The Christians Driving the Ottawa Trucker Convoy

As more protesters flock to the Ottawa trucker convoy to protest Canada's pandemic restrictions, the movement has taken on an explicitly Christian tone. Signs, makeshift food stands, and truck doors throughout the event are covered in Christian iconography and passages of Biblical scripture. This morning, I attended the protest's daily "Jericho March," which takes place every morning at 9 a.m. The assembled crowd, which attracted around 50 attendees despite the weather sitting at five degrees below zero, walked a lap around Parliament Hill, carrying horns and trumpets as symbolic tribute to the Biblical story of Jericho. "In the book of Joshua, the Lord guided Joshua and his army to march around Jericho," Benita Peterson, the organizer of the Jericho March, told me. "So the simple version of it is, they marched around once a day for six days, and on the seventh day of the march, seven times -- they blew their horns, and the walls came down." (On Thursdays, the Ottawa march happens at 7 a.m., and protesters take seven full laps around Parliament Hill instead of just one.)