{"id":204655,"date":"2022-02-07T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=204655"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:40","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:40","slug":"a-night-with-the-untouchables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/02\/a-night-with-the-untouchables\/","title":{"rendered":"A Night with the Untouchables"},"content":{"rendered":"

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3 Feb 2022 – <\/em>I live in downtown Ottawa, right in the middle of the trucker convoy protest. They are literally camped out below my bedroom window. My new neighbours moved in on Friday [28 Jan] and they seem determined to stay. I have read a lot about what my new neighbours are supposedly like, mostly from reporters and columnists who write from distant vantage points somewhere in the media heartland of Canada. Apparently the people who inhabit the patch of asphalt next to my bedroom are white supremacists, racists, hatemongers, pseudo-Trumpian grifters, and even QAnon-style nutters.<\/p>\n

I have a perfect view down Kent Street \u2013 the absolute ground zero of the convoy. In the morning, I see some protesters emerge from their trucks to stretch their legs, but mostly throughout the day they remain in their cabs honking their horns. At night I see small groups huddled in quiet conversations in their new found companionship. There is no honking at night. What I haven\u2019t noticed, not even once, are reporters from any of Canada\u2019s news agencies walking among the trucks to find out who these people are. So last night, I decided to do just that \u2013 I introduced myself to my new neighbours.<\/p>\n

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The Convoy on Kent Street. February 2, 2022.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

At 10pm I started my walk along \u2013 and in \u2013 Kent Street. I felt nervous. Would these people shout at me? My clothes, my demeanour, even the way I walk screamed that I\u2019m an outsider. All the trucks were aglow in the late evening mist, idling to maintain warmth, but all with ominously dark interiors. Standing in the middle of the convoy, I felt completely alone as though these giant monsters weren\u2019t piloted by people but were instead autonomous transformer robots from some science fiction universe that had gone into recharging mode for the night. As I moved along I started to notice smatterings of people grouped together between the cabs sharing cigarettes or enjoying light laughs.<\/p>\n

I kept quiet and moved on. Nearby, I spotted a heavy duty pickup truck, and seeing the silhouette of a person in the driver\u2019s seat, I waved. A young man, probably in his mid 20s, rolled down the window, said hello and I introduced myself. His girlfriend was reclined against the passenger side door with a pillow to proper her up as she watched a movie on her phone. I could easily tell it\u2019s been an uncomfortable few nights. I asked how they felt and I told them I lived across the street. Immediate surprise washed over the young man\u2019s face. He said, \u201cYou must hate us. But no one honks past 6pm!\u201d That\u2019s true. As someone who lives right on top of the convoy, there is no noise at night. I said, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t hate anyone, but I wanted to find out about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two were from Sudbury Ontario, having arrived on Friday with the bulk of the truckers. I ask what they hoped to achieve, and what they wanted. The young woman in the passenger seat moved forward, excited to share. They said that they didn\u2019t want a country that forced people to get medical treatments such as vaccines. There was no hint of conspiracy theories in their conversation with me, not a hint of racist overtones or hateful demagoguery. I didn\u2019t ask them if they had taken the vaccine, but they were adamant that they were not anti-vaxers.<\/p>\n

The next man I ran into was standing in front of the big trucks at the head of the intersection. Past middle age and slightly rotund, he had a face that suggests a lifetime of working outdoors. I introduced myself and he told me we was from Cochrane, Ontario. He also proudly pointed out that he was the block captain who helped maintain order. I thought, oh no, he might be the one person keeping a lid on things; is it all that precarious?<\/p>\n

I delicately asked how hard his job was to keep the peace but I quickly learned that\u2019s not really what he did. He organized the garbage collection among the cabs, put together snow removal crews to shovel the sidewalks and clear the snow that accumulates on the road. He even has a salting crew for the sidewalks. He proudly bellowed in an irrepressible laugh \u201cWe\u2019re taking care of the roads and sidewalks better than the city.\u201d I waved goodbye and continued to the next block.<\/p>\n

My next encounter was with a man dressed in dark blue shop-floor coveralls. A wiry man of upper middle age, he seemed taciturn and stood a bit separated from the small crowd that formed behind his cab for a late night smoke. He hailed from the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. He owned his own rig, but he only drove truck occasionally, his main job being a self-employed heavy duty mechanic. He closed his shop to drive to Ottawa, because he said, \u201cI don\u2019t want my new granddaughter to live in a country that would strip the livelihood from someone for not getting vaccinated.\u201d He introduced me to the group beside us. A younger crowd, I can remember their bearded faces, from Athabasca, Alberta, and Swift Current Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n

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Canada has required truck drivers to be fully vaccinated or face a two-week quarantine period when crossing back into Canada from the US.
ABC7 Chicago<\/p><\/div>\n

