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Downtown Ottawa resident surprised when he meets the protestors he was warned about

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14 minute read

From maybury.ca

A night with the untouchables

I live in downtown Ottawa, right in the middle of the trucker convoy protest. They are literally camped out below my bedroom window. My new neighbours moved in on Friday and they seem determined to stay. I have read a lot about what my new neighbours are supposedly like, mostly from reporters and columnists who write from distant vantage points somewhere in the media heartland of Canada. Apparently the people who inhabit the patch of asphalt next to my bedroom are white supremacists, racists, hatemongers, pseudo-Trumpian grifters, and even QAnon-style nutters. I have a perfect view down Kent Street – the absolute ground zero of the convoy. In the morning, I see some protesters emerge from their trucks to stretch their legs, but mostly throughout the day they remain in their cabs honking their horns. At night I see small groups huddled in quiet conversations in their new found companionship. There is no honking at night. What I haven’t noticed, not even once, are reporters from any of Canada’s news agencies walking among the trucks to find out who these people are. So last night, I decided to do just that – I introduced myself to my new neighbours.

At 10pm I started my walk along – and in – Kent Street. I felt nervous. Would these people shout at me? My clothes, my demeanour, even the way I walk screamed that I’m an outsider. All the trucks were aglow in the late evening mist, idling to maintain warmth, but all with ominously dark interiors. Standing in the middle of the convoy, I felt completely alone as though these giant monsters weren’t piloted by people but were instead autonomous transformer robots from some science fiction universe that had gone into recharging mode for the night. As I moved along I started to notice smatterings of people grouped together between the cabs sharing cigarettes or enjoying light laughs. I kept quiet and moved on. Nearby, I spotted a heavy duty pickup truck, and seeing the silhouette of a person in the driver’s seat, I waved. A young man, probably in his mid 20s, rolled down the window, said hello and I introduced myself. His girlfriend was reclined against the passenger side door with a pillow to prop her up as she watched a movie on her phone. I could easily tell it’s been an uncomfortable few nights. I asked how they felt and I told them I lived across the street. Immediate surprise washed over the young man’s face. He said, “You must hate us. But no one honks past 6pm!” That’s true. As someone who lives right on top of the convoy, there is no noise at night. I said, “No, I don’t hate anyone, but I wanted to find out about you.” The two were from Sudbury Ontario, having arrived on Friday with the bulk of the truckers. I ask what they hoped to achieve, and what they wanted. The young woman in the passenger seat moved forward, excited to share. They said that they didn’t want a country that forced people to get medical treatments such as vaccines. There was no hint of conspiracy theories in their conversation with me, not a hint of racist overtones or hateful demagoguery. I didn’t ask them if they had taken the vaccine, but they were adamant that they were not anti-vaxers.

The next man I ran into was standing in front of the big trucks at the head of the intersection. Past middle age and slightly rotund, he had a face that suggests a lifetime of working outdoors. I introduced myself and he told me he was from Cochrane, Ontario. He also proudly pointed out that he was the block captain who helped maintain order. I thought, oh no, he might be the one person keeping a lid on things; is it all that precarious? I delicately asked how hard his job was to keep the peace but I quickly learned that’s not really what he did. He organized the garbage collection among the cabs, put together snow removal crews to shovel the sidewalks and clear the snow that accumulates on the road. He even has a salting crew for the sidewalks. He proudly bellowed in an irrepressible laugh “We’re taking care of the roads and sidewalks better than the city.” I waved goodbye and continued to the next block.

My next encounter was with a man dressed in dark blue shop-floor coveralls. A wiry man of upper middle age, he seemed taciturn and stood a bit separated from the small crowd that formed behind his cab for a late night smoke. He hailed from the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. He owned his own rig, but he only drove truck occasionally, his main job being a self-employed heavy duty mechanic. He closed his shop to drive to Ottawa, because he said, “I don’t want my new granddaughter to live in a country that would strip the livelihood from someone for not getting vaccinated.” He introduced me to the group beside us. A younger crowd, I can remember their bearded faces, from Athabasca, Alberta, and Swift Current Saskatchewan. The weather had warmed, and it began to rain slightly, but they too were excited to tell me why they came to Ottawa. They felt that they needed to stand up to a government that doesn’t understand what their lives are like. To be honest, I don’t know what their lives are like either – a group of young men who work outside all day with tools that they don’t even own. Vaccine mandates are a bridge too far for them. But again, not a hint of anti-vax conspiracy theories or deranged ideology.

