The Freedom Convoy, now consisting of thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of trucks, making its way across Canada en-route to the nation’s capital, Ottawa, to protest vaccine mandates, as well as other COVID-19 measures implemented by the Trudeau government, may very well be the world’s longest convoy, ever, and may even be the largest display of civil disobedience in Canadian history.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest truck convoy ever recorded was in Egypt in 2020. At the time the convoy stretched 7.5 kilometers or 4.6 miles long.
Benjamin Dichter, the spokesman for the Freedom Convoy 2022, says the Canadian convoy now stretches some 70 kilometers or 43.5 miles. “I have seen footage from an airplane. It’s impressive,” Dichter told the Toronto Sun.
The convoy is scheduled to arrive in Ottawa on Jan. 29 where a general protest against Canada’s stringent vaccine mandates is scheduled to occur.
Truckers are converging on the nation’s capital from all over Canada. Reports of truckers joining the convoy from provinces east of Ottawa, including Quebec and Prince Edward Island, have emerged.
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Reports have also surfaced that the convoy will be greeted in the Canadian province of Ontario by thousands of American truckers. Truckers from the United States are rumored to be amassing on the border, with vaccinated truckers moving into the country and unvaccinated truckers staging protests at the U.S.-Canada border.
A video of a long line of trucks, reportedly driving to Canada from South Carolina has surfaced online.
Go Fund Me confusion
A GoFundMe campaign, organized by Tamara Lich, the secretary of the Maverick Party — a Canadian political party that advocates for constitutional changes to benefit Western Canada — originally had a goal to raise $4-million to support the convoy. The campaign quickly reached its target prompting organizers to raise the goal to $5-million. After reaching that target, in approximately one day, the goal was raised yet again to $6-million. Currently the campaign has attracted over $5.5 million in donations.
Confusion ensued after numerous Canadian mainstream news outlets published stories claiming that the campaign was suspended, stories Dichter referred to as “fake news.”
Rachel Bollis, a spokesperson for GoFundMe, told the Toronto Sun, “we are continuing to work directly with the organizer to gather information about how funds are being distributed. This is part of our standard process to ensure the protection of all donors” and “once a withdrawal plan is provided by the organizer, our team is on standby to safely and quickly deliver the funds.”
Once everything is said and done, the ongoing campaign may be the most successful GoFundMe campaign in Canadian history that organizers say is being conducted to help truckers, who are participating in the convoy, with fuel, lodging and food costs.
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Largest protest in Canadian history?
On Jan. 25, Theo Fleury, former NHL player and two time Olympic gold medalist, told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on her show, The Ingraham Angle, that Canada has a prime minister who has “vaccine derangement syndrome” blasting the Canadian leader for focusing on vaccine uptake instead of the economy, supply chain disruptions, and Canadians’ rights and freedoms.
“Right now in Canada we have one of the biggest revolutions happening … there’s 50-thousand truckers and about 1.4 million people headed to the parliament in Ottawa and they are going to stay there until Trudeau resigns or they give us back all of our freedoms and rights,” Fleury said, adding that the convoy has “ignited the whole entire country of Canada.”
If what Fleury says turns out to be accurate the protest scheduled in Ottawa will be the largest protest in Canadian history.
Currently, the largest protest ever recorded in Canada occurred on October 14, 1976 under the leadership of the then prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Justin Trudeau’s father.
At the time, over a million workers walked off the job across Canada as part of a general strike called by the Canadian Labour Congress to protest the federal government’s plan to impose wage and price control legislation.
Despite being Canada’s capital, Ottawa is a relatively small city boasting a population just over 900,000. The city is bisected by a single highway which separates the commercial and government district in the north of the city from the typically residential district in the south.
Converging 50,000 trucks and 1.4 million people in the small section of the city dedicated to parliament has the potential to bring the capital to a complete standstill.
“For the public, the convoy has become a beacon of hope that overreaching COVID-19 lockdowns, restrictions and mandates will soon come to an end,” the Toronto Sun reported.
