I Want My Children to Grow Up Free
French-language signs were abundant in Ottawa. Truckers and their supporters were from both French and English Canada.
My first meal in a restaurant in months was memorable for another reason. Beside us sat a young Francophone family. The parents had bundled up their 3-year-old daughter and their breastfeeding 9-month-old son and had driven to Ottawa from Montreal for the day.
That’s 2-plus hours of driving in each direction, diaper bags bulging with supplies, in the dead of winter. Not everyone’s idea of a rollicking good time.
This charming family shared their pickles with us, and explained they’d attended the trucker protest because they wanted their children to grow up in a free country.
Eventually, they donned coats and scarves and prepared to start the journey homeward. The littlest one waved goodbye clutching the blue and white fleur-de-lis in his small fist.
French-language signs - and Quebec flags - were abundant in Ottawa. Truckers and their supporters were from both French and English Canada. More than once, I heard about Francophone Quebecers embracing their English-speaking brothers and sisters, declaring freedom to be everyone’s battle.