I made my way back through the trucks, my next stop leading me to a man of East Indian descent in conversation with a young man from Sylvan Lake, Alberta. They told me how they were following the news of O’Toole’s departure from the Conservative leadership and that they didn’t like how in government so much power has pooled into so few hands.

The rain began to get harder; I moved quickly through the intersection to the next block. This time I waved at a driver in one of the big rigs. Through the rain it was hard to see him, but he introduced himself, an older man, he had driven up from New Brunswick to lend his support. Just behind him some young men from Gaspésie, Quebec introduced themselves to me in their best English. At that time people started to notice me – this man from Ottawa who lives across the street – just having honest conversations with the convoy. Many felt a deep sense of abuse by a powerful government and that no one thinks they matter.

Behind the crowd from Gaspésie sat a stretch van, the kind you often see associated with industrial cleaners. I could see the shadow of a man leaning out from the back as he placed a small charcoal BBQ on the sidewalk next to his vehicle. He introduced himself and told me he was from one of the reservations on Manitoulin Island. Here I was in conversation with an Indigenous man who was fiercely proud to be part of the convoy. He showed me his medicine wheel and he pointed to its colours, red, black, white, and yellow. He said there is a message of healing in there for all the human races, that we can come together because we are all human. He said, “If you ever find yourself on Manitoulin Island, come to my reserve, I would love to show you my community.” I realized that I was witnessing something profound; I don’t know how to fully express it.

As the night wore on and the rain turned to snow, those conversations repeated themselves. The man from Newfoundland with his bullmastiff, a young couple from British Columbia, the group from Winnipeg that together form what they call “Manitoba Corner ” all of them with similar stories. At Manitoba Corner a boisterous heavily tattooed man spoke to me from the cab of his dually pickup truck – a man who had a look that would have fit right in on the set of some motorcycle movie – pointed out that there are no symbols of hate in the convoy. He said, “Yes there was some clown with a Nazi flag on the weekend, and we don’t know where he’s from, but I’ll tell you what, if we see anyone with a Nazi flag or a Confederate flag, we’ll kick his fucking teeth in. No one’s a Nazi here.” Manitoba Corner all gave a shout out to that.

As I finally made my way back home, after talking to dozens of truckers into the night, I realized I met someone from every province except PEI. They all have a deep love for this country. They believe in it. They believe in Canadians. These are the people that Canada relies on to build its infrastructure, deliver its goods, and fill the ranks of its military in times of war. The overwhelming concern they have is that the vaccine mandates are creating an untouchable class of Canadians. They didn’t make high-falutin arguments from Plato’s Republic, Locke’s treatises, or Bagehot’s interpretation of Westminster parliamentary systems. Instead, they see their government willing to push a class of people outside the boundaries of society, deny them a livelihood, and deny them full membership in the most welcoming country in the world; and they said enough. Last night I learned my new neighbours are not a monstrous faceless occupying mob. They are our moral conscience reminding us – with every blow of their horns – what we should have never forgotten: We are not a country that makes an untouchable class out of our citizens.

 

This is a blog of mathematical thoughts and views from the perspective of a data scientist in Ottawa, Canada.

I am a reformed physicist who has undergone rehabilitation through the world of operations research and statistical science, becoming a quasi-useful member of society. In real life, I am a lead data scientist in Ottawa, Canada.

I am a passionate applied mathematician with an interest in all things stochastic. I am always looking for opportunities to transform data into useful decision insights. My rehab is ongoing!

Click here for more from David Maybury 

 

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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COVID-19

10 Shocking Stories the Media Buried This Week

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The Vigilant FoxThe Vigilant Fox

Measles, Fauci, Politics and Public Education. This is a fascinating read 

#10 – ‘Measles Death’ of 6-Year-Old Girl Exposed as a Media HOAX

The media claimed a 6-year-old girl died of measles, but “she did not die of measles by any stretch of the imagination,” Dr. Pierre Kory says.

“In fact, she died of pneumonia. But it gets worse than that because she didn’t really die of pneumonia. She died of a MEDICAL ERROR.”

