Andrew Lawton - The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks that Shook the World

THE

FREEDOM

CONVOY

Sutherland House

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Copyright 2022 by Andrew Lawton

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First edition, June 2022

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Manufactured in Canada

Cover designed by Jordan Lunn

Book composed by Karl Hunt

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The Freedom Convoy : the inside story of three weeks that shook the world / Andrew Lawton.

Names: Lawton, Andrew, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20220245223 | ISBN 9781989555934 (softcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Protest movementsCanada. |

LCSH: Truck driversCanada. | LCSH: Vaccine mandates

Canada. | LCSH: Liberty.

Classification: LCC HM883 .L39 2022 |

DDC 303.48/40971dc23

eBook ISBN: 978-1-989555-94-1

ISBN 978-1-989555-93-4

For my infinitely loving and supportive wife,

Jennifer, and my parents, Jim and Trish.

On the eve of the convoys arrival in Ottawa, the streets felt more like a party than a protest. Honks, diesel exhaust, and excitement filled the air. Drivers rounded city blocks blaring their horns, blasting music, and shouting Freedom! as they passed cheering gaggles on the sidewalks. The early arrivalstruckers who showed up on their own rather than in the several convoys set to descend on Canadas capitalstaked positions on Wellington St. and its immediate side streets. Many of them wouldnt leave those spots for three weeks. The scene indoors was just as vibrant. People who only knew each other from Facebook and Telegram groups met for the first time and embraced. Hotels that had sat empty for much of the previous two years filled up.

In the days that followed, the atmosphere would become even more festive. A flatbed truck rigged with a high-powered sound system became the main stage, hosting speakers and musicians throughout the week. People sang and danced into the night. The same stage hosted church services on Sunday mornings. And then there were the bouncy castles and the hot tub. Walking into Convoyland felt like taking a step into 2019a time before mask mandates and vaccine passports. This is the world the protesters were trying to reclaim. If you were there, youd never know the participants were supposed to be a bunch of violent, hateful insurrectionists. Contrary to what youve been told, they werent.

As the truckers neared Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed them as a small fringe minority with unacceptable views. Canadian media coverage oscillated between dismissive and slanderous. One outlet highlighted a purported security experts warning that convoy donors might be financing terrorism. Canadas state broadcaster, CBC, mused that Russian actors might be behind everything. When the convoy established its semi-permanent presence in Ottawawhich one organizer dubbed Trudeaus Truck Stopthe stories that trended on Twitter and dominated mainstream media coverage were almost universally negative. Stealing food from the homeless, desecrating monuments, Nazi and Confederate flags, and so on. Most of these incidents were wildly misrepresented. The convoys organizers were swift to condemn bad actors in their midst, and none of them were representative of the protesters as a whole. Nonetheless, these stories helped critics craft a narrative that the convoy was made up of a bunch of lawless, callous white supremacists.

These controversies generated far more buzz online than they did on the streets of Ottawa. Generally, I only learned of them when I was back in my hotel room warming up and recharging my phone. I didnt see a single swastika or Confederate battle flag in my travels, although from the news coverage youd think they were everywhere. There were lots of Fuck Trudeau flags and no shortage of signs delving into any number of conspiracy theories involving 5G, George Soros, and Bill Gates, but sprinklings of incivility and kookiness are not violence.

The divide between the medias portrayal of the convoy and the reality on the ground was stark. Even though the mainstream Canadian coverage occurred at close rangethe action was all unfolding steps from Ottawa news bureausreporters and columnists insisted the truckers and their supporters were dangerous goons. American and British outlets gave the convoy a fairer treatment. Some of this was no doubt exacerbated by convoy organizers refusal to engage with most media outlets, and the tendency of some protesters to heckle or harass journalists they encountered, resulting in unflattering news clips that further maligned the convoy. People who saw for themselves what the convoy was like grew more distrustful of the medias coverage of it. Some of my most-praised coverage was simple live video streaming, showing viewers the unfiltered reality of life in what Ottawa police called the red zone.

Few journalists sought to understand the protesters and why they were there. Whether it was the HVAC technician who showed up to check things out for a weekend and never left, the fully vaccinated lefty who protested because she felt being pro-choice required opposing vaccine mandates, or the Alberta couple who walked into a hotel looking for a printer and ended up becoming a critical part of one of the convoys logistics hubs, there was room for everyone in the convoy. Over the three weeks, the convoy attracted a broad base of support, including from people who didnt fit the moulds into which their critics sought to shove them. There were evangelicals and libertarians, Indigenous Canadians and Qubcois, hippies and blue-collar workers. The convoy was far more reflective of Canadian society than many would assume. This diversity was why efforts to castigate all the protesters as knuckle-dragging, anti-science louts were misguided. Yet for all their differences, there was something that held the protesters together. It started with shared opposition to vaccine mandates and vaccine passports and morphed into a sense of community for people who otherwise felt like social and political outcasts. That bond kept the convoy together until the end, when two days of aggressive police action cleared the streets, removing the trucks and protesters in under forty-eight hours.

On that cold February weekend, mounted police knocked an elderly Indigenous woman to the ground, cops in riot gear pepper-sprayed journalists, the government conscripted tow truck drivers, and banks froze hundreds of accounts of people whod never been accused, let alone convicted, of any crimes. That weekend ushered in the beginning of the end of the convoys time in Ottawa. It was also the first and only violent turn in the otherwise peaceful protest. This crackdown was largely celebrated by the Canadian media and condemned by foreign press. To the convoys supporters, it was proof of the very government overreach they were protesting; to the convoys detractors, it was long overdue. This clash only furthered the divide between the two narratives.