Was it really about vaccine mandates — or something darker? The inside story of the convoy protests

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For three weeks this winter, a so-called “Freedom Convoy” delivered thousands of demonstrators into downtown Ottawa, turning them into an occupying force that snarled daily life in the nation’s capital and dominated the national conversation.

But who were the demonstrators, really — and what were they after?

Many of them positioned the protest as a fight against vaccination mandates for cross-border truckers. Others saw it as a campaign against pandemic restrictions more broadly. No doubt the occupation was many things to many people. But for several of its organizers, the protest was the culmination of years of work, their best chance yet to coalesce a movement around their preferred conspiracy theories and a violent anti-government ideology.

The convoy protest was not about just the pandemic. But nor could it have happened without the pandemic. Organizers were able to leverage fatigue and frustration with government restrictions and social isolation to grow their movement, drawing on one particularly potent conspiracy theory in the process: the idea that an international cabal has taken control of Canada, and is weaponizing the pandemic to consolidate its dominance. This occupation was marketed as the last stand to stop tyranny — and has become a global rallying cry for a burgeoning anti-media, anti-science, anti-government political force.

Remarkably, the occupation was ended without major incident. Normalcy has returned to downtown Ottawa: Commuters sit in slow, but not frozen, traffic. Politicians bustle through Centretown on their way to the House of Commons. Journalists roam freely, without hired security in tow.

The nation’s capital is back to its famously boring self.

But it’s an unsettled peace. Where has the movement — and its anger — gone? And what comes next in its plan to stop the globalist takeover of Canada?

In a sense, the story begins more than a year before the pandemic.

In a video posted to his Facebook page, James Bauder is standing in a snow-covered parking lot in Thunder Bay, pointing his phone camera at the assembled convoy. There is a pickup truck with its bed full of red jerry cans. A small group of people mills about in reflective yellow vests, brandishing a Canadian flag. Cars and semi trucks are covered in homemade signs.

“Everybody in Canada is involved in this,” Bauder told his Facebook friends. “We got people across our great nation travelling to go to Ottawa to stand up for Canada unity.”

When it arrived in Ottawa, their convoy gathered at Parliament Hill, where the protesters demanded a say in how the country was governed. “I brought myself a pink slip,” organizer Pat King said in an interview, “and I would like to hand it to Mr. Trudeau.”

The convergence on Ottawa for two days in January 2019, dubbed “United We Roll,” was moderately successful, attracting the support of Conservative party leader Andrew Scheer and collecting more than $140,000 through an online fundraising campaign.

A few months later in Medicine Hat, Alta., Benjamin Dichter stood at an event to introduce a man who bills himself as a top intelligence analyst and whom Dichter, in a comparison to novelist Tom Clancy’s fictional CIA agent, called “Canada’s Jack Ryan.”

When he took the stage, Tom Quiggin described a plot between Islamists and socialists to control Western governments. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he warned, was the apex of that “entryism.”

“If he is re-elected this fall, and he does not immediately disavow his previous commitments to globalism and Islamism, he will then be pouring gasoline on the already burning embers of discontent,” Quiggin warned audience members including Tamara Lich, who had helped organize the event.

Quiggin touted his speaking tour as an urgent call to resist this encroaching new world order. (In a 2019 podcast, he would warn that Trudeau could usher in an era in which “widespread civic violence occurs or, in the worst-case scenario, a sort of civil war.”)

But there was another pressing reason for it: money. Quiggin was raising funds to fight a defamation lawsuit launched after he accused prominent Canadian Muslims of being the clandestine leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Quiggin alleges is a terror organization. The lawsuit is ongoing; a GoFundMe campaign set up by Dichter has so far raised more than $42,000 to fund his defence.

As a conspiracy theorist, Quiggin was convinced that something was rotten in Ottawa. He wasn’t the only one.

Norman Traversy then invoked the rallying cry of QAnon, the American conspiracy theory movement that claims Satanic pedophiles have infiltrated the U.S. government. “Where we go one …” he shouted to those assembled. “We go all!” the crowd shouted back.

Standing directly behind him was King, who would go on to become a public face of the protesters.

The next day, Corey Hurren posted a meme to his Instagram account falsely alleging that Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum were complicit in creating COVID-19. Half an hour later, Hurren drove a truck loaded with guns through the front gates of Rideau Hall, an apparent attempt of removing the prime minister from power. Hurren would later plead guilty to eight charges.

