Dakota Beacon

Since the beginning of the Canadian truckers' Freedom Convoy the federal government has responded with all the instincts of a gang of street thugs. It's not confined to Ottawa, either. In friendly Alberta, where the police duties generally revolve around the manhandling and incarceration of Pastor Artur Pawlowski and shutting down coffee shops and jailing their owners, a new tactic has developed. With many truckers, people in vans and SUVs, farmers and construction workers, all denied the most basic of human rights and freedoms by their government over the past two years, congregating near the border town of Coutts, in a peaceful display of protest for these destructive policies and regulations – among others, not even allowing Canadians to leave the country and forcing drivers to submit to experimental injections in order to cross with their loads, a few contractors had parked their excavators in view of the highway with the permission of the landowners. They wanted to peacefully show their support for the convoy.

It went something like this:

RCMP officer (to owner of equipment): We have to ask you to move your excavator from here.

Owner: What seems to be the problem, eh?

RCMP officer: We need to have you move them where they are not visible from the highway.

Owner: Ok, sure. Thank you, officer.

[Owner cranks up excavator and moves it to an area not visible from the highway. Next day he finds out that the RCMP sent out some vandals to destroy his equipment as soon as it was out of public view. This happened to at least three excavators, worth half a million dollars apiece. A recorded telephone conversation with the RCMP confirms it was they who carried out this “mission”.]

Obviously this is not legitimate. No court order was obtained for such “work”, no notice given. The property was not in violation and no one had complained about its presence on the property where it was parked. This kind of behavior was devastating to the people who owned the destroyed equipment, of course, but at no time did it result in violence – or even raised voices – just profound sadness at both the significant financial loss and even more the loss of faith in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This was followed by other police actions back in Ottawa. The police there undertook to steal fuel in gas cans. This was meant to expose the truckers to sub-zero cold. Maybe if they were just uncomfortable enough or if some died of exposure it might persuade them all to abandon their stand for freedom and just go home, beaten. It did not work. A judge ordered the stolen property returned. It wasn't. Instead, cans half full of water and half full of fuel were returned – with the obvious intention of destroying these people's means of earning their living, their rigs. Just pour a can of water into your gas tank if you want a trial run of that.

The truckers and their supporters from across Canada, however, did not go away defeated. Instead, these actions solidified their support and strengthened their resolve. They, as citizens of Canada, have rights set forth in their Charter. They relied on these rights and stood their ground, never wavering in the peaceful nature of their demonstrations. Trudeau, instead of saying, “These people obviously feel they are not being heard, so I will meet with a contingent of their leaders and we can talk together as Canadians and find solutions,” said instead that these hard-working people, wanting only to get their lives back and be secure in their bodily autonomy, not be slaves, were “misogynists, white supremacists [despite people of all races and ethnicity participating], racists – a small fringe minority who hold unacceptable views . . . “

The truckers remained, peacefully, in the streets of Ottawa. This week things took a nasty turn. Trudeau announced on Valentine's Day that he was “invoking” “emergency powers” - basically the war powers act. He accused them of being terrorists, enemies of the state, traitors, criminals and by taking this action, he as much as said they have no rights. This must be voted on by Parliament, but he counts on their uselessness to the people to date to feel confident in proceeding. Police began arresting protesters without any provocation, they threatened to take their children from them as well as their pets. Truckers' bank accounts were frozen. (This after the government hijacked nearly $10 million in crowd-funded monies, prompting them to raise another $10 million and counting through another less pliable agency.) Pets were to be seized and presumably euthanized, children – who even knew where they would end up. Friday afternoon the police began smashing the windows of the trucks. They hauled some people out through them. No one was resisting. One of the spokespeople, a Metis woman, was arrested and went without incident into the police van.

Over the course of this demonstration, about half of the Ottawa police force has resigned. The Chief of Police has been cashiered. Police have been sent in from far-flung areas of Ontario and Quebec. The men and women in the riot gear are not the best people, clearly. They are thugs.

This protest has been made up of people from all walks of life – farmers, small business owners, truckers, parents, construction workers, indigenous people, newly settled immigrants from all corners of the world, as well as native-born Canadians, descendants of immigrants. No part of the protest has had anything to do with race or gender. Most of the truckers are vaccinated – they just object to someone ordering another to take an experimental vaccine. So there are both vaccinated and unvaccinated people joining in protest.

The huge turnout for this, its great success, has inspired people throughout Europe and Australia/New Zealand to begin their own protests. In the United States a “People's Convoy” is set to begin its eastward movement later this month. We have the Canadian truckers to thank for this revival of spirit – and it has been a revival of spirit. Until tonight.

