Episode 89 - The "Freedom Convoy"

On Saturday January 29th, a self-described "Freedom Convoy" of big rigs rolled into Ottawa to protest cross-border vaccination rules for Canadian truckers. The protestors have parked their trucks in front of the Parliament buildings, taking over streets and dominating the city's soundscape with a constant barrage of horn blasts and rally cries. Within the crowd, protestors have been waving flags and raising hand-drawn signs, some featuring hateful, violent, and racist messaging. Today, Christine and JJ discuss the challenges of covering and contextualizing divisive events, and describe the troubling images that have enraged so many of us.

Transcript

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JJ Hunt: 0:03

Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.

Christine Malec: 0:26

Hi, I'm Christine Malec.

JJ Hunt: 0:28

And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashed out in description rich conversations.

Christine Malec: 0:47

Today, we're going to be talking about what's been called the Freedom convoy, which is a moving protest that has made its way to Ottawa in Canada. And we've talked about protests in other parts of the world before, I don't think we've ever recovered one in our home country. So this is new ground for us in a few ways. And in talking about the episode, before we we actually, you know, hit the button to record, I was really struck by JJ the strange role that you're in, because in this podcast, you're always gone beyond being a describer. And you offer background and research and context. And then when we pick our topics, and when you describe them, we sort of become a bit like journalists, because we're presenting news items, but in issues where opinions diverge, and are polarizing, you especially are in the position of choosing what we describe or what you describe and how we talk about it. And so I was so conscious that you're in this bizarre role, and I don't know you've given it some thought to but you're, it's not just describing, it's not even just journalism. It's, I don't even know what to call it because it's presenting what what we decide to present. So we've talked so much about neutrality, and we don't need to cover, you know, revisit all of those things that we try to do around neutrality. But yeah, I guess just that it's you're in this weird role that nobody finds themselves in, in media that I know of. So I just want to put that out. For myself, it was important to think that through and to acknowledge for you, JJ, that this is really weird territory for you to be

JJ Hunt: 2:41

It is. It's a little bit, you know, we're, we're navigating? curating we're choosing images to describe and, and, you know, especially when you're when it's a topic like this, you know, there are elements of this protest that are genuinely divisive. I mean, there are elements of this protest that absolutely should not be divisive. But there are moments that are divisive, and you can look at different images, and you can see how they're presented. And there are several different stories that can come of those visuals. So just as a starting point, as it happens, my computer has been giving me a little bit of trouble lately. So when I started to do my research for this, I was using a brand new, totally clean browser. This browser didn't know me doesn't know my history at all. And I typed in freedom convoy. And the very first thing that came up was a Fox News article. And the article was titled, Canada freedom convoy appears peaceful and respectful, despite Trudeau claim of hateful rhetoric. That was the very first article that came up and it opened with a 40 second video that featured sunny skies, a big crowd of people in parkas and woolly hats in front of the Canadian Parliament buildings. And it was filmed from inside the crowd. So the crowd looked really big, densely packed, lots of Canadian flags. And then a speaker with a microphone or a bullhorn or something. Someone who was off camera sounded like they were wrapping up their speech and they said, Hold your heads up, Canada, we love you. And then the crowd cheered. And there was some polite horn honking, very patriotic, and then the clip continued with someone strolling through a tailgate party at night. Again, lots of Canadian flags, lots of smiling white people. And this wasn't fake or doctored footage, but it was pretty clearly cherry picked to fit a narrative. And then on the flip side of that, if you Google"freedom convoy Nazi" or"freedom convoy swastika" there are lots of images that pop up and obviously that's, that's distressing. There's no way for that to be anything but awful. But for context If you look carefully at those pictures of"freedom convoy Nazi" or"freedom convoy swastika," most of the photos feature the same guy in the same group of people. There's one man, a white man in a black parka with a black hat with their earflaps, down wearing black sunglasses. And he's carrying this Nazi flag through Ottawa. Lots of people snapped this guy's picture and posted them online. So at first glance, when you google this, it looks like there are dozens and dozens of pictures of flag waving Nazis, when in fact, there might be two or three or four. A handful. Again, lots of photos, mostly the same guy. Obviously, the appropriate follow up is, you know, how many swastikas is too many? How many Confederate flags or overtly threatening protest signs do you need before a group or a protest or movement is just universally condemned or shut down? So I bring all of this up because yes, we're going to be discussing and describing some of the more outrageous and unsettling images that have come from this protest, and it needs to be acknowledged that that's a version of cherry picking. It's absolutely true that there are many images of smiling white people waving Canadian flags and holding signs that are in support of important basic freedoms. And we are going to try and talk about some of those. But we're also going to be talking about the more extreme visuals. And I think perhaps some of those more extreme visuals are more important for us to focus on, because those are the scenes that have the Ottawa Police Department instructing residents to stay inside and steer clear of the protests. Those are the scenes that are enraging the vast majority of Canadians. And most importantly, for us on this podcast, those are the images that have been all over the news, they've been flooding social media. And because of that, those are the images that I think our listeners need access to.

