Embrun Freedom Convoy camp served 600 coffees a day

Farmers Forum staff

EMBRUN — Two years ago, Parliament Hill and downtown Ottawa brimmed with a carnival atmosphere as the Freedom Convoy gathered together a multitude of Canadians in common cause to defend freedom and bodily autonomy during an extraordinarily dystopian time. The excitement reverberated across the Ottawa Valley to a handful of rural staging areas where overflow crowds and trucks camped out.

One overflow site, located off Highway 417, was an Embrun farm property, about 30 minutes southeast of the city. It was home to dozens of rigs at the height of the protests, before the Trudeau government violently cleared out Ottawa’s streets in what was — in light of a recent Federal Court ruling — the single most flagrant and public violation of Charter rights by a national government in the 40 years since the Charter’s adoption.

The 80-acre field owned by former dairy farmers Michel Dignard and Jeannette Mongeon is long silent now, awaiting only the planting of corn they have planned for this spring after last year’s soybeans. The campers are long gone. So is the heated communal tent and chef with 40 volunteers who cooked breakfast every morning. The farmer himself served 600 cups of coffee every morning. The camp was complete with numerous mobile porta-potties, a loud speaker system and covered with Canadian flags.

The self-described non-political Dignard has fond memories. “Yeah, we had fun,” he said. “We did our thing…. We did it, it’s finished, and now it’s on to something else.”

The couple never visited the convoy protest in Ottawa, nor did they take part in the recent second anniversary march on the Hill. “No. I’m busy enough,” Dignard said.

The farmer wasn’t aware of the federal court ruling that found Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act to quell the protests an unreasonable use of the law and a violation of the Charter, saying he doesn’t follow politics too closely.

But that legal win added an extra spring in the step of over 2,000 marchers who reunited on Parliament Hill on Feb. 17.

The Trudeau government is appealing the ruling to the Supreme Court.