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ISSN 0702-7796 Vol. 50 No. 2 Issue no. 542 FREE
Anatomy of an occupation
THE ‘FREEDOM’ CONVOY IN DOWNTOWN OTTAWA By Nicolay Hristozov I had just recovered from COVID-19 when the Freedom Convoy rolled into Ottawa. After 10 days of fatigue and isolation, I felt unusually eager to see our new guests. As a firm believer in public health measures, I was opposed to the goals of the convoy from the beginning, but I was also intensely curious. Like most of us, I had seen the images of Confederate and Nazi flags in the media, so I expected to see a protest of fury and hate that I could easily demonize and dismiss. The reality was far more nuanced, and I still find myself puzzling over the convoy’s many contradictions. I should emphasize that these are my personal impressions as a sturdily built white male. I could blend in with the protesters and was unlikely to present an easy target to anyone looking to cause trouble. My experiences might have been very different were this not the case. I walked up Bank Street on the convoy’s first Saturday with my mind set on objectively assessing the protest. On my way downtown, hundreds of honking pickup trucks adorned with Canadian flags assaulted my senses. Mostly shiny new crew-cab models, these trucks (rather than the larger semi-trailers) became the convoy’s most ubiquitous symbol. When I reached Wellington, I walked into an enormous street party. I saw 10,000 people in delirious revelry, drinking, chanting, setting off fireworks and producing a deafening cacophony of horns. I saw none of the hateful
Index
ABBOTSFORD.............................. 11 ART...............................................20 BIRDS...........................................14 BOOKS....................................21-24 CANAL............................................3 CIVIC HOSPITAL............................8 COMMUNITY................................15 FAITH............................................28 FILM............................................. 17 FOOD......................................18, 19 GLEBOUS & COMICUS ���������������26 HEALTH.................................. 30, 31 LANGUAGE...................................29 LETTERS....................................4, 5 MEMOIR.......................................33 MUSIC..........................................16 POETRY QUARTER...................... 37 REPS & ORGS.....................6-10, 27 SCHOOLS.....................................32 TREES.....................................12, 13
A protestor pushes through a dwindling but still festive crowd in front of the police line on Bank Street, February 19, 2022. PHOTO: NICOLAY HRISTOZOV
symbols that I anticipated. Instead, I saw positive messages of peace, love and freedom. And while the faces in the crowd were overwhelmingly white, I was still a bit surprised by the diversity on display. As I waded toward the centre of the demonstration, I could feel myself melting into the crowd. In a hint of the communal ecstasy that draws people to mass gatherings the world
Contributors this month Karen Anne Blakely Leah Brockie Blake Butler Sylvie Chartrand John Dance Doug Daniels Nadine Dawson Jenny Demark Andrew Dicapua Pam Fitch Joel Harden Kim Hodges Jennifer Humphries Nicolay Hristozov Julie Ireton Bob Irvine Shelley Lawrence Angus Luff
Crystal Maitland Janice Manchee Lucia Marc Hunter McGill Shawn Menard Yasir Naqvi Michael Kofi Ngongi Tim O’Connor Douglas Parker David Perkins Dorothy Phillips Barbara Popel Louise Rachlis Jeanette Rive Kate Roberts Marisa Romano Anna Rumin Jan Salmon
Continued on page 2
What’s Inside Mike Seto Sophie Shields Laura Smith Elizabeth Stanton Sue Stefko James Stuewe Mira Sucharov JC Sulzenko Carolyn Thompson Elspeth Tory Mary Tsai Caren Von Merveldt Zeus Wendy Daigle Zinn
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over, I felt my anger and apprehension dissolve. I still viewed myself as a sceptical observer, but I was beginning to feel some sympathy for the protestors. These seemed to be ordinary people shaking off two years of uncertainty, isolation and frustration. If this was only a joyful mass catharsis, what was the harm? Unsatisfied with just a single visit, I returned on Monday evening.
The crowds were gone, leaving a hard core of several hundred protestors to hold down the fort. The backbone of this group was the archetypal roughneck: white, male, relatively young and likely engaged in some type of physical labour. Many of them looked less than friendly and seemed to eye me with suspicion. I read the messages on their vehicles and on the signs decorating the fence around Parliament. An alarming number were explicitly anti-vaccine. Quite a few promoted absurd conspiracy theories from the QAnon dreamscape. And many, many of the messages that I saw expressed a particular hatred for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was variously described as a tyrant, a traitor, a Communist or the biological son of Fidel Castro. The core identity of the protest came through, and it was rather uglier than my first impression. In the following days, accounts of harassment and assault by protestors started trickling in. At the same time, we learned more about the convoy organizers and their far-right beliefs. A climate of fear settled on downtown as it became clear that police could not, or would not, enforce basic laws. I continued to observe and document the protest while the so-called Red Zone felt more and more like a foreign country. As the days turned into weeks and the protest turned into an occupation, I grew increasingly furious with the protestors, the police and the multiple levels of government that had failed us. I’m sure many of the protestors
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Tree myths.............................................................Page 12, 13
Flora.............................................................................. Page 21
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