Ending communism in Canada, stopping a “vaccination genocide” or even sending Justin Trudeau to Guantanamo prison: all kinds of implausible causes are carried by the demonstrators of the “freedom convoy” gathered on Saturday in Ottawa.
“To say that Trudeau thought that we were a small minority”, philosophizes a demonstrator crossing the Alexandra interprovincial bridge, a link between Ontario and Quebec which offers a breathtaking view of Parliament.
Hundreds of people parked their cars in Gatineau on Saturday to take this point, reserved for pedestrians for the occasion. On the Ottawa side, several streets have been closed to traffic since the arrival of the first trucks, which sounded their horns on Friday.
Queen Street, the closest to Parliament still open to motor traffic on Saturday, was the scene of a constant parade of trucks and vans. By -15 degrees, a shirtless man harangued the crowd, surrounded by associates who brandished messages against compulsory vaccination or offensive to the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
The flag of Canada was in the spotlight, sometimes accompanied or directly juxtaposed with that of the United States. A few Quebec flags were visible, sometimes crudely annotated with slogans against sanitary measures.
A large Quebec contingent was present in front of Parliament when one of the controversial organizers of the “freedom convoy”, Patrick King, associated with the far right, spoke. Standing on the trailer of a truck, he even chanted a word in French at the microphone: “freedom! “.
Arrived Friday from the Laurentians for the demonstration, Jonathan Renière proudly brandished a sign where it is possible to read “live free or die”, in reference to the revolutionary slogans south of the border.
“Without freedom we are nothing! It is more important than safety, ”he explains to Le Devoir. He maintains that several demonstrators intend to remain in Ottawa until the announcement of a retreat from Justin Trudeau on health measures at COVID-19. “I don’t think I’ll stay all week. »
Various convoys from Quebec joined on Saturday that of truckers from Western Canada in the hope of making the Trudeau government capitulate on all the health measures related to COVID-19, a move that worries security experts.