Christine Malec: 7:15

You really just highlighted there something that I've been thinking about because I, I have said on Twitter, and I say it here too, that I always want to publicly acknowledge JJ that when you cover this stuff, you have to look at it, then you have to keep looking at it, then you have to put it into words, then you have to write the words, then you have to read the words, you have to research that. So it's not like someone looking at the news, as you have said sort of through your fingers are going ooh, okay, that's enough of that. And so I acknowledge the difficulty of that and how precious it is for for the blind community. But as you're talking about that, it's making me realize that it actually serves another function too, which is that the casual viewer, even if you try to get your news from more than one source, which not everyone does, you're going to have a superficial understanding of what's going on because of how quickly you look. And unless you take the time as you have done for, for practical reasons, you've taken time, those subtleties, you're gonna miss them. And so as as difficult and precious as the things you do are the time you spent, there's also these these bonuses that a lot of casual sighted News viewers are not going to get Khushboo we start with some Should we start with some context about what the freedom convoy is just for anyone who may not be so familiar.

JJ Hunt: 8:42

Yeah, absolutely. So just a little bit of backstory. There's been, as you said, this convoy of truckers that made their way across Canada and have gathered in Ottawa, the nation's capital, and they gathered to protest federal government vaccine requirement for cross border truckers. And it's important to note that 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated. That's according to the Canadian Transport Minister, the Canadian trucking Alliance has for what it's worth officially come out against protests on public roads and highways. But there's a significant and very vocal group that has gathered in Ottawa to protest these vaccines at the core and then lots of other things that have been tacked on to those grievances and that anger, this group is dominating public spaces, they are certainly dominating the soundscape. They're dominating the energy of the city. I've seen some reports that say 1000s of people, even up to 10,000 people are there, which is a big number. It does fill up the public space on Parliament Hill, which we can talk about in a minute. And it's lots of people for a city the size of Ottawa to accommodate but it's important to note that the streets aren't overrun by 10,000 and people I would say looking at some of these crowd photos. It's like the density of the crowd is kind of what you would find around a decent sized concert hall 20 minutes after the show lets out, right? It's a crowd. But it's not like the packed crowd outside an NFL Stadium as everyone's leaving, you know, it's a crowd, but it's not massive.

Christine Malec: 10:21

Right.

