Who's Trauma Matters?

Millions of Canadians suffered due to COVID measures. When truckers highlighted that suffering, they were accused of traumatizing Ottawa residents.

The past few years have been disorienting, dislocating, and disruptive for millions of Canadians. We were forbidden from gathering in houses of worship. Kept from the bedsides of hospitalized loved ones during their final hours. Banned from funerals and weddings.

Family businesses were destroyed by lockdowns, savings were obliterated. People lost careers after declining COVID vaccines, and were then re-victimized by being denied Unemployment Insurance. Segregation and discrimination became an odious, everyday reality for legions of Canadian children.

The trauma associated with all of the above is massive. These have been profoundly life-altering experiences. We will carry these wounds, these sorrows, to our graves. We will never forget the cruelty of our politicians - of some of our fellow citizens, closest friends, even members of our own families.

The Freedom Convoy happened precisely because all of this trauma remained unacknowledged. People with non-mainstream opinions were invisible. Rational conversation was impossible. The government kept piling new restrictions on top of old restrictions. Long after any medical crisis had subsided, the same cross-border truckers who’d kept the economy afloat during COVID’s darkest days, were being forced to submit to a medical procedure in order to continue feeding their families.

Astonishingly few people stood up and said this was wrong. Then the truckers stood up. They drove to Ottawa by the thousands. You’re darn right they made noise. They insisted on being heard. They became the voice of an iceberg’s worth of hidden pain and alienation.

None of this pain is even on the radar of Steve Bell, currently the acting Chief of Police of the city of Ottawa. Testifying at the Emergencies Act hearings on Monday, he used the word trauma repeatedly. Strange that the only kind he can see is the trauma he says was inflicted on an estimated 18,000 people residing in Ottawa’s downtown core.

In the dead of winter, when most people remain indoors with their windows firmly closed, Acting Chief Bell would have us believe that a three-week outdoor protest was intolerable, intolerable I tell you.

He speaks of “the trauma they put our community through” (see page 33 of his transcript testimony here).

He talks of protesters “creating an occupation that traumatizes our community” (p. 48).

He refers to “the trauma that those community members felt and very clearly expressed” (page 215).

Acting Chief Bell calls the truckers and their supporters “the mob.” These weren’t, apparently, people with legitimate grievances. People who’d reached the end of their patience. People who’d descended on the nation’s capital because nothing else had worked.

To hear him tell it, the Freedom Convoy maliciously victimized the citizens of Ottawa. Intentionally and on purpose:

…the community trauma and violence to our community…Nobody knew that that was going to be the tactic that the mob that got here was going to actually engage in. [page 56, added]

When Ottawa residents express their concerns Bell pays attention. When truckers drive thousands of miles to draw attention to their own trauma, he calls them a mob.