Calloused Hands & What Used to be Called Journalism

Guest post by Ian Cumming.

In early 2022, Ian Cumming filed multiple stories about the Freedom Convoy for the Ontario Farmer newspaper, which gets delivered to rural mailboxes once a week. It didn’t manage to print everything he wrote on this topic, so it’s my pleasure to publish for the first time the column that appears below.

It begins by describing what occurred in Ottawa on January 29, 2002 - the first Saturday the truckers were in town. As ordinary Canadians descended on the nation’s capital from all directions, that city went out of its way to be inhospitable.

The second half is a well-deserved lambasting of the mainstream media.

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Guest post by Ian Cumming

Ottawa - Can you imagine the look on two rats’ faces, when they get caught feasting on a pile of grain, surrounded by 70 burly folks with shovels? That was the look of two bylaw enforcement officers who shut down the only food outlet in walking distance of Parliament Hill on Saturday morning, when the truck protest began.

It was a McDonald’s. No sit down. Just line-up-and-get-your-coffee-and-food, then walk out. Like the Tims coffee shop, 75 km away, I’d visited earlier the same morning. Apparently illegal here in the nation’s capital.

This city had already shut down the Tims, A&W, legal food street vendors and everyone else who made a living selling food, just in this vicinity. For the largest gathering of people ever on nearby Parliament Hill.

There were also no washroom facilities. The older lad I had struck up a conversation with in that McDonald’s lineup had driven here on a whim during the night and needed a sit-down john.

He had never protested before, farmed, raised a family, went to church. So being treated like this by government had never been on his radar. He seemed more confused than angry. And like, really, really needed a toilet. Don’t know if he found one. There were snowbanks.

It was only because there were oh-so-decent people like him in that McDonald’s - from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Australia, Quebec - not quite comprehending that officers were actually doing this, and also realizing they were being agitated to react, that the two rats never got thumped with shovels.

“We’re tired of them,” someone remarked quietly - meaning the bylaw inspectors who have been in all our communities harassing small businesses. Which pretty well sums up the prevailing reason why over 100,000 gathered here this day, with many continuing on into the week.

There was over $8 million raised via GoFundMe, which is enough money to keep those trucks in fuel in front of Parliament until 2024. Even with the carbon tax, organizers quipped.

I make a living knowing there are people like these bylaw officers. So after they had done their pathetic shutdown, I rapped on the passenger car window. “Why are you and your coworker wearing a mask sitting alone in your cars?” There was no reply.

It takes amazing people who will keep on smiling and standing tall when you take toilets and food away from them in minus-30 weather. This massive crowd was amazing.

What people had also gotten tired of – and another major reason they were here - was not only politicians, but also the mainstream media. With both seeming to be in some kind of contest to the bottom of people’s respect.

Media didn’t change for the better for this event. Sitting in the warm, scrolling Twitter feeds from professional activists, and then writing, shocked, as the moral scolds they’ve become. If someone peed in the wrong place, hung a Canadian flag on the Terry Fox sculpture, or walked around without a mask.

It was reported there was the smell of pot in the air. Well, you couldn’t buy any food or have a dump, but the legal pot store was allowed to be open.

Not going unnoticed was that mainstream media wasn’t this upset when Sir John A Macdonald’s statue was decapitated, or multiple churches were burned to the ground. The media did no follow-up, and therefore failed to report that the War Memorial and Terry’s statue were later kept spotless and guarded 24/7 against agitators wanting to discredit this protest.

Mainstream reporters never scolded the government over the visible snipers on the roof of Parliament on Saturday. But a media subsidized by - and beholden to - government, rarely does.

It’s not a question of “not liking” what someone writes. It isn’t journalism when it’s an outright lie. The crowd size officially cited at 8,000 was far larger than what one sees every year at the 45,000-strong Glengarry Highland Games near where I live. 6,000 people were fed at Herb’s alone the night before - a little truck stop down the highway.

Good Lord, know how to count. Know when you’re being lied to. Cowering to your government spinners and benefactors, such as the narrative that “these people” are dangerous and racist - without identifying exactly who. So many insults to our common sense. Wearing our face mask for 20 seconds entering a restaurant and then having it off for the next hour when dining. It gets tiring.

My articles on this protest have been published on the Ontario Farmer’s Facebook page. There followed praise and appreciation, but also attacks. I was accused of not posting about hateful things. How could I, when I never saw them in eight hours with these folks?

Leading writers, also sitting in the warm, stated in print that it was “confusing” knowing what these people in dirty pickups and transports wanted. Someone should send those perplexed writers a copy of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Or tell those reporters and columnists to simply stand in the cold with these folks for two hours on Friday night and six hours on Saturday and ask them why they are here. Novel concept that, used to be called journalism.

The lady who cut my hair on Friday, single chair (the other one empty due to the 50% capacity rule), started to sob at what COVID restrictions had done to her. She had a husband and little daughter in that convoy leaving Herb’s Truck Stop the next day.

It was not only the financially and personally devastated who came out to this protest, but also those with a sense of justice and courage. If you can’t understand that, if you don’t personally know these working people, for God’s sake quit journalism and politics. Because you don’t understand the people with calloused hands in your own nation. Nor understand freedom.

Claude and Max Berry, truck mechanics from Dalkeith, Ontario do. After spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at minus-30 sleeping in their pickup on Parliament Hill, they were home Monday night for a shower and a sleep in their own bed. Truckers said they’d keep an eye on their vehicle.

Monday morning they’d been up at 2 am with a gang, since Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament Randy Hillier had intercepted a message from Ottawa officials and police imploring tow trucks to gather at the Hill at 3 am. The pay offered was immense. Hillier told the tow truckers they would be waiting. No one showed up.

Tuesday morning the Berry brothers are back on the Hill for another stretch. A big snowfall is expected Wednesday. For journalists wanting a story, the Berry brothers’ black pickup with white lettering about the Prime Minister is only a few steps from the National Press Club.

Why they are here - forsaking an income - in the largest demonstration in our lifetime. That is the story. Not whether your sensitivities agree with it or not.