JJ Hunt: 10:21

What makes this crowd stand out is their volume. If Can we maybe do a bit of description of Parliament Hill, you listen to any of the clips of this protest, you will hear it is a very loud, very rowdy group of protesters and they've got access to like truck horns, air horns that are extremely loud. So they are taking up a lot of space and energy in Ottawa. And it's ongoing. It started this weekend in there. They arrived in Ottawa this weekend. And they are still there as of Wednesday, February the 2nd. so we have some context for where the people are gathering? Yeah, so Parliament Hill sometimes just called the hill, it's a 22 acres of land that backs on to a treed hill that looks over the Ottawa River. There are kind of three main buildings in a U shape around a central lawn, the lawn, which right now, by the way, is completely covered in snow. The main building of the of the three is called the center block. This is the building that houses the Senate and the common chambers. There's the East Block, which has the offices and meeting rooms and the West Block, which is a separate building that is currently I think it's a temporary home to the House of Commons right now. And then there's a long wide Main Street that passes in front of the grounds. So that's on the open end of the lawns opposite the center block. All of these major buildings are in the Gothic Revival style, very common for the most important civic buildings of the day. Originally built in 1860s and 70s, and then had to be rebuilt quite quite a bit later on the center block. This is the main structure, grand stone six storey building with three inner courtyards. It's symmetrical with lots of gargoyles and carvings. And at the center of it is the piece tower. It's a 300 foot tall Bell and clock tower. And all in the other buildings are also in this Gothic Revival style. The roof tops if you look at an image from above, you can see that all the rooftops are copper, and they've got this classic oxidized green patina on them. This is the same color as the Statue of Liberty has, for example, this, you know bronze and copper offered or copper often gets as green patina on it. And then of course, all around the grounds. There are statues and memorials, on the official grounds and also nearby, and several of those statues and memorials were enveloped and ultimately defaced by the conflict protesters.

Christine Malec: 12:58

So these are truckers and so are you seeing just a wall of trucks is that the first image that you notice?

JJ Hunt: 13:05

Yeah, there. I saw some drone footage that was taken on Sunday afternoon. And you know, the main thing on this road this this major road that passes right in front of the parliament buildings, there's a long line of parked commercial trucks that's occupying the street and they're all their big big trucks. These are, a lot of them are transport trucks with big flatbeds filled or not filled. Some of them are different kinds of industrial vehicles. There's a crane truck at the front, I've seen some some salting trucks. These are big, big big trucks. So when they park one after the other after the other, it only takes a few dozen for them to completely occupy an entire road. So again, like this drone footage I saw there are hundreds, maybe a few 1000 people milling about gathered at the front of this parked convoy, which is right in front of the parliament grounds. I read some headlines from small online publications, new sources that frankly I did not recognize. And they stated that 50,000 people were there and they posted photos to demonstrate that and I have to say just looking at those photos, it didn't look to my untrained eye anything like 50,000 people in the area. Mostly, generally, there are folks milling about this spot in front of the Parliament Buildings honking horns yelling, some people are spreading out and making their way through the city. So there are videos of people walking through Ottawa, waving flags and carrying signs. And then some people stay right near the trucks and right up in front of the parliament buildings and it's really cold in Ottawa right now. So a lot of these protesters are wearing winter coats, snow pants work parkas so these are like, you know, thick work coats with reflective gray and neon green stripes across the torso and arms. These are the kinds of coats you'd wear on a job site. You know, I'm always a little bit uncomfortable generalizing when I describe a crowd, but I can say that, you know, scanning, lots of crowd photos, lots of footage. I spent a good party yesterday doing so the crowd is mostly adults, men and women. This is not a youth or a teen protest movement. It's mostly adults, middle aged men and women. But all white. I've only seen literally one person of color in all of the footage that I've seen. And for context, that is not representative of Canada, or Ottawa, or the trucking industry.

Christine Malec: 15:46

Escpecially the trucking industry!

JJ Hunt: 15:49

Ya! According to industry surveys, the industry in 2016 I think was when they did the last survey, 25% of Canadian truckers were listed in their words as quote, unquote, visible minorities. And that was 2016. That number has definitely gone up since then. South Asian drivers alone make up almost 1/5 of Canadian truckers. So those groups of people are not remotely represented. When I'm scanning these photos in this footage, not even close.

Christine Malec: 16:16

When you look at the photos, how do you know it's a protest? What what are you seeing that's telling you this is a protest?

