Photo of a blockade in Ottawa with an "End the Occupation" banner to stop more trucks joining the downtown convoy.
Blockade in Ottawa with an "End the Occupation" banner to stop more trucks joining the downtown convoy. Credit: Chris Dixon / Used with permission. Credit: Chris Dixon / Used with permission.

Three hours into blocking a couple of dozen wanna-be truckers from joining the convoy at Parliament Hill, I heard a couple of women engaging with a guy who was flying union flags on his pickup. It’s not right, they said, for him to claim the union in this way. 

This was one of the many small conversations that were happening all around, as the people of Ottawa came together last weekend to say, ”No more.” It’s not breaking news to tell you that the people of Ottawa are fed up with the “Freedom Convoy” that’s been parked on our national doorstep for the last 17 days.      

The people of this city have been harassed and intimidated into leaving their homes and people have been pushed around, spit on and had their masks pulled off. Our law enforcement has spectacularly failed in its cardinal duty to protect people in the community. 

In fact, anyone who watches our mainstream media might well be bored of the breathless reporting about the “parties” on the Hill, the DJs, the stage, the saunas and the hot tub. As hundreds of us were out on the streets of Ottawa this past weekend, about 5000 people were partying away their evenings on the Hill, same as there were last weekend while the Premier was hanging out at his cottage. National TV — here’s looking at you CBC and CTV — aired hours of footage and interviewed one more incoherent protestor after another. 

Meanwhile, on Saturday, 4000 of my best pals and I (according to organizers) were gathered at Lansdowne park and then peacefully walking through the Glebe to make it known that we wanted the “occupation” of Ottawa to end. The Ottawa Sun counted 2000 of us and the CBC suggest that it was a scant 500 people. This carefully organized, studiedly peaceful and masked rally got almost no coverage on any major media or TV stations, which continued to give prime coverage to the riotous crowds on Wellington Street. 

We marched in support of the science of vaccine and mask mandates and yes, for democracy. We’re not all fans of Trudeau or his government (I really am not!) but we’ll take democratically elected governments over self-annointed narcissists who want to sit down with the Governor-General.

You could be forgiven for thinking, if you only watched or heard mainstream media, that the sole denizens of Ottawa were the yahoos who have arrived in the city to camp out in the red zone, urinate on somber monuments and think that it’s funny to carry around jerrycans of gas and water. You could be forgiven for thinking that the people of Ottawa either don’t care or actually support these kinds of actions and the “demands” behind them.

You wouldn’t know that Ottawa has one of the highest rates of vaccination in one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world — 91 per cent of people over 12 years old are fully vaccinated as are 87 per cent of people over 5 years old — and the 62 per cent of the over 18 also have their booster shot. You wouldn’t realize that the people who call Ottawa home are being driven mad by the hostile atmosphere being created by the convoy and its supporters. You would barely know that downtown councillors and Ottawa’s one NDP MPP have been urgently calling on the city and the province to help their constituents.

Most of all, until yesterday, you might not have known how angry the people of Ottawa have been about the handwringing and inaction of the police. People in the city are angry; we are frustrated at the continued bad behaviour by the convoy contingent that police continue to ignore. There have been moments when the response from police HQ is so ridiculous as to be comic relief for the people of Ottawa. But let there be no doubt: people here who have watched on in bewilderment and disbelief are enraged. That’s why 4000 of us were on the streets on Saturday but also, it’s why hundreds of people  — a thousand at its height — came out to stop the trucks that were wending their way to downtown Ottawa yesterday to join the convoy.

Some context on the trucks that were stopped — billing itself the “blue collar convoy”: it was a few dozen small town types who had watched the motley crew at Parliament swell and had decided to join the party. Let’s not kid ourself that these were nazis or fascists — most of them were young men (and a few women) looking for jollies, with a mishmash of opinions (and no knowledge) on vaccines, borders, immigration and probably a thousand other real and imagined slights by a world that they don’t quite understand. Almost all white, they draped their trucks with Canadian flags and set out to stake their own claims on “freedom” though they couldn’t have been able to come up with a common definition of what that freedom meant.