Let that sink in.

What happened was a complete breakdown in basic medical care. The hospital failed to give her the appropriate antibiotic regimen to treat her pneumonia. By the time they corrected their mistake, it was too late, and the girl died “catastrophically.”

“I mean, this is like medicine 101. You put them on two antibiotics to cover all the possibilities. It’s a grievous error, and it’s an error which led to her death,” Dr. Kory attested.

Not only did Covenant Children’s Hospital fail to provide the appropriate antibiotic, but when they noticed their error, they dragged their feet and took another 10 hours to administer it.

“By that time, she was already on a ventilator. And approximately 24 hours later—actually, less than 24 hours later—she died,” Dr. Kory explained.

And she did not pass away peacefully. According to Dr. Kory, “She died rather catastrophically.”

And while her family grieved, the media hijacked her death to stir fear and push the vaccine narrative. Just another “measles death” used as a political weapon.

This is a case Dr. Pierre Kory calls “absolutely enraging.”

And it is. Just another example of how the media will shamelessly twist the story of a grieving family’s loss to push Big Pharma’s agenda. That’s not just dishonest. That’s evil, plain and simple.

Follow @ChildrensHD for the full interview and more details on this enraging story.

(See 9 More Revealing Stories Below)

#9 – Bill Maher guest calls out Fauci’s ridiculous pardon, saying, “There’s a reason he was given a pardon back to 2014.”

“There is something very wrong going on here.”

“Everyone knew it [gain-of-function research] was dangerous a long time ago. You go back to 2015, you will find a big meeting in London where they say there’s one lab in the world most likely to have a problem with this—Wuhan. Do you know who was the biggest supporter of gain of function research for the last 30 years? Anthony Fauci.”

It turns out that in 2014, 300 scientists warned Anthony Fauci would start a global pandemic.

RFK Jr. previously explained that following the high-profile escape of three bugs from U.S. labs, these 300 scientists sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to shut down Anthony Fauci’s gain-of-function research.

Obama issued a moratorium and shut down 18 of the worst projects by Anthony Fauci. In the end, he really didn’t shut them down. Instead, Obama moved the research offshore to places like Ukraine, the former Soviet State of Georgia, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China.

Now, it is widely accepted that COVID-19 originated from that very lab in Wuhan, China. The 300 scientists were right when they said Anthony Fauci would start a global pandemic.

#8 – Kevin O’Leary delivers a harsh reality check to people burning Teslas: You’re going to “rot in hell in prison.”

“And frankly, as far as I’m concerned, that’s okay,” he said.

O’Leary left no room for debate, making it clear that there’s zero justification for the destruction:

“When you set a car on fire, you should go to jail. You’re a criminal. And I don’t think we have to talk about it in any other context.”

He also had a blunt message for those thinking they’ll get away with it:

“And all those cars have cameras in them, and those dealerships have cameras. You’re beyond being stupid when you do that… You’re going to spend five to 20 years in prison. If they get them on terrorism—which I think is a stretch—there will be no parole, no shortened sentence. They’ll rot in hell in prison for 20 years. And frankly, as far as I’m concerned, that’s okay.”

#7- Stephen A. Smith Rips his OWN STAFF while recording his show.

Smith grilled his staff’s loyalty to the Democratic Party after pitching this common-sense idea to Democrats: “Rather than telling us what we should vote against, maybe you should present us with options of what to vote for.

“I mean, my God. Are you okay, Michael, with me suggesting that? Are you okay with me, Sherry, suggesting that?” Smith asked.

“Rashawn Galen and all of a bunch of leftists that’s under my umbrella trying to act like they’re independents when they’re full of it! I’m talking about my own damn staff,” he clarified.

“I’m a centrist. I think my man, Rashawn, is a centrist. The rest of these damn people working for me. I mean, what left-wing party are you associated with? I mean, you gotta believe this stuff.”

#6 – Vivek Ramaswamy drops a game-changing idea for public education: merit-based pay for public school teachers.

“Pay for performance. That’s what businesses do. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be running our public schools in the same way.”

Vivek announced that he plans for Ohio to become the first state in the nation to adopt merit-based pay for every teacher, principal, and administrator.

