Truckers Protest at Nova Scotia/New Brunswick Border

Around January 13th, I had received a couple of tips from people that there will be an attempt to shut down the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick border on the TransCanada Highway again. I didn’t hear much more on this other than the initial words.

Fast forward to January 19th, I found out more about a plan to shut down the border using trucks. It was taking place on Sunday the 23rd. I emailed the editor in charge of North America at Reuters to see if he wanted it covered. He did.

On the days leading up to the 23rd, I discovered there were what seemed like two groups planning this protest. One group was to depart Amherst at 1130am and be at the border at noon. The other was coming from Moncton and would be at the border around 3pm.

Sunday came and off I went to the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick border, bright and early. On the drive over, I was thinking about how different this protest would be. Instead of using standard zoom and a telephoto, I was going to go with a telephoto and a super-telephoto. The minimal focus distance of these zoom lenses would keep me much further away from people than the requirements. I’d just have to move more on my feet.

I started off at the Amherst Mall, which is where everyone was meeting prior to the protest.

1130am came and went. Noon came and went and then the trucks started moving. The convoy was starting. I booted er over to the closest overpass to the border. After waiting what felt like forever (it was a slow moving protest), trucks eventually started to become visible along the highway.

I was ready. I had previously planned out a few different photos I wanted to capture based on a few assumptions. In the end they were right.

After watching all the vehicles stop on the side of the road, people started getting out of their vehicles. The RCMP would come over and ask them to get back in their vehicles and wear a seatbelt in case a car comes up from behind and hits them. The protestors did.

I was able to move around inside my vehicle or outside easily. I was prepared for a long hike through unpacked snow in the woods as I wasn’t really sure what the conditions would be like.

After an hour or so, the vehicles started to move out.

Was this it? It was time to walk back to my SUV and start filling imagery. I jumped into my SUV and moved to another location where I could oversee everything and work on my laptop. After a brief period in time, the convoy came back They did a loop around and stayed inside their vehicles. I sat and watched and didn’t see anything different compared to the other side so I continued captioning. After a shorter period of time, they left.

After I had finished my captioning, I noticed a new set of cars coming up the road. It was the other group. I jumped out and went down to capture a few more images.

Again the RCMP had to go along and ask people to remain in their vehicles in the event a vehicle was hit from behind.

After a while, the vehicles would leave and so would the people along the side of the road.

As I was filling the second time, the snow began. And it came on hard.

My thoughts immediately switched to, this is an accident waiting to happen as the road conditions changed. I put a much larger distance between myself and the cars tho at the same time, I was expecting the police to shut the protest down.

I can’t remember if cars started leaving before a car went off the road or after. But inside the New Brunswick border, there was a ton of flashing lights. It was the fire department and police department. It was so far away, in a snowstorm, a good image wouldn’t be possible so I didn’t bother. But a car had gone off the highway. Nonetheless, pretty much everyone had started to leave anyway.

I ended up waiting for a few more hours to see if the convoy would return. They did not.

As shot for Reuters. Globe and Mail, CBC, the National Post, The Guardian (UK) and 112 more (according to Google).