Editor:
I can understand the frustration that has led to the convoys. It has been a long two years and COVID-19 isn't beaten yet. I am just as tired of it as most other people.
I don't understand the cries of 'freedom', though.
What is there to be free of? The sensible health measures that are preventing thousands of deaths? Free not to be vaccinated? No one has to get the needle if they think they know better than 99 per cent of doctors and scientists or do they just want to have the guy with the biggest truck make the laws? Or is domestic terrorism OK?
And what does it all have to do with truckers anyway?
It seems to me that trucks got co-opted into this because they are big, noisy, hard to shift, and have lots of space on them to write all kinds of nasty slogans about the prime minister. And why him? It's not as if he invented the disease or even has much to do with the restrictions. Why not have had “screw COVID, or down with mandates, freedom for all?" That would make more sense.
I'm not a Justin Trudeau fan, but at the time the pandemic started, I would have rather had him leading our fight than in the United States who had Donald Trump. Even today, I still believe Trudeau is still trying to protect. We may not agree with the methods, but he is still our elected leader and until he is voted out, we still need to give him a chance or at least the benefit of some doubt.
Unless you happen to be the leader of the Maverick Party who started the convoy idea and maybe want to stir things up to take over the work of the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance of making the Conservative Party, which used to be titled 'Progressive', even more regressive and fractured. That would give Canada an even less effective opposition, which ironically is why we are now stuck with Trudeau.
And as for the frustration people are feeling, I can see driving around tooting horns and waving flags can be a bit of a release, but it would be so much better if the tooters and wavers all ended up in a big field, well away from other folk trying to sleep and otherwise get on with their lives.
While they are having their fun, maybe we, the silent majority, should do something to show that we don't want to be part of this revolution – not rushing around tooting horns but something a little quieter such as wearing a big button that proudly says, 'I've been vaxxed'.
Maybe supporting freedom also begins with our rights or even better all rights. Think about that.
Irving Semenok,
Banff