JJ Hunt: 16:23

Yeah, so a lot of the signs, a lot of the banners, a lot of the flags and the chanting and cheering, right. So I mean, if you can get past just the horn honking, which, by the way, is apparently 24 hours. I've got friends of friends who live in right in downtown Ottawa and they haven't gotten any sleep in nights because all night long, these very loud trucker horns are going constantly very loud. So but but there are some people chanting, but it's mostly the signs, the flags, the banners, and these are these are, you know, printed on sheets of cardboard. Some of them are on the backs of these empty flatbed trucks, they put big signs right down the middle of the back of a flatbed truck. Some of these are posted on the front grilles of the big rigs. I can just read and describe some of those signs that I've come across. I just, you know, wrote down a whole long list, these are not presented in any particular order. So I saw black handwritten signs those black text with red hearts drawn onto a sheet of white bristol board, and it read hope, truth freedom. I saw another sheet of white bristol board this one was has more cheerful lettering and yellow and blue that said we support truckers and it had a pink heart and a hand drawn Canadian flag on it. I saw several professionally printed signs. So these were like a series of signs. Black and yellow. And they read we support medical freedom. And it had a picture of a syringe on it. I saw a man in a red hat with bold white text that reads Canada first. I saw in a big one of these big upright signs that running down the center of an empty flatbed truck. And it said masks don't save. Only Jesus saves freedom over fear. There was a flatbed truck lined with what looked like straw bales and there was black handwriting or painting on the bales. And it read. My rights don't end where your fear begins. And then on a separate part, it said no mandates. Actually it was written in such a way that it said no man and then a hyphen and dates underneath lots and lots of upside down Canadian flags, which you know, an upside down flag is a signal of distress. I think we talked about that in the Portland protests, I believe. Lots of people carrying upside down Canadian flags. So I did see a screenshot from a video that was posted in a Twitter thread. In it there's a person holding an upside down Canadian flag and it has red writing on the field of white around the upside down maple leaf. And included in that red handwriting is a red swastika drawn right on to a Canadian flag. I saw an American flag with a red maple leaf over top of the red and white stripes you know signs that say no to masks no to mandates signs that say Wake up a big sign on the front of a truck that read my body my choice, right Mr. Feminist, follow the money and then a white sign with red lettering that said make Canada free again. A sign that said I'm not racist. I'm not an extremist. I am Canadian. This is riffing on an ad campaign for Molson Canadian beer. I am Canadian, and they made an I'm not racist. I'm not extremist sign out of that. I saw confederate flag lots of it's several several Confederate flags that have a big rig right in the center. So a picture of a of a truck right in the middle of Have a confederate flag, and then a large cardboard sign that was held by two people. And it read assassin true dough. And there's a picture of a dripping syringe filled with green liquid right in the middle. And both pairs of the Ss in the word assassin are the zigzag lightning bolts of the Nazi SS. So Nazi SS emblems in the middle of the word assassin. So I have seen a few response signs that were posted by the citizens of Ottawa just just a handful, someone painted big letters on a window. So you know painted from the inside of an office so that it was to be read from the outside and these big letters spelled out, truck off. And then a relatively small sign in a window. This was a computer it was printed off of a computer quite clearly. And there's an image of a swastika in a red circle with a red line through it. So no swastikas and you know, black letters on white paper, and please pardon my language, the sign read Nazi shitheads not welcome.

Christine Malec: 21:14

This was an unavoidable attention getter and a place where neutrality is completely inappropriate for me. That was when I read on Monday, that statue of Terry Fox had been appropriated and defaced. Can we talk about about what you saw that some of the disturbing things that were done into the monuments and things? Yeah, I'm in hell.

