Hutterite Hospitality

Before aiding the Freedom Convoy, Manitoba Hutterites supported a trucker protest at the border.

CBC coverage of a trucker protest at the Manitoba/US border - a week before the Freedom Convoy got underway.

Eagle Vision Video Productions is a small company located 13 hours north of Vancouver. Its personnel traveled across the country with the Freedom Convoy, recording high quality, historic footage. Since then, Eagle Vision has produced an acclaimed, 2.5-hour documentary film titled Unacceptable?

Everyone who appears onscreen for a minute or two in that documentary has their own back story. When you purchase the film online at Vimeo.com for $15, you also gain access to 27 unedited, full-length interviews.

Amongst these is 70 minutes with Ben Hofer, a Hutterite gentleman who describes the assistance that members of his community provided to the Convoy. To my knowledge, no one else has landed this story. This level of detail has not been reported on.

Ben is a member of the Horizon Colony in southern Manitoba where, he explains, Hutterite colonies are typically 80 to 100 people (a headcount of 200 is considered large). A week before Freedom Convoy truckers left the west coast, Manitoba truckers were already protesting the cross-border vaccine mandate. In the words of a CBC article dated two days after the mandate took effect, truckers were "parading their vehicles up and down Highway 75 near the international border" close to Emerson.

Screen capture from Google Maps (click image)

Ben says he'd heard they'd be gathering at 3 am, so he himself got up in the wee hours to check things out. "Not to be in the rally, but to see if it's actually happening. And sure enough, they were there. There was about 50, 60 trucks there already."

Returning a few hours later, he says trucks were driving in a half mile loop, "up to the Canadian Customs and then back. Because there's a turnaround right in front of the Canadian Customs. So I stopped one of the drivers there and I asked him how long they're staying." The plan was to remain for the entire day, so Ben proposed bringing some food.

At home, he says he "got some brats made and some Italian sausage," before returning to the protest with a trailer containing barbecues and tables. He says he “made sure the wind was in the right direction, and got the air going through, and started grilling brats.” His brother arrived with coffee and buns, and a sign that said 'Free Food.'

Ben continues:

And the people were just ever so glad that we were there, and serving them food. And one of the things they started doing was asking where they could put donations. Donations for what? For the food, whatever. I says, ‘I didn't come here for donations.'

And so we ended up putting a Tim Horton's cup. And that, I think, whatever - $80 or a hundred bucks, was accumulated. But people came in and just were relieved and overjoyed that this was happening. And you could feel the spirit there, the unity.

He says the border protest turned into a week-long slow roll. "I think it turned out to be five days. It went through one weekend. And people came from far and wide. And it grew." At one point, he says, "there was three miles of trucks on both sides."

After some of the truckers began talking about blocking the border, Ben’s team pulled back. "Our elders," he says "didn't wanna be a part of blocking the border." But "during that time, when we were at Emerson, one day the truckers came through from Alberta."

next: An Experience I’ll Never Forget