What was coming down the highway was the story of the day and part of that was the crowd gathered at Virden along the TransCanada Highway on Tuesday morning, Jan. 25. They were awaiting the Freedom Convoy. Led by truckers, vehicles of every size were in the highway train that rolled past Virden that morning.
By 9:30 a.m. Virden RCMP were prepared to control the TransCanada intersection at PR 259 and King Street, to let the convoy roll on by.
But it was 10:25 a.m. when the lead truck could be seen from the frontage road west of the Valleyview cardlock. Meanwhile, local trucks were sitting on the cardlock lot, fueled up ready to join in.
Despite a minus 28 morning people were out of their vehicles as the convoy came through, waving whooping and cheering, some with flags and signs.
“It’s absolutely wonderful, it’s bigger than I thought,” says Jaylene Stone, part of a group from Miniota watching from the north frontage road. Her interest was more than casual and with a semi horn singing back-up she said, “We have a whole pile of people in the Virden area that will be coming through. We met at the cardlock and now they’ll be coming through.”
She added, “It’s actually amazing to see the support out there. Everybody banding together and for different reasons. One main purpose is to get back our freedoms.”
By 11:50 the last of the convoy from the west were past, heading for Brandon.
Just 10 days earlier, on Jan. 15 vaccine passport mandates were applied to traffic crossing the international border in either direction.
In a Jan. 25 Twitter post MP for Brandon-Souris, Larry Maguire said, “I'm back in Ottawa this week, so I couldn’t meet with any of Manitoba’s truckers as they drove through Brandon this morning, however, the convoy will soon be in the nation's capital.”
In a later tweet he said, “Our supply chain is already strained… I will continue to call on the Liberals to work with the American Administration to drop this mandate.”
By Thursday morning, Jan. 27, the convoy pulled out of Thunder Bay, Ont. headed for Sault Ste. Marie Their ultimate goal, Parliament Hill.
