OTTAWA—The Alberta-organized convoy to Ottawa saw a frustrated crowd protesting against the government with mixed messages more informed by feeling than fact.

After a five-day journey — during which the group was met with a series of supportive rallies in and between towns and cities from Alberta through to Ontario — the United We Roll Convoy for Canada landed in the nation’s capital Tuesday to promote pipelines and oppose energy and environmental policy, carbon pricing, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, among other things.

“Flush the turd!” chanted members of the crowd, referring to an effort to replace Trudeau in the upcoming federal election.

The protestors, many of whom had been with the convoy since leaving Red Deer, Alta., last Thursday, parked their pickups and big rigs along Wellington St. Tuesday morning and swarmed the sidewalk before trudging through knee-deep snow to a fenced enclosure for the rally.

Organizers had expected the rally to garner massive support, but only about 200 people, many wearing yellow vests, occupied a small corner of the designated demonstration grounds on Parliament Hill Tuesday morning, though they were limited by the number of trucks allowed into downtown Ottawa. There, they were met by a smaller group of counterprotesters, separated from one another by a police line of about 30 officers.

Originally organized under a yellow vest label, a movement criticized as anti-immigration for its position against the United Nations Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration — a non-binding agreement that aims to improve global co-operation on international migration — the effort was rebranded as a “united” convoy, that kept the yellow vest values and opened the door to anyone with a grievance against the federal government.

While promoted primarily as an oil and gas advocacy project, the crowd took more of an anti-government tone, with a wide range of protestors welcomed to the movement flipping off the parliament building, calling for “God given rights,” over government rights.

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The counterprotesters, who showed up shortly after the rally began, drew attention to Indigenous rights, the environmental effects of pipelines and the oil and gas industry.

The convoy gathered controversy as it drew closer to the nation’s capital, with some protestors toting signs calling for Trudeau to be tried for treason, and others questioning the existence of climate change.

Les Michaelson, of Edmonton, Alta., seen on the grounds garbed in a yellow jacket was among the drivers who set out to advocate for the oil and gas industry by protesting the federal government.

Among his complaints were Trudeau’s 2017 comments on “phasing out” the oilsands.

“Look at it. It’s -19 C right now,” Michaelson said Thursday, outside of Dryden, Ont., en route to the capital. “To me that’s not global warming, and if the whole planet is warming up, why is it so cold here?”

Tensions escalated when Faith Goldy, a former Toronto mayoral candidate with white supremacist ties took the mic at the rally, but was drowned out by the crowd who called for her removal.

A shouting match ensued, where protesters and counterprotesters criticized one another between, and under, the truck horns blaring around them.

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Some drivers tried hard to keep the focus on the plight of laid off workers out west. Patrick King, one of the convoy drivers, was among a few yellow vesters perched on a platform on the street, speaking to the counterprotesters with a bullhorn, shortly before members of the opposing group acquired its own.

“We’re working,” King said, trying to appeal to the crowd, “to get you heat in your house, gas in your cars, plastic so you can carry your kids’ lunches to school.”

“We don’t need plastic,” one man replied.

During the exchange, King’s bullhorn stopped working, to which a counterprotester suggested (by way of heckling) that “The Creator doesn’t want to hear your voice — that’s what’s happening.”

But the glitch that evened the vocal arena led King and a couple of counterprotesters to find common ground and have a conversation in person over the police line. About 30 officers stood between the two groups.

Brock Lewis, 26, a University of Ottawa student, was among the counterprotesters and one of the few who engaged King.

“We’re here because we’re against pipelines,” Lewis said. “We’re against the promotion of putting carbon in the air.”

Throughout the exchange, disparaging remarks from both sides shot through the police line. A Yellow vest protestors on the platform quizzed those on the ground on their employment status before a man on the ground called on a member of the convoy to fight and told him to “Go back to England.”

“There’s some very legitimate people on both sides, but there’s also a lot of hate-filled people on both sides, and it’s only making it worse,” Lewis said.

But there were also attempts to reconcile.

Some of the calmer conversations between the two sides were often interrupted by truck horns and music blasting from a stereo nearby.

Lewis wasn’t optimistic about the outcome of the exchange between the two groups.

“I think a few people have had some good conversations,” Lewis added. “But, for the most part, it’s just been a screaming match.”

A second protest is planned for Wednesday, where truckers will return to rally on Parliament Hill, before driving the convoy back home.

With files from The Canadian Press

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