PEI Freedom Convoy Rally to Charlottetown

As the Canadian truckers convoy was beginning, I was tasked with going to the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick border and creating the first imagery for Reuters of the convoy which was to end up in Ottawa. I covered this in a previous blog post.

As time went on I was asked to cover the Ottawa Truckers Convoy by a newer client however I couldn’t due to another assignment I had which required me to be on PEI that week. This was a sadly missed opportunity. However, as time went out a PEI Freedom Convoy was organized and I was tasked with covering it for Reuters. It had grown to a pretty good level which is difficult to show in imagery when you have moving vehicles spread out over a downtown core.

I met up with the convoy out near Brookfield where one of the groups of vehicles was heading towards Charlottetown (from Hunter River). Listening to the Zello app, it seemed disorganized as there were multiple sets of people heading towards Charlottetown. One group was parked at the Bluefield High School while another group was driving along highway #2 just down the road. I believe two other groups were coming into Charlottetown from the East.

I went towards Bluefield and as that group was sitting in the parking lot, I heard the other group driving in on Highway #2, so I went down to capture some images of it. Sure enough, I found an RCMP Member stationed alongside the road. He was generally curious as to who I was and after a bit of a chat, he was shocked to find out Reuter’s had a freelancer covering this. I was expecting this to be large so I wasn’t as surprised.

During our chat, he apologized he had to leave. Sure enough, he had to go for a call merely meters away.

From here, I left the Brookfield area and headed towards town. As I got into near Kent Building Supplies in Charlottetown, I again stopped and captured some imagery. The convoy was sitting on the side of the road not moving at this stage. At the same token, there were cars across the street part of the convoy awaiting to join in on John Yeo drive. I put on one of my longer lenses and captured images of the farm tractors. While this was happening, I heard someone yell something across the street about CBC and China.

Naturally, I thought CBC was close by. After capturing the imagery I look around and didn’t see any CBC vehicles. The police officer at this intersection asked, “did you hear the racist remarks they were yelling at you”?

“Negative,” I said, “I wasn’t listening”.

To this individual, they thought I was CBC because I was holding onto a camera? Okay, sure I thought.

Nonetheless from this intersection, I had heard there was some commotion near province house. I left uptown Charlottetown and went downtown.

I parked my car and walked in front of the protestors capturing some imagery. A face stood out in the crowd. Not fully understanding it, I continued on my way to my where I wanted to capture some images.

Photographing the Cenotaph from above…page 2.