He says that performance reviews should go beyond standardized testing, incorporating peer reviews, parent feedback, and student outcomes—with a clear goal of rewarding the best educators.

“The best teachers in the country right now, sadly, are underpaid. We need to fix that—but fix it through meritocracy,” Vivek said. “Thanks to President Trump’s bold actions today, we can lead the way.”

While you’re here, don’t forget to follow me (@VigilantFox) for more weekly news roundups.

#5 – Tim Walz absurdly claims that Trump’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education could take America back to an era of racial segregation.

“And then it’s about the Civil Rights Department at the Department of Education that makes sure that we don’t have a situation where a Ruby Bridges is escorted to school with police. And so we’re back in an area where we can segregate,” Walz said.

Somehow, giving control back to the states means we’re suddenly back in 1960. This is why no one takes Democrats seriously anymore. All they do is cry wolf.

#4 – Bill Maher believes JFK wasn’t killed by a lone gunman—says a lot of people wanted Kennedy dead.

QUESTION: “Is it time to move on from this conspiracy theory?”

MAHER: “Well, I mean, do you think it’s a conspiracy theory? Plainly, there was not a single gunman, right?… But the magic bullet. There could not have been a bullet that went through a guy, went around him, came back, went through the other guy, got lunch at the diner, came back, shot him in the back of the head. I mean, it’s just. Come on, everybody heard a shot from the grassy knoll.”

“The idea that the CIA is going to now suddenly go, ‘You’re right, we had something to do with it.’ I’m not saying they did, but a lot of people wanted him [JFK] dead.”

#3 – Elon Musk sounds the alarm on “magic money computers” at the federal government that can “send money out of nothing.”

“So you may think that the government computers all talk to each other. They synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere, and it’s coherent that the numbers, for example, that you’re presented as a senator, are actually the real numbers. They’re not,” Musk explained.

“They’re not totally wrong,” he continued. “They’re probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases. So I call it Magic Money Computer. Any computer which can just make money out of thin air. That’s Magic Money.”

“So how does that work?” Ted Cruz asked.

It just issues payments,” Musk answered. “I think we found now 14 magic money computers. They just send money out of nothing.”

This raises a critical question: If the government’s books are off by 5% to 10% in some cases, leaving up to hundreds of billions of dollars unaccounted for, where is all that money actually going?

#2 – The New York Times finally ADMITS the “conspiracy theorists” were right about COVID and that Fauci and the “experts” misled the public.

“Perhaps we were misled on purpose.”

I can’t believe they actually printed this. Here’s what they’re finally admitting:

• Tony Fauci, Francis Collins, and Jeremy Farrar coordinated a media strategy to discredit lab leak discussions. Emails show they worked behind the scenes to smear and silence anyone who questioned the official narrative.

• The Biden administration and intelligence agencies pressured social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to censor lab leak discussions and label them as “misinformation.”

• Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, and other scientists knew the truth but covered it up. Behind closed doors, they admitted a lab escape was likely. In public, they dismissed it as a “conspiracy theory.”

• WHO’s Jeremy Farrar got a burner phone to secretly coordinate meetings with Fauci, Collins, and top scientists, ensuring their discussions stayed off the record.

• Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, and Eddie Holmes strategized how to mislead New York Times reporter Donald McNeil Jr., making sure he didn’t dig too deep into the lab leak theory.

• The infamous Proximal Origin paper, authored by Andersen, Garry, Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, and W. Ian Lipkin, was a coordinated effort to mislead the public. Private Slack messages revealed they believed a lab escape was not only possible but likely—yet they publicly denied it.

• Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance helped cover for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, despite knowing their risky gain-of-function research could have caused the outbreak.

• The Wuhan lab, run by Shi Zhengli (“Bat Woman”), had horrifyingly lax safety protocols—yet they expected the public to believe a leak was impossible.

And now, after years of smearing and slandering the “conspiracy theorists,” The New York Times is quietly admitting the so-called “conspiracy theorists” were right all along.

#1 – RFK Jr. Sounds the Alarm on Bird Flu Vaccines

The USDA plans to inject millions of chickens to stop the bird flu outbreak, but RFK Jr. says “leaky vaccines” could make things worse.

