What's going on in Truckistan

The rollercoaster battle of good vs evil

Dispatch from the ground in Truckistan, the country formerly known as Canada. It’s been a weird and wild few weeks. Probably most of you reading this will have been following the news, so this is less a news update than one person’s impressions from living it.

The trucker convoy is still camped out in Ottawa, and despite drawing the rage of the Prime Minister, the Ottawa city council, the Ottawa chief of police, and every bien pensant from Vancouver to St. John’s, don’t appear to be going anywhere. Thousands of people join them every weekend, turning Ottawa into a giant open-air party. I haven’t gone yet, but hope to soon.

In the meantime, they’ve inspired similar convoys across the nations most plagued by covid tyranny, in New Zealand and Europe, and closer to home, here in Canada. I’ve taken part in two slow-roll vehicle convoys this weekend and last, and have heard of many more across the country. More borders are being blockaded.

Personally speaking, it’s been an absolute roller coaster of emotions, from the joy and relief and hope generated by the truckers storming across the country, to fear and despair as they are threatened with arrest and removal, to amazement and gratitude as millions of dollars from Canadians and even people from other countries poured in for their support, to horror as GoFundMe seized the donations, to elation as GiveSendGo stepped in to receive them instead…and on and on it goes. We really are in a giant battle of good versus evil and every day brings good and bad news. But the side of light and truth is still soldiering on and gaining more recruits every day.

I have had to learn to not allow every new seemingly negative development to cast me into despair, but to pray. I may have prayed more in the last few weeks than at any other point in my life.

I do not understand how Justin Trudeau is still our Prime Minister. He is digging in his heels, refusing to back down, refusing to meet with the truckers, refusing to rescind any mandates or restrictions. How long can he hold out? As countries across the world are dropping their covid regimes, when will Canada follow suit? Some provinces already are, but here in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford is not only refusing to back down on vaccine passports, mandates, and lockdowns, he declared another state of emergency due to the trucker convoys and the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. That is in addition to the existing “state of emergency” he somehow managed to prolong again, ostensibly due to covid.

These are weird and exciting times to be living in. All I know is I feel an urge to rise up, to join up, and to be part of resisting this - whatever “this” is that’s being pushed on us, that I can feel like a malevolent dark force over our country and the world. It’s a strange feeling because I have no idea how this revolution will play out. Will it be successful in restoring freedom and democracy to Canada? Or will it be crushed and the iron totalitarian boot be on our throats even harder, forever?

One strange and difficult thing to deal with is the polarization this has created in society. On one side you have people who believe that freedom, democracy, and human rights are under severe threat, and are fighting to try to restore them. On the other, you have a group who viscerally hate us for this. It’s hard to understand, and also very ironic, because while they accuse us of being haters and racists and this-phobes and that-phobes, the only hatred I’ve experienced has come from them.

Our protests are polarizing. We get many, many people showing support by honking and waving. We get others who ignore us. And another group who expresses their displeasure with the middle finger, thumbs down, yelling, and even violence.

Last weekend’s convoy was met with a woman throwing eggs at vehicles and another woman and her son throwing chunks of ice, one of which bloodied someone’s eye. This weekend, my husband and I tried to join a rumoured protest at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, but by the time we arrived, police had closed off all routes to the bridge. So we ended up in a spontaneous slow roll on the highway instead.

Somehow we ended up at the front of the line, and during that time we passed through a section where the highway narrowed into one lane with no shoulder on either side. We weren’t aware that we should have sped up until reaching the point where it widened into two lanes again, so we got pulled over and given a warning by the police.

As we were stopped waiting for them to process us, a car pulled up on a parallel roadway on my side of the car and the driver, a young man, rolled down his window and made it clear he wanted to speak with us. My husband rolled down the window and this young man yelled, “You deserve that! For slowing down traffic. You deserve it!” I just smiled and said, “OK, cool. Have a great day!” This made him angrier so he started shouting more. I just blew him some kisses, my standard response to protest haters. This drove him into a fury. “You’re sick! Sick!” he snarled, and sped off.

It’s exceedingly strange to end up in the position where peacefully protesting in an attempt to regain your Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and freedoms draws so much hatred. It’s a little bit frightening to realize that you live among a sizeable portion of the citizenry who really aren’t actually very nice people, who hate your guts for daring to exercise your rights, who apparently prefer to live in slavery than as free men. Do they even know why they hate us? Or do they just swallow the lies by the government and the media who desperately try to paint us as evil?

It’s a historic moment. I’m proud to stand with the heroes who have done so much more than I to speak the truth and fight for our rights. I am not a person who enjoys conflict or trouble. I’d much prefer to be out of the spotlight living a quiet life. But this feels too important to not be a part of, something in me rises up saying I must do my part to resist, and so on we go. How this plays out I don’t know. God knows, and trusting him with it and trying to do good is all we can do.