Things are definitely not normal in Ottawa. Not that the city has witnessed normalcy in the past two years with any number of lockdowns and restrictions. And it's the latest federal government mandate over truckers' vaccination that has brought the city centre to a standstill with the presence of heavy trucking rigs with Canadian truckers protesting the forced vaccination of the as-yet unvaccinated in the trucking community. 

A man walks past signs fixed to the fence surrounding Parliament where the truckers protest continues to block streets in Ottawa's downtown core on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

The casual observer might take the impression that most truckers are opposed to vaccination, but the fact is 90 percent of Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated. It's the few that are not that the aggregate are protesting on behalf of, those who have lost employment. Along with the strictures in general, leading to a pause in civil liberties. 

Ironically enough, there are more than a few studies that support what the truckers are protesting against. That lockdowns, temporary closures of borders, travel restrictions, shutting restaurants, gyms and direct in-person teaching have accomplished nothing in the avoidance of coronavirus infections,  hospitalizations and deaths.

In the face of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the province has been in yet another partial lockdown. But this city, the country's capital, is in another kind of lockdown. Those thousands of protesters and their rigs have made their point, but it's the radical fringe groups who always recognize an opportunity to hide behind legitimate grievances, the haters and the sociopaths, the radical nationalists and the neo-Nazis have been out in full display, spreading their disaffection liberally. The central city has been shut down; businesses, hospitals, medical clinics, universities, public schools in the face of sociopaths threatening people and blocking access to services.

"We know there remain many unlawful demonstrators that are highly determined and highly volatile within our city. "

"[Intelligence gathered by the Ottawa Police Services and RCMP and OPP suggests that] we will continue to see the convoy attempt to hold the footprint that they have."

"We'll see large group9s of people gathering in the Parliamentary Precinct who are both in support of the convoy effort, as well as opposed to them, and they will all be demonstrating within the same area downtown."

Ottawa Police Service Deputy Chief Steve Bell

The Ottawa Police Force is playing it low-key. They have decided it would serve no useful purpose to confront the convoy, arrest people for blocking access to roadways, haul off their rigs, and possibly provoke a violent response. There have been a few discrete arrests; of people found carrying firearms. There will be others as investigations continue into incidents like desecration of the National War Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the occurrence of harassment and assaults.

As for neighbourhood communities confronted by some of those who have joined the protest, verbally abusing them for wearing masks, refusing to mask when entering restaurants, converging on humanitarian groups providing meals to the homeless and insisting on being fed at their soup kitchens, and the loud, unending noise connected with people being out on the streets partying, or blowing air horns without stop, interfering with people's sleep, ability to study and to work, this is a city being held hostage.

The hostage-takers of course are the very group bitterly complaining that their employment is being held hostage to government mandates that do more harm than good. That truckers who convey all the necessities of life for social communities have their needs that are being ignored. And in their determined push to be heard and their complaints listened to, they have used their discouraged frustration to victimize other people, those who cannot sleep at night, who cannot set out in the morning without harassment to go to work, attend school due to blocked roads. 

"A lot of people in my community here in Centretown are suffering and struggling and honestly, I just don't see the reasoning behind protesting for freedom and taking away a whole community's freedom."

"We're being overrun. This is an incursion."

"We don't have the ability to live our lives and workers and businesses and residents are suffering."   Counter Protester

This upending of a community reflects the social chaos that has resulted as a result of political and medical authorities theorizing the best possible public measures to take in hopes of taming a deadly virus which has no intention of falling under human control.

Trucks are blocked by police barricades as a rally against COVID-19 restrictions, which began as a cross-country convoy protesting a federal vaccine mandate for truckers continues in Ottawa on Tuesday, February 1, 2022. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Patrick Doyle)