- 2023
- Feb
- 11
A Fringe Minority
Saturday February 11, 2023
By Jenny English
I love Canada. I love the mountains, I love the coast lines, I love the islands, i love the forests, I love the rivers, I love the birds, I love the animals. And most of all, I love my fellow Canadians.
Something has been happening in Canada that I don’t understand. This country that I love and have lived in for over four decades is now more divided than I have ever seen her. Canadians are speaking to each other in ways they never would have dreamt of speaking to a stranger only 10 years ago. Accusations of racism abound, with proof of racism scarce to be found.
What I know for certain is that I don’t like where we are right now, and I don’t like the direction we are heading. Some of the wisest advice I’ve ever come across is as follows: Stop trying to love them, and start trying to understand them.
To help better understand my fellow Canadians, I’ve turned to Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, by Christopher Browning. Browning does a deep dive into how Germans citizens were manipulated into doing things they would never have done even 10 years prior.
- 2023
- Feb
- 10
A Stroll Down Wellington Street
Friday February 10, 2023
By Shirley Guertin
Here are some pictures showing the happy loving atmosphere of the convoy – music, dancing, speeches, hugging and singing. Perma-grins on all the faces, everyone feeling like brothers and sisters in one big family. A singer from Quebec entertained, the Clan Mothers, accompanied by a group of children, gave a moving speech. Many canopies with truckers offering free food.
One fellow had brought his elderly mother with him from Quebec “for the week-end only” – that was on Jan 28. They have been there ever since, the pair serving free hot drinks, food, joking, laughing and poking friendly fun at each other (a little unfairly since the mom doesn’t understand English). Another trucker showed us how someone came along and lined his truckbox with insulation so he would be a little warmer at night.
There are kids everywhere, playing in homemade structures, waving flags, bringing heartfelt notes to the truckers to be taped onto their trucks.
[Read more…]
- 2023
- Feb
- 7
What Just Happened?
Tuesday February 7, 2023
By Ted Mellenthin
What just happened? What started all this? Why is it still going on?
I first caught wind of a convoy through a post on Facebook. That would have been in Dec 2021. I suppose at that point for me I was in a place of desperation, frustration and anger.
That led me to an overpass in Brooks, Alberta. It was -26 with the wind chill. What I found was a crowd waiting to see the convoy just like I was. What I didn’t expect was what I found in the crowd. That’s where my story begins.
I don’t remember what time the convoy was supposed to pass the overpass but it was late. I soon recognized this as ‘Convoy Time’: 10:00am means around 10:00am give or take two hours.
It was cold. Something was in that crowd, though. Inside me I felt something being drawn out. People started coming up to me and talking to me like I was a close friend. Well what’s this? Aren’t people supposed to look at the ground when they pass each other? Don’t look anyone in the eye? Yet here I was in a crowd of people who treated each other like they were neighbors.
- 2023
- Feb
- 6
Our International Profile: How Bad Can it Get?
Monday February 6, 2023
By Plushie Bug
When I sat down in September of 2022 to begin writing my response to the Public Order Emergency Commission’s invitation of citizens’ comments about the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and everything surrounding it, I was surprised to find the following suggested topic for discussion:
What impacts have the Freedom Convoy protest, and the use of the Emergencies Act against it, had on how Canada is viewed internationally?
To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about it.
As an exhausted Ontarian, past hope of seeing any effective protest emerge, to the ever more strict and coercive pandemic measures which had been layered in upon us through 2020 and 2021 — six months burned out of hope for there ever to be any end in sight, to any of it — my whole focus throughout had been on tracking any potential it might have, to get us any relief domestically, ever.
- 2023
- Feb
- 5
A Study in Irony
Sunday February 5, 2023
By Maggie Hope-Braun
The legacy media, along with a handful of business owners and residents of Ottawa have propagated the idea that the Freedom Convoy and protest was a huge violation of the rights of the residents and businesses of Ottawa; and therefore justifies using the Emergency Act to restore these rights. The irony abounds in this now generally espoused argument. As we look at these so-called violations in comparison to the human rights violations the protesters were protesting, it’s not difficult to see a vast difference in the magnitude of people affected and the scale of the human rights violations. Most of the complaints against the Protest are not guaranteed Rights in the Charter. The violations to the Charter that caused the Protest are plain and obvious. Simply put the Governments, Public Health and Organizations at all levels created a two-tiered society and segregated a large minority based on their lack of compliance to experimental medical treatments. They then issued social, economical and mobility sanctions on individuals who did not comply. The Freedom Convoy protest was a result of these sanctions which violated our rights and freedoms.