When Chris Barber, a trucker from Swift Current, a small Saskatchewan town on the Trans-Canada Highway, started posting TikTok videos under the name “Big Red”, he had no idea it would foment a national crisis.
However, like all social movements, the one that has left the Canadian capital in chaos, and a nation searching its soul for answers, needed a spark.
Big Red’s videos detailing frustration with Justin Trudeau’s vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the US-Canada border, were seen by Tamara Lich, a key figure in the “Wexit” movement, which advocates for the independence of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada’s vast “Prairie Provinces”.
Described as the person who “lit the fire”, it was Ms Lich, a former fitness instructor and singer, who started a GoFundMe campaign that would ultimately raise millions of dollars for what became the “Freedom Convoy”.
As they started heading for Ottawa last month, the truckers were cheered in small icy towns, similar to Swift Current, as residents braved the cold to bring them food and fuel.
Along the way, their protest has morphed into something bigger, a perhaps inevitable confrontation between two Canadas: the urban one, embodied by liberal metropolitan cities like Ottawa and Toronto, and the rural expanses where people feel little connection to their government.
