After a six-day protest, a police raid has finally put a stop to the costly bridge barricade in Windsor, Ontario, with the crossing reopening for traffic on Sunday night. Is the anti-mandate campaign nearing an end now that a tentative agreement has been reached to relocate the demonstration in Ottawa?
This was the moment that the demonstrators had been waiting for.
As he left the site, Tyler Kok told the BBC, “I was hoping it wouldn’t end like this, I was hoping the cops would let us continue to peacefully protest.”
The officers arrived by busloads on Sunday morning, dressed in balaclavas and armed with long rifles, ready to clear the roads leading to the Ambassador Bridge of the remaining few demonstrators.
A seven-day standoff was about to come to an end. For days on end, about 100 automobiles had been parked along a 2km (1.25 mile) section of road.
There were Canadian flags, anti-vaccination messages, and anti-Trudeau epithets on pickup trucks, SUVs, and even a dog grooming van, as well as some huge commercial trucks.
Evangelical Christians, anti-mask mothers, vaccine skeptics, and local residents tired of lockdowns and vaccine passports made up the crowd.
The Freedom Convoy originated as a protest against a rule that required truckers crossing the US-Canada border to be vaccinated against Covid.
However, the group is not connected by a common occupation; instead, they share a suspicion of vaccines, a fear of government overreach, and a general hatred of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Similar blockades have appeared at other border crossings across the country, including one in British Columbia where four people were arrested on Sunday.
However, Windsor’s largest one is no longer in operation. After an extremely cold night, the police began stage one of their clearance operation on Saturday, and only a few dozen people remained by Sunday morning.