Truckers, don’t expect a warm welcome
Shrugging off protesters is a way of life in Ottawa, but this event has extra potential for disruption
Ottawa is a city of protests. We have them the way other cities have chip wagons. They pop up all the time in front of the Parliament buildings or a foreign embassy, and dozens of people — occasionally hundreds — wave signs outside the empty offices on a Saturday or Sunday, because that’s when people have time to protest.
If we people who live here want to care about the latest protest issue, that’s fine, but we don’t have to. And the sheer number of protests makes them blur a little.
We have the privilege, most of the time, of ignoring protests if we choose.
The truckers’ convoy has changed that, but not in a good way.
Most of the time protesters are targeting the governing party, or a foreign government, or the treatment of Indigenous people, or other specific matters.
Truckers tell us they are targeting our city, and its residents, simply because this is where we live.
They say they’ll shut down Ottawa itself, not just the government. And maybe they will. It’s as though someone got mad at Premier Doug Ford and said: Let’s shut down Toronto. Yes, the federal government is this town’s biggest employer, but public servants are still a minority. The other industries combined (tech companies, universities and so on) have more employees than the feds do. Yet many people outside Ottawa treat all of us who live here as appendages of the federal government.
Now there’s a feeling of impending violence, fed by angry words and actions as the convoy approaches — and as counterprotesters prepare to meet them. Ottawa police this week said that officers have been threatened by people who believe police are supporting the convoy.
Chief Peter Sloly responds that police only want to keep things peaceful. He cautioned that the protests would be “massive,” and “unfortunately they are polarizing in nature.”
A city councillor representing downtown has issued a written warning to the convoy members. Catherine McKenney, who may become our next mayor this year, warned that “a group of anti-public health protestors have stated that they will come to Ottawa and disrupt the legal commercial and transportation activities of our city.”
The councillor added: “You (protesters) do not have the right to damage our infrastructure, to threaten violence, or to spew your statements of hatred, xenophobia, and racism to those who disagree with you. Come peacefully. Come respectfully. Or do not come.”
While we wait, downtown businesses are closing for the weekend. So are downtown libraries, veterinarians and even COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
There’s a widespread resentment, and the waiting has jangled people’s nerves.
This city remembers the 2014 terrorist attack, in which Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was shot and killed just outside the Parliament Hill grounds. Ottawa has also looked nervously over its shoulder at last year’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, and wondered: What if ?
You don’t control large groups of angry people. They’re coming here, some say, to force the government to retreat, or even force it to resign. Sure, that will happen.
So what actually happens next? After driving across the country, then parading around Ottawa as government officials ignore them, it’s hard to imagine that the cold, frustrated demonstrators will happily go home.
Yes, some downtown merchants are planning to lock up to avoid trouble. But most of the downtown core that the truckers threaten to shut down is not even connected with government — this is a community where people live.
The physical layout of Ottawa makes trucks of all kinds a problem every day. Truckers going to or from Quebec must cross the Ottawa River right in downtown Ottawa, and the roads leading to the bridges are old, narrow, twisting routes shared with cars, cyclist and pedestrians, designed before the days of big rigs. From time to time a cyclist or pedestrian is killed by a truck squeezing through these routes, and there’s a clamour, but in the end nothing changes.
Pouring thousands of extra trucks onto these streets now would be like directing a huge truck convoy through Toronto’s Chinatown or Little Italy, and Lord help anyone who needs an ambulance while the convoy is clogging things up.
Ah well, Ottawa residents keep telling each other, maybe the joke’s on the truckers. Wait till they see Ottawa on a weekend during a lockdown — already about as closed as closed can get, no portable toilets, and a curfew next door in Gatineau. The early Saturday morning temperature is forecast to be -28 C.
Never mind. The truckers say for now that they will bring freedom, or an end to tyranny, or something. Ottawa — the community, not the government — just hopes they don’t break too much stuff before they leave.