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“A sense of festivity, exuberance, even euphoria”

By January 26, 2023January 30th, 2023No Comments

At the Oct 5 public hearing, an Ottawa resident who supported the convoy shared her experience of the convoy.

“My experience was that there was a sense of festivity, exuberance, even euphoria especially on the first day, January 29th. I saw people of diverse ethnic backgrounds and spoke to people from BC to Nova Scotia. To me, it felt like a city being liberated. Yes, it was very noisy, although noise levels decreased significantly, I noticed after the judge’s injunction to limit honking. There was dancing on Parliament Hill, and there seemed to be a permanent party at Rideau and Sussex. I personally did not see any violence. The only thing that I can describe as violent that I saw was at a counter protest. I went on the Sunday of the third weekend, February 13th at the intersection of Bank and Riverside Drive. Counter protesters shouted insults at the occupants of cars with flags and other signs of convoy support and in some cases even swarmed the cars.

Despite the absence of weapons and the fact that many truckers brought their families, and deployed only bouncy castles and hot tubs, some still think the convoy was an attempt to overthrow the government. Much was made of one, maybe two swastika flags seen at the protest. I actually saw one of them, it was carried by a man who had a flagpole with two flags, the top flag was an F*** Trudeau flag, below it was a swastika flag. My interpretation of that message was that Trudeau was a Nazi.”

You can view the full testimony here.