In 2021, James Bauder would find a way to pull these strands together.

The World Economic Forum provided a perfect target.

The organization hosts an annual retreat in Davos, Switzerland where members of the political, business and cultural elite gather to promote liberal economic policies and recognize the leaders who champion their progressive capitalist values. The Forum has been led by its founder, Klaus Schwab, for a half century.

But in an information universe where institutions are presented as corrupt and malign, critics have coloured its mission with an ominous hue. Along with the United Nations and the World Health Organization, conspiracy theorists have baselessly alleged the WEF is complicit in releasing COVID-19 into the world to enact mass control, open borders, and the imposition of a Chinese-style digital surveillance establishment. In essence: Totalitarianism.

Bauder wrote on Facebook that Trudeau “needs too (sic) be arrested and charged for treason, and for participating in committing crimes against humanity” and warned that it was nearly too late to stop the World Economic Forum’s devious plan: “WE HAVE BEEN LEAD (sic) RIGHT INTO A TRAP. A few more moves and it’s checkmate, Game Over.”

Pat King’s presence was also increasing on social media, where he warned his followers, “There’s an endgame: It’s called depopulation of the Caucasian race.” Dichter had become increasingly involved in the People’s Party of Canada, the right-leaning political party founded by former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier, and warned the Ontario Legislature of a “gradual Islamization of Canada by erasing its national identity.”

They’d had enough.

“Truckers,” Bauder wrote on Facebook in August 2021, “wanna make some noise?”

In the months that followed, Bauder came up with the idea for Operation Bear Hug, a plan modelled after the United We Roll convoy. He would recruit a veritable army of patriots to head to the capital and surround it — in protest of COVID-19 vaccination mandates, masks, vaccines and the violations of personal freedoms he claimed they represented. He started an organization to advance the plan: Canada Unity.

If the problem was a global conspiracy, then the solution had to be more than just talk. Bauder was seeking real change. He began touting a so-called “memorandum of understanding” that detailed the protest’s objectives. “By having the Senate of Canada and the Governor General of Canada sign this MOU into action, they agree to immediately cease and desist all unconstitutional, discriminatory and segregating actions and human rights violations,” it read. Failing action from the Governor General and the Senate, Bauder said, signatures would be collected to trigger a national vote to remove the government. “So this is just step one of calling for a referendum through Elections Canada,” he said in a livestream.

The document also proposes a citizen’s committee, spearheaded by Canada Unity, that would set policy alongside the Governor General and Senate. He expected to see their signatures on the document. “If they don’t, they’re incriminating themselves,” Bauder said in an interview. He began using the hashtag #SignOrResign

“On Dec. 6, we put the Senate on notice. We are having tens of thousands of people come to Ottawa, in unity, to bear hug this city until the law is restored in our country,” he told followers of Canada Unity.

When Bauder arrived in Ottawa last December, it didn’t go terribly well. “Failure is not an option,” he told his Facebook friends from outside the Rideau Hall grounds one evening. “Standing down is not an option.”

But Bauder was turned away when he and his supporters marched to the Senate building to deliver their memorandum of understanding. He led the crowd instead to a nearby Canada Post office, to drop the document in the mail.

He wouldn’t hear back.

But then the world changed. COVID-19 and growing concern about governments’ response created an opportunity to broaden the movement. Bauder started plotting Operation Bear Hug 2.0, which would become the convoy. The timing was perfect. A political knife fight was brewing over the decision to require truckers to show proof of their COVID-19 vaccination status when crossing the U.S-Canada border.

The organizers started to assemble: King signed on as a road captain for Alberta. In the months prior, he had accused Trudeau of stealing an election and warned his followers to stock up on meat and supplies to prepare for “what’s coming.” Tamara Lich, who had taken on a position with the Western separatist Maverick Party, started an online fundraising campaign to finance the convoy. Benjamin Dichter later joined as a spokesperson, and brought Tom Quiggin along as an unofficial intelligence adviser for the occupation. (Quiggin had recently turned his professional attention to Trudeau’s push for what he baselessly described as a “social credit scoring system, much like Communist China has now.”) In Ottawa, Norman Traversy was part of a “reception committee” for the truck convoy’s arrival.

