Regular Canadians vs the Media

Crowd chases CBC news crew - 'You work for us, not for the government.'

Part 1: Bootlegging Fuel into Ottawa

Photo supplied by Martin

"There was no plan," says Martin, a Quebec grain farmer who spent three weeks in Ottawa supplying the truckers with fuel. "There was no script, no script at all." Every morning was a new day.

“I met so many people from all over Canada,” he says:

They just walk up to you, strangers. My tractor was literally full. With food. With Tim Horton's gift cards, McDonald's cards. Letters. Envelopes with money. I took them all home, opened them up. I had five, six hundred dollars in my pocket in one day.

A lady walked up to us one time. Nice dressed. The dress did not fit the surrounding, right. She started chatting to Frank, the farmer from Alberta. Me, another couple guys. Around ten o'clock in the morning. She had a big handbag. Chit-chatted for 15 minutes. She says, 'I have to go see some other people.' She grabs into the bag. Envelope, envelope, envelope. And she left.

We figured it's a card in it. Every envelope had a hundred bucks, a $100 bill. The funny part was she traveled from Vancouver, BC with her own car.

Photo supplied by Martin

Martin says the cash that flowed in his direction was passed along to truckers who’d incurred huge fuel bills just to reach Ottawa. Overall, the vibe was "just amazing.” He remembers two chaps from Manitoba who drove 24 hours straight and then spent the day walking around, introducing themselves, thanking everyone. “We had a tent set up. There was always a warm meal, breakfast in the morning, dinner at night. We had a whole pig roast there. Two or three times. In the wintertime. People just walking in and everybody got fed."

Friends from western Ontario called to ask if they could stay at his farm. Firsthand accounts of the protest contrasted so dramatically with what the media was reporting, many Canadians felt compelled to check out matters for themselves. After they arrived, these friends showed Martin examples of the coverage in their local, small town newspaper. He was startled. "Like, wow. That bad?"

At times, hostility toward the press boiled over. In Martin's words,

One night the CBC was doing a live broadcast. Camera man, two security, they were doing the news. And I started yelling into the crowd 'CBC, CBC is right over here.' And we chased them down the friggin damn side streets. We were running after them, the police watched it. About 50 to 100 people just running down the street. You never gonna forget the way everything went.

A few days later, he says he confronted the same journalist. "You work for us, not for the government," Martin told him. Despite the evidence in front of their eyes, journalists chose to parrot the government narrative that the protesters were marginal, illegitimate yahoos who didn't deserve the courtesy of a hearing.

It's as though mainstream journalists were oblivious to how our social fabric was being destroyed by the scapegoating they themselves endlessly promoted. Martin says the friends who visited from Ontario are dairy farmers. The male half of the couple "got shunned out of the curling club, out of the swimming club." After being part of these groups for 25 years. "They still don't wanna see him, cuz he's not vaccinated."

final installment: When Police Impede the Ambulances