Remaining Peaceful

'The more they were provoked, the more the truckers understood their role.'

Photo taken by Jodi near Wellington & Eglin Streets, 29 January 2022. Click image to read her essay, ‘A cold winter’s birthday in Ottawa’ - in which this photo appears.

Jodi Bruhn was born on the prairies, but has lived in the nation’s capital for nearly 20 years. She was among the many Ottawa residents who ventured downtown and experienced the Freedom Convoy firsthand.

Jodi visited the protest multiple times – celebrating with people, talking to people, taking photos, observing. Recently, she discussed all of this with Marco Navarro-Génie on his podcast.

He tells us Jodi has a PhD, works as a policy consultant, and “specializes in the analysis of totalitarian dictatorships.” In other words, she’s not blue collar. But she certainly knew what she was looking at. “I was very much in support of the protest happening in the first place,” she says, even though “I'm not a person who attends a lot of protests.”

In her view, politicians, educators, and the health care sector all overreacted to COVID. She thinks the media failed us, and notes that Canadian courts were not defending bodily autonomy. “Something needed to change,” she says.

The Omicron variant was dominant at the time of the Convoy. Everyone – vaxxed or not – she points out, was catching it, and overall it was relatively harmless. Yet these new realities weren’t “penetrating our ruling class…or our media,” who seemed stuck in a time warp.

As the Ottawa protest dragged on, Jodi says she found herself worrying about some of the truckers. But whenever she checked in with them, she thought they displayed a remarkable “acceptance of their role” given that no one knew what was going to happen, or how matters would eventually end. Doggedly, patiently, they refused to budge.

In her view, the political rhetoric on the part of those opposed to vaccine choice, and on the part of the Convoy’s critics was sometimes “ugly and scary.” She recalls comments comparing the unvaxxed to cornered rats, and marvels at the ability of the truckers to keep their cool even after their GoFundMe campaign was shut down, and even after donors to their GiveSendGo fundraiser were doxxed. In her words:

I think some of the police representatives said it was a miracle that it stayed peaceful. And I would agree with them. It was a miracle. Because there was such provocation. And such anger [from certain Ottawa residents and politicians].

And it was like the more that they were provoked, the more the truckers there understood their role – that they were to remain peaceful.

Part 2: A Sad Day

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Listen to the podcast here. Jodi’s thoughtful substack is called The Good Resist.