JJ Hunt: 21:41

Yeah. So like I said, there are several monuments statues on the parliamentary grounds. But there's also there are statues in the in the area. So there's a bronze statue across from Parliament Hill, a statue of Terry Fox. So lots of people know about Terry Fox, he is an iconic Canadian. And this statue represents an important element of, of who Canadians aspire to be. Terry Fox was a Canadian athlete and activists who was in his early 20s. In 1977, his right leg was amputated after an aggressive cancerous tumor was found in the bone. In 1980, he began running what he called the Marathon of Hope. This was a cross country run to raise money for cancer research, not to raise money for himself to raise money for cancer research. He started on the East Coast and began running west. And he did this with very little fanfare. It's hard to imagine now, but he did this with virtually no fanfare, very little support. He just started running. And he ran the equivalent of a marathon every day on the sides of highways along country roads. Sometimes he was completely alone with just one, you know, vehicle with friends, making sure he was okay trailing behind him, no other support. Sometimes he would run through cities and towns where people would ask what was happening, what he was doing. And by the time he reached Ontario, he had become a national celebrity. But his cancer spread and he was forced to stop running in Thunder Bay. He tried to restart the run a couple of times, but sadly, he died in 1981. So Terry Fox is a Canadian hero. He's an international hero.

Christine Malec: 23:34

There's, sometimes Heroes is a funny word, and one person's hero is not everyone's hero. But speaking as a fellow Canadian, Terry Fox is just unambiguously the best of us.

JJ Hunt: 23:46

Absolutely. And there are dozens of statues of him that can be found across the country around the world. This particular statue that we're going to talk about today is a bronze statue a little bit larger than life size. It's on a waist high. I don't know if it's stone or marble platform. And it's Terry Fox in motion running. He's always depicted running. It's an extremely recognizable we use the word a lot iconic image, Terry Fox running and like I said, he had no stylist. This was not an overly managed event. He started running in a white t shirt that was tucked into gray sweat shorts, and he wore Adidas running shoes on the t shirt was a Canadian flag in the shape of Canada. And above and below that Canadian flag was in iron on felt letters like it looked like he either did it by himself or went to the mall and had a single t shirt made. It said Marathon of Hope this was the name of his run.

Christine Malec: 24:50

And this was after his amputation just to be clear.

JJ Hunt: 24:53

Yeah, absolutely. He was doing this run this 42 kilometers a day on a 1980's prosthetic leg! This was a very difficult run. He was a young white man, 22 years old at this point, I believe. So he had an athletic build, but he was not a ripped athlete like we're used to seeing today just to you know, a solid athletic build, had heavy blonde eyebrows, narrow eyes, curly light brown hair. And yeah, he was he was running on this this prosthetic leg that was built in the late 1970s. This leg was thin and cone shaped coming down from the hip under his gray running shorts, tapered to the knee joint at the knee joint. This prosthetic leg had exposed metal and leather and Canvas straps, pretty industrial looking by today's standards. It then was quite thin down the lower leg and he wore a bunched sock around the ankle where the prosthetic foot went into the blue Adidas shoe with three stripes all elements of this of his clothing is iconic. This is what he wore every day while running. And when he would run. He had broad athletic shoulders, he they were a bit hunched and his elbows were bent. He had a very distinctive kind of hop step gait, to run with this leg. So it's his shoulders, a little bit hunched, elbows bent hands were usually in fists and held in front of his chest and kind of at his sides. This is how Canada remembers Terry Fox mid stride running, always running. And this is how he's immortalized in the statue across from Parliament Hill running, mouth hanging open prosthetic leg back fists clenched. On Saturday afternoon, photos of this statue started to spread on social media. A protest sign had been tucked under his right fist and because of the way his fist was held in the statue, it kept the sign pressed against his torso. And this sign read mandate freedom in bold black letters. Someone tied a Canadian flag around his neck worn like a cape and perched a baseball hat on top of his head. There was a flagpole tucked behind his left hand again holding against his torso because of the way the fist was being is positioned in the statue. And flying from this relatively short flagpole was an upside down Canadian flag.

Christine Malec: 27:33

I think there was also some talk about the war memorial to was that images that you saw?

JJ Hunt: 27:40

Yeah. So this the Canadian National War Memorial? I think we discussed it, it was episode 23?

