Guest Contributions

Canada is approaching the three-year anniversary of its first case of COVID-19. Over time, it has become increasingly clear that COVID represented not just a public health issue, but a crisis in governance and democratic values. COVID forced Canadians to face the fact that government systems they trusted unquestioningly are not functioning as smoothly as we had all assumed.

For example, long before COVID appeared, expert, professional Emergency Management Organizations (EMOs) already existed in every province and territory. They’ve battled wildfires in Alberta, ice storms in British Columbia, and floods in Manitoba. They maintain constant contact with each other, and with their federal, municipal, and international counterparts. They partner with public sector agencies and private sector businesses.

“To see people dying alone and families unable to have proper funerals was horrible. Horrible” by Donna Laframboise New Brunswick trucker Travis Macleod hauls sea cans – containers that get loaded directly onto ships docked in the Port of Saint

During the three weeks Mark and his truck spent in Ottawa, the parking tickets and small acts of vandalism were minor matters. Wife Joanne describes him as a laidback guy who doesn’t talk much about feelings. But as they texted back and forth during those weeks, she says, he told her about the tears and the gratitude. People kept thanking him for taking a stand. “He said the love that was there, it was just unbelievable.”

Regular people would come by his truck offering submarine sandwiches and fried chicken. An Asian woman, Mark says, “was bringing us down Chinese food all the time. And Tim Horton’s. I don’t drink coffee myself, but they’d be bringing wagons full.” At random times of day, strangers would ask if he needed fuel. “Yeah, I’ll take it.”
After the police started cracking down on fuel deliveries, folks got more creative:

‘A thousand people standing on an overpass and you driving under it’ by Donna Laframboise Read Part One, here By the time Mark, a Nova Scotia commercial fisherman, joined the Freedom Convoy the pandemic had dragged on for nearly two years.