The honking. The bellows of “freedom!” The semi-trucks clogging the streets around Parliament Hill. For three weeks this winter, that scene was a crisis for police, politicians and downtown Ottawa residents that only ended after the federal government invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act to clear what it described as a dangerous and damaging illegal protest.
But to Terri Haydar, the so-called “Freedom Convoy” was something else entirely. It was simply beautiful.
“It was one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve had in my life,” Haydar, a 66-year-old former corrections officer, recalled over the phone in Toronto on Tuesday.
“It was people hugging each other, just coming together,” she said. “There was so much joy. The excitement in the air was electric.”
Now she’s coming back for more. Armed with misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, pandemic conspiracy theories, and a deep conviction the federal government has trampled fundamental individual liberties in this country, various groups are staging a return of this “freedom” movement to the capital for Canada Day. It is a sign that, for people like Haydar, the cause of the convoy didn’t wane as the health measures it was ostensibly launched to protest — mask requirements, vaccine passports and mandates in federal workplaces — have been lifted.
Haydar is among those who plan to come back, while others that traveled to Ottawa last winter say they still believe, for various reasons, that their movement is necessary, even if they themselves aren’t returning over the Canada Day long weekend. Indeed, the “freedom movement” is hardly homogeneous, with high-profile leaders infighting over their rationale and goals.
As national co-ordinator of a group called Mama Bears Project, Haydar said she is staging a picnic — “not a protest” — to celebrate the “family unit” in Ottawa’s Strathcona Park. In her mind de ella, the lockdowns and other health restrictions imposed during the pandemic were unjustified and caused undue harm to children and families. Yet her grievances of her extend to ardent doubts about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, which she falsely claimed is an “experimental injection.” She also objected generally to what she would only describe as “very disturbing” material children are taught in public schools under the “guise of sex education.”
Haydar said she hoped the “freedom” movement that started with the convoy results in “a country where our Charter rights are not violated, where family unit is the focus, and with some good Christian values.”
Others involved in the “freedom movement,” such as a Toronto man named Ryan Penn, see in Canada a country degraded by corrupt institutions, from the financial and medical systems to the political process, that need to be reformed. Penn, a volunteer for a group that denounces pandemic restrictions called Take Action Canada, said he attended the convoy protests in February to “bear witness” to what he believes was an abuse of power by police under the Emergencies Act.
While he is unable to attend the events in Ottawa for Canada Day, Penn said the “celebrations” he expects will include “ordinary, peace-loving, freedom-promoting Canadians” who want to pay tribute to an “once-great” country. He argued this movement is needed to push back against the alleged erosion of personal freedom, pointing to the use of the Emergencies Act to freeze protesters’ bank accounts during the convoy and federal legislation to regulate online content.
“The rally in Ottawa is more about the erosion of our basic freedoms and the apparently duly-elected dictatorship that the Trudeau government has enacted on the rest of the population,” said Penn. He explained he sees it as undemocratic for a government to pass laws when it received votes from a minority of the population in the last federal election.
Contacted Tuesday, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino’s officer referred to comments from last week. The minister said it’s “troubling that some are fanning flames” and that the government would give police the tools and the support that is necessary to ensure that there’s public safety as we celebrate Canada Day.”
Police, meanwhile, are preparing to make sure the coming demonstrations don’t turn into another weeks-long occupation of the downtown core. Steve Bell, the interim Ottawa police chief, said Monday that local police have enlisted the Mounties and Ontario Provincial Police for backup, and plan to have riot squads, traffic officers and tow trucks available.
They also intend to prevent vehicles from parking as part of any demonstration in a “control zone” around Parliament Hill, Bell said.
One of the groups organizing events in Ottawa is Veterans for Freedom, which includes convoy spokesperson Tom Marazzo on its steering committee, as well as Edward Cornell, a retired soldier who says his bank account was frozen during the protests. He was denied standing at the public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act in a decision by the judge leading it on Monday.
The group has not returned interview requests from the Star this week.
However, in an interview on Youtube posted earlier this month, group organizer Andrew MacGillivray described plans to set up a logistics hub called “Camp Eagle” on private property somewhere outside of Ottawa. On top of events for Canada Day, including a welcome march for a man walking across Canada to denounce vaccine mandates, MacGillivray said they planned to hold events in Ottawa throughout the summer.
He also professed intolerance for any calls for violence within the movement, and said his group would abide by Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of peaceful protest.
Recently, some prominent members of the movement have warned their followers to avoid Mark Chilcott, a former male stripper and self-styled “inspirational speaker” better known as Marcus Anthony Ray.
Ray, who was in Ottawa during the February occupation, claims to have gathered ex-military and ex-law enforcement personnel to prevent the country from being “taken over” and to “protect the children.”
Ray, who goes by “Wolf” on his TikTok channel which has more than 94,000 followers, has been criss-crossing Western Canada for months holding rallies. His events from him feature common anti-vaccine and anti-mandate conspiracy theories, including how the World Economic Forum is taking over Canada, and he suggests violence may be inevitable.
“I can go out in a blaze of glory holding the Canadian flag, let my kids remember that,” he told a crowd in April in BC, wearing his trademark black cowboy hat and boots. He claimed he had “thousands” of former military and law enforcement officers at the ready.
“Everyone’s gone into training and been training for weeks on end ever since Ottawa. So you’ve got a trained group of people coming out that are going to stop this in its tracks,” he said.
In later speeches and in emailed newsletters, Ray says he is not advocating violence, in part because that would turn the police against the movement, but that his “constitutional sheriffs” will defend themselves.
“If we back away on that day, if we decide to back up when they (the police) advance to us, which I hope they won’t, but if they do and we decide to back away, then (my grandson) won ‘t have a chance,” he told a small-town Manitoba crowd on June 11.
At that rally, Ray said his cadre of “sheriffs” has been buying equipment, including uniforms and shields. He said he intends to ask police in Ottawa to “join forces” so they can “go get Silly Socks” — the nickname he has given Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — and provincial premiers to put them on trial.
While his rallies, which sometimes draw a hundred people or more, and his large social media following suggest he has an audience, it is not clear how many people have joined his “sheriffs,” or what plans they have for Canada Day.
However, others in the “freedom movement,” including former RCMP officer Danny Bulford, a key player in February’s occupation of Ottawa, have warned people to stay away from Ray because of his bellicose rhetoric.
In response, Ray has called the freedom movement groups criticizing him, corrupt.
Eddie Humphrey, a hydro worker in Manitoba, was an eager participant of the convoy protests in February. At the time, he spoke to the Star while pouring gasoline from a jerry can into a parked semi on the street in front of Parliament.
Humphrey said by phone Tuesday that he still supports demonstrations for “freedom” in Ottawa, even if he can’t make it himself. He’s busy installing hydro poles, but he expressed concern that vaccine requirements could return.
“It’s just getting worse. Beyond pandemic measures now, it’s just mismanagement of government,” he said. “We’re the laughingstock of the world.”
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