastfeed in public. Ghorbani said, and the man yelled at her sister-in-law to mind her own business.
Then the first vendor approached, and Ghorbani expressed confusion — saying she only sat down because she was invited.
“I was trying to tell him, ‘It bothered nobody except your colleague.’ As I was trying to explain the point, he kept on saying, ‘You should have covered up, you should have covered up.’”
Realizing they weren’t going to change the vendors’ minds, the family walked away. Afterward, Ghorbani’s sister-in-law emailed the PNE about the experience.
“What they did was discrimination,” Ghorbani said. “They are not allowed to tell me to cover up or move somewhere else.”
Laura Ballance, who handles media relations for the PNE, told Daily Hive the exhibition supports mothers’ legal right to breastfeed in any public area.
“In this instance, the individual chose to sit in one of the massage chairs in a third-party vendor booth. The PNE has apologized several times to the individual for her experience and has spoken with the vendor, ensuring the owner of the booth is aware of the legal right to breastfeed in public in BC. That owner has addressed the issue with their staff team.”
The family received a response from the customer relations team highlighting the PNE’s dedicated breastfeeding space in Playland. But for Ghorbani, that wasn’t helpful, given that the breastfeeding station was about a kilometre’s walk from where they were in the marketplace.
“Every time my baby is fussy, I can’t just walk almost a kilometre away, try to see if I can feed her, and walk back,” she said.
The family wants the PNE to acknowledge the human rights violation and ensure it doesn’t happen again — especially at an event geared toward families.
“Some other mothers might not know, and that might prevent them from breastfeeding their babies or make them feel bad for doing that.”