What you can and can’t say in Coutts, one year after the convoy
Maybe it’s the sudden snap of cold weather, but the town of Coutts seems too quiet.
With Coutts largely being a commercial gateway, and the home of several cross-border trucking companies , its location – along with the general disposition of the people of southern Alberta – made it an obvious choice for a particularly economically painful protest. This crowd believes that the RCMP planted the guns in order to frame the men and end the protest. They are aghast that the accused have been denied bail and will stay in jail until their trial this June. “As far as sentiment goes,” said Logan Murphy, a photographer and documentarian who covered the convoy last year, “most attention is now on getting theNo one really regrets blocking the border, Mr. Murphy added.
The mayor of Coutts, Jim Willett, won’t talk to me about the protests. He can’t, actually; the Coutts village council recently passed a resolution barring members from speaking publicly about the blockade. But last year, when he testified before the federal Emergencies Act commission, Mr. Willett acknowledged that the majority of the town was on the convoy’s side.
But the place can also be stark, hard and poor. The people here are independent and self-sufficient, and will generally turn inward before accepting help from outsiders. This can make them distrustful of remote institutions – including the RCMP, whose officers tend to cycle into the community for a few years before moving elsewhere. Worse, the RCMP work for the federal government. There is little love for distant Ottawa.
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