As plans for the so-called “Freedom Convoy” gained momentum, its leaders made clear that they were in it for the long haul. On a livestream with Bauder, King promised, “We are going to fix our broken country, and I’m not leaving Ottawa until it’s done.” Bauder chimed in: “Neither of us are.” King vowed that “everybody” involved was committed to occupying the capital. “I’m going to live on Wellington Street, right in front of Parliament.”

Jason LaFace, who signed up as a road captain and hosted Canada Unity’s official podcast, promised “when we get to Ottawa, we’re not leaving until Justin Trudeau leaves government and the Liberal government is dissolved.”

Bauder tapped into a well of like-minded support. That included Action4Canada, which had unsuccessfully sued the Canadian government, alleging “a massive and concentrated push for mandatory vaccines of every human on the planet earth with concurrent electronic surveillance” and accused Trudeau of taking part in the plot at the behest of “international Billionaire Oligarchs, and oligarch organizations such as Bill Gates … (and) the World Economic Forum.”

As the days passed, support grew: Donations poured in, from within Canada and beyond, and a network of Facebook pages racked up tens of thousands of new followers.

And unlike Bauder’s previous efforts, dozens of trucks actually set out for Ottawa — from Prince Rupert to St John’s — when the planned departure day, Jan. 22, came around. The online fundraising campaign smashed past $1 million.

The convoy was actually happening.

For some, the convoy’s destination in downtown Ottawa would be a place to commune with like-minded citizens, to make a point but also to lounge in a hot tub, listen to a DJ and play street hockey.

But to Canada’s security establishment, the occupation was anything but fun and games.

On Jan. 27, a bulletin went out from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre with an alarming headline.

“Extremists may attempt to seize the opportunity of public protest,” said the bulletin, which was sent to intelligence, police and first-responder agencies. It warned that several elements had joined the convoy promising civil war, attacks on politicians, and a Canadian version of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington.


The centre judged that the protest was likely to be peaceful, but flagged groups and individuals in the growing convoy that espoused “violent anti-authority/anti-government views.”

Indeed, King had once predicted in a video that “Trudeau, someone’s gonna make you catch a bullet someday,” and warned the rest of the House of Commons that somebody would “do ya’s in.” Even before the convoy arrived in Ottawa, King said the point of occupying Ottawa was to terrorize politicians. “What we want to focus on is our politicians — their houses, their locations,” he said.

The leader of a convoy leaving from Quebec was Steeve “L’Artiss” Charland, a former core organizer of far-right militant group La Meute. He announced that his new group, Les Farfadaas, would be heading to Ottawa as well: It would end up occupying a stretch of downtown Gatineau. “We stay here. We’re not going anywhere. We have a free country or we are dead,” he said in an interview.

Tyler Russell, head of the far-right Canada First organization said on a livestream, “When you go in and you see these counterprotesters, you understand who our enemies are, right? … They are complicit in this globalist plan.”

One group that caught the attention of CSIS in particular was Diagolon. Started as a running joke by far-right internet trolls known as the Plaid Army, its founder, Jeremy MacKenzie, insists it is not a militant or extremist group but a “social club.”

But Diagolon members have shared images of Trudeau’s head on a spike. Its members have met in real life, posing with assault-style rifles and shotguns. Its followers have fantasized online about installing themselves in heavily fortified compounds, out of reach of the state. MacKenzie has frequently alluded to a coming race war, and has adopted the catchphrase “gun or rope,” referring to methods of executing the ideological opponents of their aspirational state.

Before the trucks set out for Ottawa, MacKenzie promised in a video that they would “block up the city, and not leave until either the mandates are lifted, and/or the entire government resigns. It’s going to cause food shortages, parts shortages, industrial shortages.

“I only got one thing to say to those guys,” he added with a laugh. “Let’s go, Justin. What are you gonna do?”

On a podcast, another Plaid Army member promised “this is gonna be bigger than Oka. This is gonna be bigger than the FLQ and the October Crisis.”

And despite their more radical tone, they were motivated by the same conspiracy theories as the convoy’s organizers. In a mid-February livestream, MacKenzie warned his listeners not to trust promises from the Conservative party to repeal vaccination mandates. “Are they? Or are they gonna just replace them with a digital ID they’re gonna roll out here for the UN and Klaus Schwab?” he asked. MacKenzie would be regularly spotted on the streets of Ottawa during the occupation.

