A different kind of Freedom Convoy book
Donna Laframboise’ book will focus on the unsung heroes
I was honoured to entertain a special guest this week.
Donna Laframboise is, in my opinion, one of the most important historians living and writing today.
Since COVID occurred, misinformation, disinformation and propaganda have made it difficult to know what is real or true anymore.
Centuries-old concepts like natural immunity and quarantining sick people are cast aside in favour of unproven theories like lockdowns and social distancing. Citizens whose food and rent costs have doubled are forced to listen to politicians brag how great Canada’s economy is. Addiction rates are skyrocketing while government “helps” by distributing free opioids to teenagers. Canadians voicing common sense risk excommunication.
Photo: supplied by Donna
Objective truth is being virtually abandoned in the 21st century. Our government’s current War on Rationality makes Chico Marx make sense: “Who ya gonna believe, me, or your own lyin’ eyes?”
This is why Donna Laframboise is so important. She tells the truth, and documents it.
Donna is one of the few Canadian journalists who visited Ottawa during the Trucker’s Freedom Convoy, taking innumerable photos of the Trucks, people and events. She was there on her own dime: independent, beholden to none of the mainstream news agencies which take funding from government and broadcast pure propaganda.
For the two years since then, she has interviewed truckers and their supporters at length. Truckers who were joyful, hilarious, generous and proud. Truckers who were fed-up, buckled down, resolute and determined. In many cases, she’s met their families and their kids.
She’s met supporters who drove miles and spent days cooking, feeding, doing laundry, and dispensing cash to protesters. Supporters from the East Coast to British Columbia, and immigrants from all around the world.
She has been documenting the real Freedom Convoy that took place in Ottawa, not the fictional Convoy that took place in the minds of government and legacy media.
Donna Laframboise, respected journalist and civil libertarian, is writing a book about the Trucker’s Freedom Convoy based upon the reality of her own experiences and her own perceptions.
As the publisher of Road Warrior News, I’ve been proud to carry many of the advance writings and extensive photos and videos Donna has posted to her Substack, “Thank You Truckers.”
There are lots of books on the Freedom Convoy and I’ve read most of them: Tamara Lich, Andrew Lawton, Tom Marrazzo and Christine Van Geyn have all published important works detailing their recollections of what happened and why it mattered.
I am very certain Donna’s take will be radically different than those focused on media malpractice or legislative precedents. It will be different because it’s going to focus on the individual human beings, the colourful characters who put their physical safety, financial security and personal integrity directly on the line that ran between the protest on Wellington Street and the parliamentarians ignoring them. And ignoring, by extension, the millions of Canadians who agreed with the Truckers position on ending the lockdowns and the abuse of our civil liberties.
I knew before she dropped by this week that Donna’s book would have completely a new, radically different and honest take on the Freedom Convoy. She stopped by my house on her way home from Quebec and Ottawa, where she had travelled to interview the last two people she considered absolutely indispensable to the book: The Bouncy Castle Lady and the Pastor’s Wife at the Biker’s Church in the nation’s capital, which threw open its doors to the truckers from 10 am until 10 pm every day during the protest.
Not Benjamin Dichter or Pat King. Not Tamara Lich or Chris Barber. Not Justin Trudeau or Chrystia Freeland. The Bouncy Castle Lady and the Pastor’s Wife at the Biker’s Church.
I have read thousands, maybe millions of words about the Trucker’s Freedom Convoy; never once have I come across an interview or an in-depth profile about the lady who arranged for the Bouncy Castle and funded it with her own limited resources. (She wanted something fun for the kids, Donna learned.)
Neither have I read anything at all about the wife of the Biker’s Church Pastor, who has cradled drug addicts in her arms and offered thousands of hot meals to the most marginal community in Ottawa. Apparently, she is a true force of nature and an essential interview, if you really want to understand the Freedom Convoy.
The Bouncy Castle Lady and the Pastor’s Wife. Those two interviews were all that was holding up Donna’s final sprint to the finish line of getting this book ready for publication.
As we sat at breakfast Wednesday, I asked her: “Donna, when it is all said and done, what do you think the Freedom Convoy was really about?”
I was anticipating an answer that touched on politics, civil rights, or media manipulation. I was not expecting the answer I got:
“Love, and unity,” Donna answered without hesitation. “That’s what I heard, from everybody I talked to.”
For a moment I was too gobsmacked to reply. It was not the answer I was expecting. But actually, considering the last two people Donna considered crucial to the book, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The Bouncy Castle Lady and the Pastor’s Wife at the Biker’s Church, who accidentally became heroes when Canadians needed heroes most.
It’s so Canadian. I can’t wait to read the book.
