It’s now clear the truck convoys were never about the pandemic

It’s hard to know exactly what these so-called protesters want. There are lots of “Freedom” shouts and signs. There are anti-vaccine mandate signs, anti-Trudeau signs, pro-God signs, some people sport yellow stars. Since Alberta has hardly any COVID-19 public health restrictions or vaccine mandates at this point they look completely out of touch with the real world when it comes to pandemic policies.

And if they think their freedom is constrained in Canada maybe they should try living in Ukraine.

And yet every Saturday for months about 1,000 people, sometimes many more, gathered in a park right across from an urgent care centre where sick and injured people were being tended to by overworked health care providers. Trucks sporting Canadian flags drove around and around the building blasting their horns. What is the point of all that other than to harass health care workers and their patients?

In the park, The People’s Party of Canada, and other organizations, some of them sporting upside down Canadian flags, set up booths in the shadow of the city’s cenotaph where annual Remembrance Day services are held. And then everyone set off to march down one of the most popular streets in the inner city, a long stretch of shops, coffee shops, bars, restaurants and condos.

Business owners complained that customers were being harassed. Residents said they were afraid to leave their condos for fear of being accosted on the street.

The police were always on hand but they seemed to be escorting the demonstrators or making things easier for them by blocking off streets to traffic so they had more room.

Residents and business owners fed up with the weekly disruption on the busiest day of the week complained to city hall, a lot, and then assembled their own small band of neighbourhood counter protesters to thwart the marchers. Mayor Jyoti Gondek went to the site to see what was going on and before the next Saturday the city filed a court injunction against the demonstrations, which was immediately granted.

This time the police came out in force. Officers took down the booths in the park, ticketed truck drivers who were repeatedly honking their horns and forced the 1,000 to 2,000 protesters onto the sidewalks that led to the plaza in front of city hall in the downtown core where they had agreed to go and continue their speech making and general mayhem. The police also arrested a handful of trouble makers.

But despite all the furor that spanned months and swelled when the siege of Ottawa was underway, it’s hard to know what it was all about other than an organized plan to disrupt other people’s rights and freedoms. From what I could see and hear there was always a mean edge to it. The first clue being that they gathered in front of a busy health care facility.

They are not interested in listening to other people’s perspectives on the pandemic, vaccines, or any other issue. They would rather blast their propaganda through a megaphone regardless of whether other people want to hear it or not.

They obviously view the last election as irrelevant and see Justin Trudeau as the country’s greatest villain no matter what he does. For them, freedom means getting rid of him and nothing less will satisfy them.

They wield their trucks like tanks and weapons. And given the number of Stars and Stripes on display, they seem to yearn to be just like the Jan. 6 rioters who almost took over the U.S Capitol last year.

Day by day it becomes clearer that this was never about pandemic restrictions.