The government intelligence assessment rated a co-ordinated terror attack or storming of Parliament as unlikely, but warned that “a dedicated group of protesters” could “prolong their protest in Ottawa and/or seek interaction with Canadian politicians” — a warning that many critics say Ottawa Police failed to take seriously.

Organizers framed the demonstration as a protest against COVID-19 vaccination mandates and lockdowns, a cause within the mainstream of Canadian opinion. Support from some leading Conservative politicians seemed to lend credibility to that idea. But even during the occupation, darker motivating beliefs were apparent.

The protest teemed with outstretched arms wielding cellphones, broadcasting live — to Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, but also to alternative social media sites Bitchute and Rumble. Occupiers, and their supporters back home, essentially had a 24-hour news network — by occupiers, for occupiers. One of the most omnipresent of those streamers was former People’s Party candidate Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson. She had amassed a considerable social media following by promoting, among others, Norman Traversy and firebrand pastor Henry Hildebrandt, an ardent opponent of mask and physical distancing requirements.

“Have you seen the video where Klaus Schwab is admitting that they hand-picked Trudeau, and they have used him to destroy our nation?” Thompson said. Hildebrandt nodded, emphatically interjecting with “Yes! Yes!” Hildebrandt regularly led prayer sessions in front of Parliament, vowing to return God to the House of Commons.

Intense interest from abroad made minor celebrities of the convoy leaders. Dichter, who became a regular face on Fox News, offered his thoughts on the World Economic Forum in a YouTube interview. “Klaus Schwab — I jokingly say, well, for the third time we have a left-wing German who’s going to save the world. What could go wrong?” he said, adding that “we live in a society where these people, globally, are trying to institute policy, so it seems, to prop up the degenerates and cause conflict.”

Quiggin began producing daily “intelligence reports” that warned that the federal government was launching an “‘information operation’ in order to provoke civil disobedience and violence.” He included a list of prominent Canadians who “are members of the World Economic Forum.”

As the scrutiny ramped up, some of the organizers tried to distance themselves from controversial statements that were jeopardizing their fundraising efforts. That proved difficult in the case of someone like Pat King, who was mobbed by supporters wherever he went. When King put out a call for trucks to join him in a slow roll to the airport, which also happened to be a police staging area, dozens of trucks signed up. “When Trudeau goes to jail, he can have all the mandates he wants,” he told a livestream.

Norman Traversy said he would be restarting his plan to have Trudeau arrested and prosecuted. But for the time being, he was delegating responsibilities from inside one of the occupation’s “command centres” in a downtown hotel. “There’s no boss of this group,” he said.

Dichter told a news conference much the same. “Because this is so organic, there are many people in different groups that have latched on to the movement,” he said.

It was becoming apparent that this wasn’t going to end well.

In Ottawa, police were confronted with a situation far removed from the peaceful, fun-loving party the occupiers described.

“Members of racialized, faith-based, LGBTQ communities were threatened and verbally harassed on a regular basis,” said Ottawa Police Interim Chief Bell. When officers tried to stop the flow of fuel canisters into the downtown core, the occupiers would “swarm our officers, threaten them, to the point that they couldn’t do their job.”

Policing sources say a significant factor in the city’s unwillingness to clear the occupation sooner turned on what was present in the trucks, and what the occupiers’ true intentions were.

Those fears proved prescient in other parts of the country. On Feb. 14, four men were arrested in Coutts, Alta., the scene of a border protest, and charged with conspiracy to commit murder; a significant weapons cache was seized. The RCMP alleged that the four men had plans to kill Mounties and members of the public. The Diagolon patch was sewn into some of the seized body armour and one of the men arrested was reported by Anti-Hate Canada to be “head of security” for MacKenzie’s so-called “social club.” MacKenzie would ask his followers to pray for the men arrested, saying, “we haven’t heard from them.” He would later deny knowing any of the men accused.

A source with knowledge of the emergency response said there were serious fears within the Ottawa Police Service that someone was leaking operational information to the occupiers — perhaps even giving them access to encrypted radio channels. Bell would only say there are “very serious allegations” against a “very small group” of officers who were affiliated with the occupation.

The Star spoke to one officer, on leave without pay for refusing to get vaccinated, who visited the occupation but vehemently denied leaking information to the occupiers. “I have never seen Canada more unified,” he said.