The weather had warmed, and it began to rain slightly, but they too were excited to tell me why they came to Ottawa. They felt that they needed to stand up to a government that doesn\u2019t understand what their lives are like. To be honest, I don\u2019t know what their lives are like either \u2013 a group of young men who work outside all day with tools that they don\u2019t even own. Vaccine mandates are a bridge too far for them. But again, not a hint of anti-vax conspiracy theories or deranged ideology.<\/p>\n

I made my way back through the trucks, my next stop leading me to a man of East Indian descent in conversation with a young man from Sylvan Lake, Alberta. They told me how they were following the news of O\u2019Toole\u2019s departure from the Conservative leadership and that they didn\u2019t like how in government so much power has pooled into so few hands.<\/p>\n

The rain began to get harder; I moved quickly through the intersection to the next block. This time I waved at a driver in one of the big rigs. Through the rain it was hard to see him, but he introduced himself, an older man, he had driven up from New Brunswick to lend his support. Just behind him some young men from Gasp\u00e9sie, Quebec introduced themselves to me in their best English. At that time people started to notice me \u2013 this man from Ottawa who lives across the street \u2013 just having honest conversations with the convoy. Many felt a deep sense of abuse by a powerful government and that no one thinks they matter.<\/p>\n

Behind the crowd from Gasp\u00e9sie sat a stretch van, the kind you often see associated with industrial cleaners. I could see the shadow of a man leaning out from the back as he placed a small charcoal BBQ on the sidewalk next to his vehicle. He introduced himself and told me he was from one of the reservations on Manitoulin Island. Here I was in conversation with an Indigenous man who was fiercely proud to be part of the convoy. He showed me his medicine wheel and he pointed to its colours, red, black, white, and yellow. He said there is a message of healing in there for all the human races, that we can come together because we are all human. He said, \u201cIf you ever find yourself on Manitoulin Island, come to my reserve, I would love to show you my community.\u201d I realized that I was witnessing something profound; I don\u2019t know how to fully express it.<\/p>\n

As the night wore on and the rain turned to snow, those conversations repeated themselves. The man from Newfoundland with his bullmastiff, a young couple from British Columbia, the group from Winnipeg that together form what they call \u201cManitoba Corner \u201d all of them with similar stories. At Manitoba Corner a boisterous heavily tattooed man spoke to me from the cab of his dually pickup truck \u2013 a man who had a look that would have fit right in on the set of some motorcycle movie \u2013 pointed out that there are no symbols of hate in the convoy. He said, \u201cYes there was some clown with a Nazi flag on the weekend, and we don\u2019t know where he\u2019s from, but I\u2019ll tell you what, if we see anyone with a Nazi flag or a Confederate flag, we\u2019ll kick his fucking teeth in. No one\u2019s a Nazi here.\u201d Manitoba Corner all gave a shout out to that.<\/p>\n

As I finally made my way back home, after talking to dozens of truckers into the night, I realized I met someone from every province except PEI. They all have a deep love for this country. They believe in it. They believe in Canadians. These are the people that Canada relies on to build its infrastructure, deliver its goods, and fill the ranks of its military in times of war. The overwhelming concern they have is that the vaccine mandates are creating an untouchable class of Canadians. They didn\u2019t make high-falutin arguments from Plato\u2019s Republic, Locke\u2019s treatises, or Bagehot\u2019s interpretation of Westminster parliamentary systems. Instead, they see their government willing to push a class of people outside the boundaries of society, deny them a livelihood, and deny them full membership in the most welcoming country in the world; and they said enough. Last night I learned my new neighbours are not a monstrous faceless occupying mob. They are our moral conscience reminding us \u2013 with every blow of their horns \u2013 what we should have never forgotten: We are not a country that makes an untouchable class out of our citizens.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>David Maybury – This is a blog of mathematical thoughts and views from the perspective of a data scientist within Canada\u2019s federal civil service. I am a reformed physicist who has undergone rehabilitation through the world of operations research and statistical science, becoming a quasi-useful member of society. In real life, I am the lead data scientist at Public Services and Procurement Canada. Formerly, I was a senior operations research scientist with Defence Research and Development Canada. I am a passionate applied mathematician with an interest in all things stochastic. I am always looking for opportunities to transform data into useful decision insights. My rehab is ongoing!<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – maybury.ca<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in downtown Ottawa, right in the middle of the trucker convoy protest. They are literally camped out below my bedroom window. They moved in on Friday [28 Jan] and they seem determined to stay. They are our moral conscience reminding us \u2013 with every blow of their horns \u2013 what we should have never forgotten: We are not a country that makes an untouchable class out of our citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":204658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[229,1619,1868,1378,888],"class_list":["post-204655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","tag-activism","tag-canada","tag-covid-19","tag-protests","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265949,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204655\/revisions\/265949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}