Mama Sandra

'My convoy family. They never forget me, and I never forget them.'

Part1: It Was a Prison

Sandra (on right) with Manitoba friends. Photo supplied by her.

Having worked in a Montreal veterans hospital from 2011 until late 2017, Sandra is familiar with the shortcomings of government-run health care. Bureaucratic imperatives have their own momentum. The consequences of government policy for individuals can be dire.

Skeptical of the safety of COVID vaccines, Sandra advised her daughters, her parents, and her sisters not to take them. As a result, she says, much of her family stopped speaking to her. Her mother urged her to get vaccinated in order to keep her job at the hunting and fishing lodge. "'It's just a little pick, pick. And If you don't take that,' she said, 'you can never see me again. You can't come to visit because you make dad and me sick.'"

Sandra believes her parents received four shots each. Her father had experienced a cardiac event in 2019 and was on the mend, she says, but after the vaccines his health declined. He had trouble breathing. He had pain under his arm and in his legs. All of these problems were new. In November 2022, he slipped on some ice and died in a tragic accident at the age of 78.

Despite having been previously advised by her doctor that her heart was unusually healthy, in the summer of 2022 Sandra's mother was also diagnosed with heart problems. A blood clot developed behind one eye (macular degeneration had already claimed her sight in the other). She is now blind, and resides in a care home. In Sandra's mind, these cascades of poor health weren't simply old age - they were triggered by the vaccines.

Many families experienced medical catastrophes during the COVID years. Anxiety, conflict, grief, sorrow, exhaustion. At a time when those families could have used some compassion, when mutual respect might have calmed troubled waters, politicians and journalists were instead stigmatizing, scapegoating, and dividing people.

"So where is my family, now?" Sandra asks rhetorically. "In Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. My convoy family. They never forget me, and I never forget them."

Sandra (on right) with western Canadian friends. Photo supplied by her.

The truckers who parked on the city block near her outdoor kitchen were mostly from western Canada. To them she was Mama Sandra - the angel of Metcalfe Street. The last thing they'd anticipated while rolling across the country in their big rigs was that they'd form an enduring bond with a francophone woman from Montreal.

"They let me know," she says. "'Hey Mama, you come to my house anytime. I have a room for you. I cook for you, and you just relax.'"

Since the Ottawa protest, Sandra has indeed visited out west. And received visitors in return. In one case, a chap she met in Ottawa flew to Montreal to fetch a truck he'd purchased in Quebec. She picked him up at the airport and, it being maple syrup season, took him on a tour of local sugar shacks.

When he returned home to Alberta, $300 worth of syrup and maple butter went with him.

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At a time in which fear, division, and scorn had poisoned our nation, ordinary Canadians such as Sandra helped turn the tide. Unity is the answer, she says. People from different parts of the country came together in Ottawa. In defiance of the entire political class, they joined hands and hearts. They fed each other, hugged each other, loved each other. Together, they created a new vision of Canada.