Rallies gather in Canadian cities in support of Ottawa trucker protest
Global News
Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria, B.C., were a few cities that saw rallies in support of the trucker protest in Ottawa. "We're all uniting,'' said one supporter.
Like many of those gathered near the Alberta legislature to support a convoy of trucks that inched their way through Edmonton’s downtown streets for several hours on Saturday, Kyla Keulers has been to protests against COVID-19 health restrictions before.
But there were so many more people at Saturday’s event, and so many truck horns honking, that she felt optimistic things are about to change, that their protests will finally make a difference.
“I think people are really waking up and we’re all uniting,” said Keulers, standing beside a stroller with her three-month-old son inside.
“I want to be able to choose and I want my child to be able to choose, and it’s just ridiculous what the government thinks it can get away with.”
The event, which a provincial spokesman said attracted several thousand people, was one of numerous convoys that were held in conjunction with a national convoy against vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers that rolled across Canada this past week and arrived in Ottawa on Saturday.
“I think there’s a lot of people who’ve been silenced because we’ve been bullied into silence,” said Megan Crowther, who attended the Edmonton protest with her four children, her parents and friends.
“We can’t get onto a train, a plane, a bus. We’ve lost our right to have a job. People are losing their homes,” she said.
Other protesters openly espoused debunked conspiracy theories about the virus and the vaccines used to combat it.