A Romanian Immigrant's Story

Cross border trucker says the convoy was about more than feeding his family

The trucker reaching down to shake hands in the previous post is named Csaba Vizi. Side by side with the driver of the yellow truck, above, he held the line in Ottawa for three weeks, at an intersection approximately halfway between Parliament Hill and the Rideau Centre, a nearby shopping mall.

Csaba lives in Windsor, on the Canada/US border. His final US run was in early January 2022. He personally declined to take the COVID vaccines, so after the border vaccine mandate came into effect mid-month, he was abruptly barred from earning a living in his usual manner.

Csaba spent the first 18 years of his life in Communist Romania, arriving in Canada at the age of 28 in 2000. Like other immigrants from the former East Bloc, he claims to have a sensitive nose. He can, he says, recognize “the smell” of creeping Communism.

Feeling it was time to take a stand, to push back against government COVID policies, he joined the trucker protest. In an interview with Bright Light News, he says:

I didn’t know what exactly is going to be in Ottawa. But I feel the need, I gotta be there. So I just joined the convoy without knowing, like, no organizer. I simply just heard what time the convoy is gonna leave from my area, and that’s it. I kiss my family goodbye.

When I started driving, and I get on the the highway, the very first overpass I saw a few hundred people. Kids. Older people. Young people. Cheering. And [I] see all those Canadian flags. I get moved, you know. And I knew I’m doing this not just for my family. I gotta do this for these people also.

Two hours later, as the convoy approached London, Ontario the emotional significance of the protest got cranked up another notch:

At London, I remember I saw five or six [military] veterans, old veterans. Right on the side of the highway. And they was [raises his right hand in a salute].

And I started crying. And I was driving like that probably 20 miles. I couldn’t stop crying. It was very, very emotional.