Christine Malec: 27:47

You described it, yeah.

JJ Hunt: 27:48

Yeah, I think maybe we should put a link to that specific description in our show notes because it might be worth listening to.

Christine Malec: 27:54

For sure.

JJ Hunt: 27:55

After we have to go through this display that I'm about to describe. So members of the protest gathered at this national memorial, which is on the on Parliament Hill. They gathered there over the weekend, and they posted videos of themselves and of others. posing in front of the War Memorial. And in the most often referenced video, there's a white person standing on the steps of the memorial dressed in a white parka, black snowpants, black tuque. And behind them is this is a bronze sculpture of a tangle of soldiers. This is these are statues of 22 men, two from each branch of the Canadian Forces and they're passing through the middle of a tall granite arch. So the protesters stands on the steps in front of this statue. They throw their arms in the air for a small crowd that's gathered around with a gun a drink in their hand and smiling, absolutely beaming they scream "Freedom, woohoo!" And then they start to step down and they say, ah, that felt good. And they share a laugh with some of the other protesters and while they're sharing a smile with a person who's wearing a scarf of blue and white fluidly. These are the symbols of French presence in North America, the fluidly appear on the Canadian on the Quebec flag. This protester looks at this person wearing the scarf and says "tabernacle", which is a very strong bit of French Canadian profanity. So this is, I have to say, the only video that's attached to all of these stories. There's a lot going around there lots of headlines that say protesters dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. That phrase is thrown around a lot. People are upset about the dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And this is the video that's always attached to articles that have that statement or have that as the as the title. This video is taken At the, the National War Memorial and just in front of that war memorial is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, it's kind of connected, it's part of this, this area of Parliament Hill, the the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is an it's on an ankle high platform, it's a stone. The the tomb looks like the top of a gray granite coffin. It's inscribed the Unknown Soldier in English and in French. And then across the top of this, of this coffin is in bronze, a soldier's helmet, a sword, and branches of Laurel and maple leaves in there, and they're made to look like they're draping over the sides. So I haven't seen any videos of any one specifically dancing on this spot. It is only a few feet from the spot where protesters were screaming and laughing and swearing and filming selfies. But I just, you know, as a describer, I need to be clear that I, I wouldn't, I would not describe the video that I've just seen as dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Christine Malec: 31:10

It's an important example of why critical thinking and description are necessary because someone might use that headline, and know that you're going to see the image. And so they're free to make a bit of a metaphor, because you'll see that it's a metaphor. They're not literally dancing on the tomb. There is a little editorializing in that headline choice -

JJ Hunt: 31:32

Totally!

Christine Malec: 31:33

- that's not obvious unless you can see.

JJ Hunt: 31:35

Exactly. And you know, obviously, I have no interest in refuting. I'm not trying to say that no one's dancing on the tomb. This is fake news. Not at all. But it is, as you say, it's important to understand if you only have access to the headline, and you don't have access to the visuals, it is possible to misunderstand. Around that war memorial... on Twitter, I found a photos taken from the side of that war memorial, the snow, the snow all around it like the all the ground around this memorial is packed with snow. And in this picture in the frame is the speckled gray granite base of the statue. And then the first of the bronze soldiers that are making their way through the archer depicted. And then there are dates along the side of the memorial that that read 1939 to 1945. And then right there at the granite base, where the snow is pressed up against the memorial, there are several distinctive patches of yellow snow, and some with what look like... there might be cigarette ashes and cigarette butts melted into the deep snow beside these puddles of yellow... melted into the snow.

Christine Malec: 32:57

It's hard when this stuff is home for us. This is the first time we've talked about this kind of thing from that's, you know, our home. And as I always do at the end of these episodes, I just want to again say thank you to JJ, it's hard to spend as much time as you have to wading through all of this stuff and it's so precious and valued by the community. So thank you.

JJ Hunt: 33:18

Thanks, Chris.

Christine Malec: 33:21

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