Hard to Swallow

'Charter of Rights and Freedoms aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.'

Before Jake and Lynnette (aka Ted & Sally) left Saskatoon to join the Freedom Convoy, they decorated their truck with red maple leaves, Canadian flags, and the words “True North Strong & Free.”

But that wasn’t all. Attached to both doors was a photograph of a Saskatoon anti-lockdown activist who was too ill to make the 3000-km trip himself. Known online as the Grizzly Patriot, his name is Mark Friesen.

As they were preparing to leave, Lynnette says she felt terrible that Mark wasn’t going to be part of the Convoy. They hadn’t yet met in person, but his activism and social media broadcasts had helped keep her sane when it seemed the whole world was losing its mind.

In her words, “God laid it on my heart. I knew Mark really wanted to be on this trip, and I just felt he needed to be represented.” Reaching out to an associate of his, she said “I need a picture of Mark. We need to take a visual of him with us.”

The image arrived late on Friday prior to their Monday departure. Shops that print automobile decals are usually closed weekends. By chance, Lynnette found one open for a few hours that Saturday. Over the phone, she said:

‘I need decals really bad, like I’ve gotta have them today.’

He says, ‘Come on down.’

So I went down there and he printed them and they were amazing.

Throughout their journey, and during the time Jake and Lynnette spent in Ottawa, when people asked if it was Mark’s truck, they heard the story and were told he was often amongst those watching Lynnette’s livestreams. Via her videos, he was able to see for himself the reception the Convoy encountered in community after community.

Two days ago, Mark testified before the National Citizen’s Inquiry. You can watch his testimony in this stand-alone video. He talked about being fined thousands of dollars on multiple occasions for peacefully protesting lockdown measures. In his view, the last three years have demonstrated that “our Charter of Rights and Freedoms aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”

Mark is gravely concerned, as we all should be, that people with alternative pandemic views were frozen out of the public conversation:

There’s something wrong, I think, when you have all of these people - and the Convoy showed how many people there are that felt this way…

…if [we’re] not represented then we have to represent ourselves. And we’re going to gather, and we’re going to express our opposition to their decisions peacefully. Publicly. And that is our right.

But as we saw with the Convoy, apparently it’s not our right. Apparently a peaceful protest can be bludgeoned. With horses. And soldiers. And beatings.

That’s hard to swallow. When so many of us have relatives that gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. And to have them trampled, like they have been over the last three years, is disgusting.

Find Mark on Twitter here, on Rumble here, and on Facebook here and here.