The following is from an interview with a reporter who had been on the ground with the truckers in Ottawa.
Hochman: I got here late Sunday afternoon, got into Ottawa and settled Sunday evening. And I went out and just checked out the convoy that night.
And things are a lot more crowded on the weekends than they are during the week, so I only caught the back end of the really crazy weekend, which is when you have thousands and thousands of protesters streaming into the city. But I’ve been there since then and I’ve been talking to a lot of the folks on the ground and it’s just the core group of truckers, which is still hundreds and hundreds of people.
And it’s amazing, these people are, I think, patriots in the most authentic sense of the term. They’re weathering not just insane cold temperatures and sleeping in their trucks to fight for their freedoms, but also now a full-on frontal assault from their federal and provincial governments.
So I have nothing but respect for these guys. They’re some of the kindest people that I’ve ever met. And I don’t say that just because of my ideological priors. I went into this supporting the cause, but thinking that maybe a lot of these guys were going to be kooks and crazies, and that’s not the case. These are really decent, fundamentally good people who are fighting for their basic freedoms and their rights and their way of life. And it’s a really wonderful thing.