Concerns of a mole were raised again when, after police moved in to clear the encampments, the logs of an RCMP group chat were posted to Telegram by Jeremy MacKenzie.

On Valentine’s Day, Trudeau announced that he had decided to invoke the Emergencies Act.

The announcement sent shock waves across the country, reviving memories of his father’s use of the War Measures Act during the FLQ Crisis. The updated law’s powers, however, were far less expansive. They enabled Ottawa to freeze bank accounts, forbid entry to certain areas, and press tow trucks into service.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told the Star there was a series of “inflection points” before that decision was made, but said the foiling of the alleged plot to kill RCMP officers “revealed the extent to which some of these individuals were, potentially, willing to go.”

Even if they were convinced that using emergency powers was necessary, the politicians remained nervous, Mendicino says. “We almost collectively held our breath when we invoked the Emergencies Act, because we know it could only take one person to set off a series of events that could result in mass casualties and damage.”

On the morning of Friday, Feb. 18, the occupiers emerged on the streets expecting a police operation. As Ottawa police and their reinforcements got into place — armoured assault vehicles moved into position, tactical units readied for the operation, tow trucks pouring into the city, ambulances idling nearby — the occupiers steeled themselves with a mix of preparation and delusion. They wielded shovels and got to work on some freshly fallen snow, building makeshift barricades in front of their lines.

Before the operation began downtown, police picked up the organizers, one by one. Pat King’s Facebook livestream was interrupted by police pulling over his vehicle.

Rather than use the more aggressive crowd control methods seen in recent years at protests in Toronto and Montreal, Ottawa police opted for a measured approach. Every 15 minutes, give or take, the line of officers would announce their intent to step forward — and they would. Most occupiers dutifully stepped back. A smaller contingent of occupiers tried to resist, with some trying to wrestle officers to the ground. Police would grab those people, pull them behind the line, and handcuff them.

Of the thousands of occupiers who remained in the city’s core when police moved in, just 230 were arrested. Of those, only 118 people were charged criminally.

It would take more than 24 hours before the entire downtown core was retaken. Over the course of the operation, police employed pepper spray and non-lethal projectiles — which can include beanbag rounds — but did not fire tear gas or more dangerous projectiles.

Fears that there weapons inside some of the trucks proved prescient: A police source said loaded shotguns were found. (While truckers can legally transport registered firearms in their vehicles, guns must be securely stowed and are not permitted to be loaded.)

Mendicino says it was “nothing short of miraculous” that nobody was seriously injured.

The occupation of Ottawa was a “wake-up call,” Mendicino says. The city’s police force deals with an enormous number of protests every year, Bell said, but “this one was different.”

And the attempt to link debate over legitimate public health measures with conspiracy theories — about vaccines, about the World Economic Forum, about a dire threat to Canadian sovereignty — have sparked concern about what could come next.

“The people who organized that protest, and there were several factions there, there’s no doubt [they] came to overthrow the government,” Jody Thomas, national security adviser to the prime minister, said earlier in March.

“This is a problem that is not going away.”

Mendicino says the chaotic month proved that “the tools and laws we have on our books aren’t effective enough” at dealing with this type of movement. He hinted that his government was considering making some permanent legal changes to supply police with some of these powers, although he didn’t specify what that would look like.

Some of those who enabled this occupation won’t be part of whatever that new movement looks like. King and Lich were both arrested and charged with criminal offences; King’s attempts to be released on bail are ongoing, while Lich’s bail terms prohibit her from participating in demonstrations. Dichter has re-emerged in the world of bitcoin, leveraging his experience sourcing donations that are beyond government’s grasp. Quiggin continues his podcast, turning his attention in recent weeks to the conflict in Ukraine. Once he recovered his RV from a city impound lot, Bauder headed west; by early March, he had reached Victoria, where a rump of the Ottawa occupiers set their sights on the B.C. government, occupying the legislature grounds in the provincial capital.

The movement has now outgrown the former organizers. Sympathetic social media channels continue to expand. Groups like Diagolon are recruiting new members. The conspiracy theorists that propelled this movement proliferate online. Some demonstrators no doubt returned from Ottawa satisfied, believing that they had made their point. But others came back armed with dangerous lessons. As one put it on a recent livestream: “Violence in some way, shape, or form is the only way these people are going to respond.”

TORONTO STAR
Justin Ling is a freelance reporter