He breaks it down here. This is the must-read thread of the week:

Originals

RFK Jr. Issues Grave Vaccination Warning

·
Mar 21
RFK Jr. Issues Grave Vaccination Warning
 

The USDA wants to vaccinate millions of chickens to stop the bird flu. They claim it’s the ultimate solution, but not everyone’s convinced. RFK Jr., for one, is sounding the alarm.

 

Read full story

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While you’re here, don’t forget to follow me (@VigilantFox) for more weekly news roundups.

 

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Mark Carney was an early supporter of government crackdown against Freedom Convoy

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

It is difficult not to conclude that he was publicly building the case for what Trudeau would ultimately do: freeze bank accounts, invoke the Emergencies Act, and launch a crackdown. Ironically, a federal justice would conclude, based on a mountain of evidence, that the government crackdown Carney appeared to be advocating did precisely what he accused the convoy protesters of doing: violating the fundamental rights of Canadians.

The Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa on January 29, 2022. Two weeks later, on February 14, Justin Trudeau declared the Emergencies Act (which replaced the War Measures Act in 1988); his Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino, insisted that law enforcement had requested the measure. Police from all over the country began arriving in Ottawa, and on February 18, they were sent to clear the streets — including a contingent on horseback. I was in Ottawa for the crackdown, and some of the scenes were surreal.

On January 23, 2024, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was both “unreasonable” and a violation of the rights of Canadians as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He found that the invocation of the act lacked “justification, transparency, and intelligibility,” infringed on freedom of expression, and violated protection against “unreasonable search and seizure” due to the freezing of bank accounts and suppression of protests.

The Trudeau government is appealing this decision, insisting — against all evidence — that the Emergencies Act was essential to restoring peace despite the fact that there was not a single incident of documented violence during the Freedom Convoy. Further to that, Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Brenda Lucki directly contradicted the claims made by Mendicino, stating that law enforcement had not requested the Emergencies Act, a key aspect of the government’s justification for invocation. “There was never a question of requesting the Emergencies Act,” Lucki told the Public Order Emergency Commission bluntly.

Interestingly, one of the early advocates of a crackdown on the Freedom Convoy was … now-Prime Minister Mark Carney. On February 7, a mere week into the protests, Carney penned a furious editorial in the Globe and Mail titled “This is sedition—and it’s time to put an end to it in Ottawa.” He claimed that people were being “terrorized”; that women were “fleeing abuse”; he stated, bluntly, “This is sedition. That’s a word I never thought I’d use in Canada. It means ‘incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.’”

Carney went further, writing that although the protest might have been initially peaceful, “by now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition,” and called on the government to “identify those who are prolonging this manufactured crisis and punish them to the full extent of the law.” He opined that donating to the Freedom Convoy amounted to supporting an insurrection, concluding:

It’s time to end the sedition in Ottawa by enforcing the law and following the money … Decisive action must be taken to protect Canadians and our democracy. Our Constitution is based on peace, order and good government. We must live up to this founding principle in order to protect all our freedoms.”

Carney was already a key figure in Trudeau’s circle at this point, and it is difficult not to conclude that he was publicly building the case for what Trudeau would ultimately do: freeze bank accounts, invoke the Emergencies Act, and launch a crackdown. Ironically, a federal justice would conclude, based on a mountain of evidence, that the government crackdown Carney appeared to be advocating did precisely what he accused the convoy protesters of doing: violating the fundamental rights of Canadians.

Carney has kept understandably mum on all this since his leadership race and subsequent victory, although presumably he will be continuing the Trudeau government’s ongoing appeal to overturn the federal ruling that they violated the rights of Canadians. Indeed, for his Chief of Staff, Carney chose … Marco Mendicino, the very cabinet minister who appears to have blatantly lied about law enforcement requesting the Emergencies Act. Ironically, Carney also selected Chrystia Freeland, the minister directly responsible for freezing (at minimum) the bank accounts of hundreds of Canadians, as Minister of Transport.

To state that the Trudeau government violated the fundamental rights of Canadians in cracking down on protesters often rendered desperate by their vaccine mandate policies — which they cynically used as a wedge issue in a (failed) attempted to secure a second majority government — is not a right-wing conspiracy theory. It is the considered opinion of a federal judge that, to date, has not been overturned. Carney appears to be cut from precisely the same cloth — and has surrounded himself with those who carried out the crackdown.

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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