TWO PROTESTERS

Once again, it seems that every day of inquiry will present surprising facts seemingly contrary to everything I was led to believe about the Trucker Convoy. These two witnesses, not truckers or convoy organizers but just folks who came to Ottawa to share their frustrations with pandemic-related mandates that adversely impacted them and their families, appear in every way to be far closer to my friends and neighbours than part of a treasonous, neo-Fascist militant insurrection funded by a foreign adversary and set upon Ottawa to topple the federal government, replacing our democracy and Charter system with far-right authoritarianism – as asserted on CBC by their many vetted experts. In hindsight, it appears to me there were more veterans, nurses, and naturopaths (with connections to the hippie communities of BC) than anti-democratic operatives with links to China or Russia.

DEERING - CANADIAN ARMY VETERAN

Chris Deering is a Canadian army veteran from New Brunswick. He served in Afghanistan and was discharged after suffering significant injuries as the only survivor of an IED attack that killed everyone else in the truck he was travelling in. Deering testified that he went to Ottawa after a whole range of negative experiences around COVID. The 34-year-old had travelled to Nova Scotia every year to lay flowers on the graves of the infantrymen who died during the explosion that injured him. He explained how government COVID restrictions prevented him from driving, alone in his vehicle, to visit a cemetery. He found that both outlandish and upsetting. In addition, Deering had a mask exemption and also refused the vaccine due to concerns and unanswered questions. This status, and thus also not having a vaccine passport, left him not just feeling like a second-class citizen, which was jarring for a veteran, but also made him subject to various forms of harassment, intimidation, and discrimination. He talked about strange things like taking his daughters to gymnastics without any issue for the first year and a half of the pandemic and then suddenly being prevented from entering the building. Deering also explained how his long-time family physician, and someone providing care for 4,000 veterans and their families, lost his licence when he chose not to participate in the vaccine passport system.

(Of course, the vaccine passport system proved useless. We didn't just have our biggest waves during the passport implementation but those passports were removed from most regions immediately after the Trucker Convoy exited Ottawa and, of course, the pandemic is still raging and our hospitals remain overwhelmed. And then, as is becoming brutally apparent, the loss of essential health care professionals due to mandates, thousands in BC alone, has surely caused more damage than the harm posed by those unvaccinated – who, just like their vaccinated counterparts, are still susceptible to symptomatic and asymptomatic infection and transmission.)

Deering testified about his time in Ottawa. He said that, even as a soldier, he saw allegations of a woman “desecrating” the Unknown Soldier's Tomb and someone dancing at the War Memorial site as ridiculous and taken out of context by the local and national media. He, like other soldiers, also believed that the police and government wrongly erected a fence around those monuments as a form of political sensationalism. Clearly triggered by being once again prevented from accessing a memorial, In uniform and wearing his medals, he was involved in demanding removal of the fence and then was part of the party that did so. He testified that the protest was overwhelmingly positive, provided open businesses with more income than they had in the previous two years, and, contrary to new reports, could be seen regularly providing Ottawa’s unhoused population with food, clothes, shelter, and money.

On the day police moved to clear the protest, February 18th, Deering and other veterans chose to position themselves between officers and protesters and link arms. They considered this a peaceful protest and one all levels of government needed to hear, but was still denying and refusing. By his own account and video evidence, Deering was snatched from the crowd, kneed in the ribs twice to bring him down, dragged behind police lines, kneeled on, beaten, and kicked.

Sprawled on the ground, face in the snow and with his hands over his head, he yelled that he was a peaceful protester and not resisting arrest. He testified being hit four or five more times in the head, and also losing his Jubilee Medal in the scuffle. All of this he considered to be a degrading and unlawful use of excess force. He testified that he was kept on the ground for some minutes before being zip-tied and then made to stand for two hours in the minus twenty weather. Still tied, he was processed and eventually placed in a transport vehicle with four others. They sat in the vehicle for roughly two more hours before being driven 45 minutes out of downtown to a location unknown to any of them. There they were dumped without so much as being told where they were. They were not charged with anything and told not to return to Parliament Hill. Because they didn’t have cash or masks they couldn’t take transit or call a cab, of course, but they were able to call someone Deering had met during the protest who had a vehicle.

HOPE BRAUN - HYDROTHERAPIST AND MOTHER

Maggie Hope Braun, is a 37-year-old mother of two from Peterborough, Ontario. Similar to Deering, she and her family felt discriminated against for not wishing to get a novel vaccine. She described how her husband, an engineer, was forced to work from home due to his vaccination status and that this made their lives very difficult and strained their relationship. She also expressed concerns about the experience of university students and government employees when vaccine mandates were introduced.

Hope Braun shared that was inspired by the convoy when her and her children watched them pass through her town. She and a friend felt compelled to attend the protest in Ottawa. She testified that, before leaving for Ottawa, she watched Global News report that authorities “did not have official numbers of how many rapes had taken place in the city since the convoy arrived.” Global also reported Ottawa Police Chief Sloly reporting “the police have so far had operational success in ensuring a lack of deaths, riots or physical violence” but that “he takes ‘no solace’ in that as the demonstration continues.” So riot and murder, apparently, was not just possible but likely. They also explained how police claimed they’d arrested individuals bringing firearms to Ottawa to be “involved directly or indirectly in the protests.” But, of course, they refused to give names or dates when questioned. Hope Braun felt all of this was absurd and that she needed to travel to Ottawa to witness the situation for herself.

She testified that her experience from start to finish wasn’t just perfectly peaceful but also full of generosity and togetherness, with people hugging random strangers and handing out hot drinks. She said it felt like an end to years of government-mandated isolation. The press’ labelling of protesters as terrorists, and thereby herself and her friends, was something she couldn’t believe. She reported never seeing anything negative never mind any of the hateful flags, signs, or symbols reported as being abundant in the news. The opposite was true, she said. What she was were ‘Every Child Matters’ shirts and signs, LGBTQ-friendly flags, and an assortment of Canadiana. She described her distress as witnessing the Centennial Flame being extinguished and barricades erected all around Parliament Hill. This, to her, was the clearest sign that her own government did not welcome peaceful protesters airing their legitimate grievances about specific policies.

More than that, Hope Braun testified witnessing camera crews from CBC, CTV, and others being escorted by police. She described it as theatre, with cameras getting dramatic shots of a large gathering of police, despite convoy participants just happily mingling about and the police not being present previously. She offered that thousands of live videos from participants and onlookers alike gave a very different perspective to that these news outlets presented, of an event she described as extremely diverse and very positive. (Which was also my experience from afar.)

She testified that, like Deering, was grabbed while kneeling on the ground, having a rifle pointed at her head, being bound and driven to a towing lot out of town. She testified being dropped off in the middle of nowhere without any shelter.