Hundreds gathered along Highway 401 in the London, Ont., region on Thursday for the arrival of southern Ontario branches of a national truck convoy that began to protest COVID-19 vaccination mandates on cross-border truck drivers.
London police advised motorists Thursday morning to expect heavy delays in both directions along Highbury Avenue near Highway 401. The curb lane of Wellington Road was closed to southbound traffic at Exeter Road.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance has spoken out against the protests, stating that it does not support “and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roadways, highways and bridges.”
In London, convoys travelling from Sarnia and Windsor began arriving at the Flying J Travel Center on Highbury Avenue South at around 11 a.m. Thursday and had mostly cleared out by 1 p.m.
Instead of one large convoy, a group of trucks stopped in London before continuing their journey eastbound to Drumbo, followed by another group and so forth.
The trucks are expected to finish the day’s journey in Kingston before ultimately joining others from across Canada in Ottawa this weekend.
Hours before the convoys arrived in London, a crowd began gathering at the Flying J Travel Center. By the time trucks started arriving, there were over 200 supporters to greet them.
The sound of horns filled the air as protesters cheered on from the side of the road, draped in Canadian flags, holding up signs calling for freedom from restrictions and handing out coffee and doughnuts to stay warm.
Truck driver Gagan Mann was moved by the support, noting that one woman was handing out $10 bills while others were providing food and drink.
“There’s a little girl. She gave me that little heart,” he said, pointing to a paper heart he put on the dashboard of his truck.
“She thanked me. She’s like my son’s age, like six years old.”
Mann argued that the convoy is strictly about vaccination mandates.
“I’m not protesting against the vaccination as everybody’s personal choice. Most of my family is fully vaccinated. I’m also vaccinated,” he said.
However, the message has become muddied as the movement has grown.
One of the groups associated with the event, Canada Unity, has produced a pseudo-legalistic “memorandum of understanding” it plans to present to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and the Senate, which it mistakenly believes would force the government to rescind COVID-19 public health measures, or force the government to resign en masse.
Some of the supporters gathered also said their involvement was not limited to protesting vaccine mandates.
“It’s more than that. It’s way, way more than that. This is about our government trying to tell us what we have to do,” Lyn Kilby said.
Kilby said she’s “not anti-vax,” but she is “for the right to decide what goes in my body.” She attended with her grandson, adding that it’s important for kids “to see that they have to stand up for what’s right in Canada.”
When asked about the truck driver vaccination mandate, protester Tim Andrew said, “That isn’t what this is about.”
“This is about Canada. The world is watching. We’re doing this for Canadians. We’re doing this for the world,” he said.
“No more masks. No more shots. No more restrictions. We’re done.”
Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor of international affairs at Carleton University and former national security analyst, warned that while there are participants frustrated by public health measures and concerned about their livelihoods, the group is vulnerable to being co-opted by more extremist groups.
“I’m not calling everyone in the group an extremist. I’m saying that there’s a bunch of people who have, you know, certain extreme views that are targeting the people who are angry about what’s going on and they’re trying to use that anger for their own ends,” she explained.
Carvin said a lot of online rhetoric she’s seen surrounding the protests involves violent language.
“We want democratic dissent. We want people to feel that they can express themselves. But when they’re using this language and they’re introducing it into a crowd of very angry people, you really do worry.”
While fatigue is not surprising after nearly two years of varying levels of restrictions due to COVID-19, health officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of slowing the spread of the virus to avoid overwhelming the health care system.
The recent Omicron wave has proven particularly challenging due to the variant’s high rate of transmission and its ability to evade vaccines, though early studies show vaccination is still very effective at reducing the severity of illness.
Locally, a capacity crunch prompted the London Health Sciences Centre moved to transfer some patients to free up beds earlier this month. LHSC also reported a new record number of COVID-19 inpatients in its care last week, with 166 inpatients on both Tuesday and Thursday.
Meanwhile, Statistics Canada reported this week that Canadians’ average life expectancy in 2020 experienced the largest decline ever since records began in 1921.
COVID-19 became Canada’s third-leading cause of death in the first year of the pandemic, and Statistics Canada says the country saw 7.7 per cent more deaths that year than in 2019.
The agency says Canadians’ average life expectancy dropped to 81.7 years in 2020 from 82.3 years in 2019 — a drop of more than half a year.
— with files from Global News’ Andrew Graham, Rachel Gilmore, Simon Little and Kevin Nielsen