Today we saw a confrontation between police and protesters shaping up. It seemed that the police were just standing unresponsive in lines opposite groups of protesters. On the rooftops of tall downtown buildings we saw snipers in position. Some distance behind the flatfoot police in the front lines were mounted police on horses. It seemed like a stalemate, although there was tension in the cold Ottawa air. As one elderly woman, possibly indigenous, stood with her walker and a sign, told the reporter that she was there for freedom, for grandchildren, the horses began to move. They ploughed through the crowd of protesters, riding over the elderly woman and her walker. They never looked back. The recording showed no sign of anyone stopping to attend to the victim, only police pushing people back. The woman died.

Much has been said about veterans, about warriors who defend their country. We have heroes, most of them brave men in uniform. What is it they defend? Is it an emperor? A country? A people? A home? Or do they perhaps defend freedom? Do they do their deeds of valor in order to preserve a good life for their children and grandchildren? If so, none will fight harder than mothers and grandmothers. There is something visceral in this day's events. Heretofore Canadians have valiantly stood their ground, refusing to kneel to a dictator, refusing to back up when cops overstepped their bounds, demanding only their rights, traveling a couple of thousand miles to their capital to confront their government with their simple demand for their Charter rights. Until today no one has died. Until today the only violence has been against old men and grannies where the police have beaten them. Until now it has been simple assault of elderly people, threats against pets and children and severe damage to costly property. No one has taken revenge. No one has lost their temper with this. People have philosophically and stoically stood firm without rancor. Now someone's grandmother has been ridden over by mounted police and killed in the streets of her capital city.

The question now is, what will be the measure of honor? What will be the measure of manhood of these stalwart Canadian truckers? How much more can they be expected to tolerate – how much should they tolerate? How much will they tolerate? All things have their season, we have been told.

We wonder now how long the season of peace will prevail in Canada. Perhaps the days of peaceful protest are at an end. How can this end? Can truckers go home after this? Can Members of Parliament actually vote to continue this “state of emergency”? At what cost? Or is this old lady with her walker and her prayer for freedom expendable? What, we wonder, will Trudeau say? If he is not in hiding again at one of his luxurious cottages, he will almost certainly blame the protesters for this. He will say they, not the reckless and homicidal police, were “unlawful”.

It has been the police from beginning to end who have been breaking the law since this protest began. It is they, not truckers, who have destroyed property, they who have assaulted people in the streets, they who have threatened and intimidated. At every juncture, until tonight, truckers have invited the police to join them, to follow their conscience if they have one, to stand up for their own grandchildren's future freedom. Police have at every turn abused the protesters. Protesters have picked up litter in the streets, they have donated food to local pantries, they have fed the poor. They have held out their hand to the police and to the government. They have been met with hostility and with silence. And with trampling horses. Instead of a simple conversation with the country's leaders they were met with snipers on rooftops, cops in riot gear, threatened with being microwaved, like their brethren in Canberra. Yes – they were attacked with war technology. And they, too, were unarmed.

So today marked a turning point – which way it will turn we don't yet know. But an unarmed, peaceful protest was attacked by a stampede of horses' hooves and thugs in police uniforms. Tonight someone's grandmother lies dead. At least we must hope it is a turning point. Although many of them are Christian, the protesters are not Jesus. How much will they take?

Many of us have been around long enough to have seen the movie, Dr. Zhivago. One of the most chilling scenes in the film was near the beginning, where a peaceful protest was met by the Czar's mounted police. It didn't end well for the Czar.

Update: Trudeau's spokesman has tried to tell us that this trampling was caused by someone “throwing a bicycle at the horses”. Utter crap. This story came out of an incident that took place a couple of summers ago in London. In that instance, a crowd was demonstrating and someone allegedly “threw a bicycle” at a mounted female police officer. The horse reared up, threw the rider and bolted, running wildly through the streets. It ended up near the stables where it was usually kept. There are no bicycles among these truckers. They are there in trucks. No bicycles were anywhere in that crowd or on that street. The horses did not rear up as if struck by or frightened by a thrown object. There was no room to cock one's arm to throw anything anyway. This is a lie. Perhaps this is a signal of the panic and desperation in the Canadian government today. There is little likelihood of apology, of accord of any kind, of reasonable discussion of any kind with the people of Canada. The woman died at a hospital, her skull crushed. Where was she from? Alberta? Saskatchewan? Quebec? Did she travel a thousand miles to be heard in Ottawa or was she local? Who cares? Not Trudeau.

Clearly this is the time when anyone who is part of the police turn in his badge if he has any character or any soul left. There is obviously no way a decent human being can continue to serve in this lawless gang of thugs.