On the Convoy's 2nd Anniversary, Let's Do Some Time Travel
How were governments behaving before the truckers hit the road?
AUTHOR’S NOTE: It’s now my understanding that some BC trucks left home on January 22nd.
Tomorrow - January 23rd - will be two years since the Freedom Convoy trucks began rolling in western Canada. Some Canadians think the protest was unnecessary. Pandemic measures were already falling by the wayside, they say. The restrictions were disappearing all on their own, they insist.
But that wasn’t the case. A few months prior to the trucker protest, in the autumn of 2021, Canada’s Prime Minister made vaccine non-compliance central to his election campaign. In mid-September, he insisted that, because Alberta and Saskatchewan lacked vaccine passport systems, the premiers of those provinces weren’t keeping people safe.
A few days later, Saskatchewan caved. Declaring that the “time for patience is now over,” the premier said unvaccinated people were overburdening hospitals, that indoor masking had returned, and that “a proof-of-vaccination policy” would soon follow.
In early October, the election behind him, Justin Trudeau acknowledged that Canada was “a world leader on COVID-19 vaccination” with “82 per cent of eligible Canadians fully vaccinated.” But that wasn’t good enough. The “country’s largest employer” would now force the holdouts to take these shots:
On October 30th, Canada became a prison for millions of people. The unvaxxed were trapped. We could no longer board a plane and leave the country. If an elderly relative fell ill, we might have to drive for days since we were also barred from domestic flights:
In mid-December, restrictions governing daily life tightened in Nova Scotia:
Next door, in PEI, new measures took effect on December 17th. School’s were closed until at least January 10th. Tourists who’d hoped to visit Anne of Green Gables historic sights over the holidays were barred from entering the province until further notice.
Did the holiday season’s ‘goodwill toward men’ translate into a 2022 that was kinder and gentler? I’m afraid not. Instead, our federal health minister began the New Year by declaring it was merely a matter of time before provincial premiers did the right thing and made COVID vaccines mandatory:
Harsher pandemic measures went into effect in the Yukon on January 7th:
A few days later, Quebec announced financial penalties for the unvaxxed - adding more strain to the lives of people who’d made the wrenching decision to forfeit their job rather than comply:
January 13th was the day the Premier of New Brunswick promised life would “become increasingly uncomfortable and more difficult” for the unvaccinated. In that province, kids didn’t return to the classroom until January 31st.
During the final months of 2021 and the first weeks of 2022, the trajectory was unmistakable. Pandemic restrictions were not fading away. Quite the opposite.
Normal life was being interrupted yet again. In-school learning was yet again put on hold. The unvaxxed were being targeted by governments more, not less. There was no indication whatsoever that politicians were prepared to relax their grip and adopt a ‘live and let live’ approach.
The trucker protest’s central message was: Enough is Enough.
That’s when the spell finally broke.
In early 2021, COVID vaccines were being called a miracle. The virus would be stopped in its tracks, herd immunity would be achieved, and normal life would return.
But these vaccines don’t work. By March 2021, experts already knew herd immunity was unlikely. By early August 2021, the CDC admitted the inoculations didn’t stop anyone from catching or spreading the virus.
It’s crucial to understand this: Rather than facing up to reality, rather than acknowledging the shortcomings of the vaccines and changing course, politicians spent a further six months behaving like tyrants. The vaccines were faulty, but it was the unvaxxed who got blamed and scapegoated.
During those six months, politicians coerced people. They disparaged people. They continued to make our collective lives miserable. They didn’t stop behaving this way out of the goodness of their heart. That happened only after the truckers, with vast swaths of the public behind them, spoke up and stood up.
I found it emotional to read that post. it brings back the fear and trauma of being outcast from society and blamed for a spreading disease. Everything became unstable, our future was in question. No one stood by us. Even family members deserted us. For those of us that experienced being excommunicated and threatened with fines and further exclusion, we have been changed forever. We will be at the overpass on the 23rd.
I remember all of this, and am grateful for the list to pull it together. It was terrifying. By September 2021 I was looking for any way I could to protest--attending rallies, writing to all layers of government, signing petitions, writing to newspapers, looking to contact any resistance groups I could find--and it was all like screaming into a vacuum. No sound carried. Word of measures planned just got worse and worse and worse. No political resistance from any of the parties which should have been standing up against it--none from my neighbours, either. (Hint: I live in Ottawa, in the riding which persistently re-elects Trudeau's most obnoxiously stupid fangirl.) Everything was just falling in line... The Freedom Convoy has bought us at least a few years of relief, and I'll hope we can build on that, for more.
That said, knowing that all the legislative infrastructure implemented to control us, both Federal and provincial, is still in place--'suspended' is not repealed, for any of it, and I suspect that none of their 'planned' measures have been erased, either...I still expect to die freezing in a gulag. Likely being pinned to the floor and force-jabbed with a killer 'Disease X' vax or 'assisted' medically to die because I'll have been ruled incurably mentally ill for being an enemy of the state.