Such a high!
After two years of heartache, a place to ‘fuel up on happiness’
Katia arrived in Canada as a small child with her immigrant parents. When they left Switzerland four decades ago, this country seemed safe, stable, well-governed. Land was plentiful; you could farm your own fields and be your own boss. Having grown up on the northern side of the Ottawa River, today she considers herself fully Québécois. René, her husband, raises beef on their farm an hour’s drive from Ottawa. He, too, is a Swiss immigrant.
Katia and René are amongst the ordinary people who provided regular support to the Freedom Convoy truckers during the weeks they remained in Ottawa. “I couldn’t keep her at home,” René jokes. “She would go every night.” One of the reasons he accompanied her frequently was that it was a place to “fuel up on happiness.”
The previous two years had inflicted many wounds and strained countless relationships. Within families, different members had conflicting opinions about face masks, gathering for the holidays, and COVID vaccines. In Katia’s words, by early 2022
“Everybody had had enough, and everybody met in Ottawa. They brought their sadness, their aches. Being with the same kind of people, being accepted. I’m telling you, I never saw so many grown men hugging. I mean, large men with beards. They didn’t know each other, and would never see each other again. Oh, you’re wearing the same flag as me, let’s hug. It was beautiful.
“It was such a high for everybody. Everybody’s family was torn apart. Our friendships were torn apart. Lifetime friendships. People were treated so badly by their friends, or siblings, or parents. Everybody was so hurt. That’s why they went.”
With help from others, Katia regularly prepared snacks for eight trucks. “They got hamburgers and sandwiches” from other people, she says, “but you need your veggies too, so we started making up trays and delivering them.” Clarence, a super appreciative Manitoba trucker, received double portions – as did vehicles occupied by more than one person. The trick, adds René, was to deliver the plates quickly, before the cucumber slices and the homemade herb dip froze solid in the subzero weather.
A warm relationship developed between them and Clarence. Katia would frequently ask “What do you need?” One time it was socks. On another occasion, a snow shovel. “We would bring him homemade soup and fresh, braided Swiss bread along with the veggies,” she says. More than 18 months after the protest ended, these families remain close.
René also remembers a trucker from southern Alberta. He and a friend had spray painted ‘Freedom Convoy’ on bales of hay and driven to Calgary. But the event there seemed lame. Later that evening, says René, the trucker “called his friend and said, ‘We have to go to Ottawa.’ So they loaded up again. And there was a huge blizzard going on. They drove 11 hours, catching up to the Convoy just before Winnipeg.”
Seeing people from “Alberta and Quebec pulling together, in the same direction, on the same string was remarkable,” he laughs. “We saw all kinds of people there. Like those Romanian truckers that were on Wellington, you know, past Parliament Hill. There was a whole group of Romanians and people from Bulgaria, too. They fled their country, and now they were fighting for freedom in Canada.”
Being from Switzerland, he says, “We always compare what’s happening here to what’s going on in Europe. It was amazing to see convoys forming in other countries, to see protesters around the world displaying Canadian flags. You heard about the cowbells in Switzerland? They were marching for freedom, too, around the same time. So I grabbed my own bell and I went to Ottawa.”
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Donna Laframboise writes a daily blog at ThankYouTruckers.substack.com. It is a first draft of her upcoming book that focuses on interviews with Freedom Convoy truckers. She is a former National Post and Toronto Star columnist, and a former Vice President of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
