There really was two distinct "protests."
There was a broader movement, the Canadians donating, that showed up on the weekend and left, waving flags at overpasses, etc. This group was bigger, not homogenous, and largely not "in the know." 2nd, 3rd, 4th, hand information, supporting the idea the expressing frustration at the government.
Then there was the core protest. (Bauder, Barber, King, Laface etc) and the group in the hundreds that had either been organizing or being organized for weeks. Those involved at some level with the very public planning of "Operation Bearhug", the ones that thought that they were actually going to get the MOU (or something like it) enacted by "choking out" the whole of Ottawa. This group made up a much higher percentage of the long-haul occupiers than it did of the weekend protest and national support, but it very much did exist, and was at the core of the whole thing. They only walked back that asinine document because they realized that the hype about the scale was BS and that they were going to fail.
Acknowledging that rotten core doesn't delegitimize the anger felt and peacefully expressed by the others, but refusing to do so is just burying ones head in the sand about what was attempted.