On the first Saturday of the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa a year ago, Reuters tweeted a 90-second news clip. At the 10-second mark, that video says Canadian truck drivers had “staged a massive protest.” Thirty seconds later, the same video said “scores of trucks,” had “lined up in front of Parliament…as thousands of people gathered peacefully.”
While falling short of the reality, this account was closer to the truth than that of Andrew Coyne - a columnist for the Globe and Mail and a regular panelist on CBC television. Around 7 pm that day, Coyne derided and dismissed the Ottawa protest. A “few hundred anti-vaxxers,” he said, had made “asses of themselves.”
So let us turn to the Emergencies Act inquiry, and to the Closing Submission of former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly. There’s a great deal of hyperbole in that 154-page document, but it also reports some cold, hard facts. Here’s the police perspective:
The first weekend flooded Ottawa with vehicles and protesters. The City was inundated, from all directions, with thousands of trucks from across the country…[the Ottawa Police Service] tried to maintain its traffic plan…but it collapsed under the pressure of thousands of trucks streaming into the core. [bold added]
That’s a quote from paragraph 91. Here’s what paragraph 93 says:
Around noon on Saturday, January 29, a convoy of around 1,000 vehicles was coming north up Highway 417; three convoys were coming south down Highway 50, totalling around 2,000 vehicles; and people were marching on foot across the Alexandria and Portage bridges [from Quebec].
By around 2:00 pm on January 29, convoys from the west and east had arrived and were backed up 20 and 30 kilometres, respectively, on Highway 417. [bold added]
On the day in which these monumental events transpired, a prominent Canadian journalist told the world nothing much had happened.
I am happy to know Andrew Coyne is one more high profile Canadian journalist who cannot be trusted or believed- not that I ever come across him anymore because I only listen to independent news sources now.
So happy and proud to stand with you Critical and Barbara and all the rest of you like minded Canadians! R U all aware of Christine Anderson’s Cross Canada Tour presently happening? - Toronto and Whitby Ont this Sat and Sun!