Many were shocked at the resistance they were met with; their bravado of being ready to take on the state melting in the face of people talking to them and telling them they weren’t welcome in the city. I’m proud of every single person who showed up — the couple of dozen folks who stepped into the intersection at Riverside Drive and Bank Street could not have known that they would inspire hundreds of people to come join them. But it speaks volumes about the depth of frustration in this city that minutes after organizers started asking for help on social media, hundreds of people arrived to bolster their ranks.

As we reminded ourselves this weekend, we take care of ourselves. We have been abandoned by the police; our mayor says things that even he must know are ridiculous. Last night, for instance, he went on national television to assure Canadians that he “admired the gutsiness” of the people who turned back these truckers but worried that we were taking scarce police resources away from their essential work of protecting our neighbourhoods.      

Hey Mr. Mayor, do you think our neighbours are feeling “protected” by the police? Why do you think we are taking to the streets ourselves? What does it say about the state of affairs in the nation’s capital when ordinary people step up to what the police won’t? Unarmed, untrained Ottawans are putting their bodies on the line to prevent more flag-waving, gas-carrying trucks driving into the downtown core because we have seen that the police will not stop them.      

The Chief of Police bleats that they are doing the best they can with the resources they have. Let’s not forget that these resources come from a budget of almost $350 million, a budget that the chief himself admits was the forces’ “number one priority.” Maybe if he’d spent more time learning from the January  6 insurrection in the U.S. and not focussed on how to get more money for his police force, he’d have something to show for it. 

The carefully planned counter protest on Saturday and the spontaneity of the blockades of trucks on Sunday show that people here are done. Indeed, why would we believe that the police would intervene when dozens of videos show them ambling through the protestors on Wellington without stopping any of the multitude of illegal activities? From cops openly siding with the convoy to their inability to offer protection to those who are being harassed, intimidated and threatened in the downtown, they have lost the trust and confidence of the people of Ottawa. If you’re looking for another laugh, here’s the deputy top cop warning of enforcement to come.      

So a community that has been dazed and confused is coming together to protect itself. Councillors Catherine McKenney, Shawn Menard and Jeff Leiper have been organizing community safety walks. Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden has been organizing emergency meetings. They have shown up to the “counter” rallies and protests and they have stood in solidarity with community members who are taking to the streets to reclaim them. But it’s a sorry state of things when it has come down to friends and neighbours texting each other about going down to spell each other off at intersections. 

As we watch the kid-glove treatment that the convoy is receiving from the police and the explicit and overt support they are getting from the PPC and the CPC  — someone tell me the difference between a Poilievre and a Bernier, by the way — the hypocrisy and double standards in policing and politics are not lost on any of us.      

Many of us have organized protests in the city. Many of us have been pushed back ferociously when we’ve tried to get action on climate change for Indigenous rights or for migrant workers. Picket lines have been met by baton-wielding police carrying shields. We’ve gathered far more people for far more relevant causes than this jumble of anti-government animus and seen the police show up in riot gear. But apparently when white supremacy supporters show up and call for overthrowing democracy, they are met with carnival rides in cop cars and taken out fo,r pizza by Candice Bergen.      

I’m not suggesting that any protestor be met with violence and intimidation by police. These last few weeks have exposed to public view what many of us who are not big white dudes have always known: this city, its police and most of its politicians have real problems with racism. And they may try to paper over it again, but the spectre of this deep structural racism will continue to haunt us all for years to come. It’s why the city needs to have a serious conversation about how and how much we fund the police. The need to talk about civilian oversight of police has never been clearer than now when we have the chair of the Police Services Board denying any responsibility for them. 

Many of us hope that this weekend was the beginning of people in the city taking back their own power. The pandemic has already taught us the value of mutual aid. This convoy, its abhorrent tactics of harassment and its incitement to violence and intimidation is reminding us that we have to take care of ourselves.

Archana Rampure

Archana Rampure

Archana Rampure is a trade unionist.