Never Refused Entry to America

Only trouble was when returning to Canada.

Part 1: The Church in the Greenhouse (trucker Bill’s story)

Photo taken by me in Ottawa, during the second week of the protest.

The Freedom Convoy triggers the end of many pandemic restrictions in Canada. In province after province, the two-tiered, vaccine passport society begins to crumble within days of the truckers reaching Ottawa.

Wholly out of step with the rest of the world, the federal government stubbornly maintains the cross-border vaccine mandate until October 1, 2022. Numerous European nations stop caring about the vaccination status of international arrivals between February and May of that year. Portugal, an outlier, abandons its vaccine requirement on July 1st.

Following two disastrous pandemic summers, Canada's tourism industry is subjected to a third year of hardship. It's difficult not to conclude that the Prime Minister is more interested in punishing truckers than in reviving the overall economy.

Interviewed in September 2022, Bill says he never stopped working. After the Freedom Convoy, he continued his weekly run into the US. Not once, he says, did American border guards refuse him entry. The only trouble he encountered was while returning to Canada.

"Before I get to the border I turn my phone off," he says. But his identity is in the system, and that system says he's vaccine exempt. When Canadian officials examine his paperwork, the conversation goes something like:

They say, 'Oh, you're exempt, but you can't prove it.'

I say, 'That's right, I can't prove it.' Some agents are good, 'Boom, boom, have a nice day.' I've had trouble twice. As soon as I got to the booth and they were wearing a mask, I knew I was in trouble. I just give the tickets to Harold.

Like I told the guy yesterday, 'If the health department wants to pay my monthly condo fees, my insurance, all my bills, I'll stay home.'

Whenever a border guard scolds him about not following the rules, Bill shrugs and says, "I don't listen to the news. It's all crap. You can't believe them. It's sad."