Roche Percee Mayor Jay Riedel hasn’t trusted the mainstream media in years, so when TV reporters came to his long weekend freedom rally on farmland near North Portal, they were not welcome..“We had to kick Global News off of this private land we had,” Riedel told Western Standard in an interview..“We said, ‘Did you have permission? Did you get permission? The cops made us get permission to be here. So how the hell did you guys?”.The network respected Riedel’s request not to use footage from the property, and only from the highway. Still, he found renewed reason to be irked at the network’s angle..“Of course, they called the event an ‘anti-vaccine rally…’ It’s not an anti-vaccine rally. You know why? Because half of our group is vaccinated. It’s a freedom rally. We want our freedoms, we want our freedom to choose, our freedom to travel. We want like it used to be before Trudeau was in power.”.Riedel has been organizing convoys since 2018 when he rallied 400 trucks in a convoy through Estevan, a city of 11,000 people. He was a Saskatchewan organizer for the United to Roll convoy to Ottawa when the carbon tax, blocked pipeline development, and shutdowns of coal-fired power plants were the main issues..“The first year there I told everyone don’t speak to the media unless it’s live,” Riedel recalled, saying insinuations their group was racist had begun. .“I said we have every ethnicity with us in this convoy..“Anybody else that wanted to have an interview with me, I would tell them, ‘Is it live?’ and if they said no, I would say, ‘Not interested.’ I got probably 100 calls.”.Riedel builds motor controls for pump jacks, but in November 2020 he also became mayor of Roche Percee, population 111. He stepped aside from organizing rallies for awhile, but returned to the role last month. At an unfenced section of the border, he rallied 50 trucks and roughly 80 people to a road that ran along the 49th Parallel..“We basically walked down into the ditch on both sides. We exchanged flags for an American one,” Riedel recalled..“My brother-in-law tried to bring them in some Tim Hortons doughnuts and coffee and the Border Patrol would have none of that … because they had sprinkles.”.On the road to another rally last weekend, North Portal protesters were handed a notice by RCMP that said if they parked on the shoulder of the road, they could have their bank accounts seized..“We had to tell our group that if you guys have flags fly that they may turn you away [at RCMP check stops]. Most of them got through, but there was maybe a half dozen they turned away. So you can’t fly a flag in your own country, you can’t park over on the side of the road in your own country. People don’t understand we’re living in a state of communism,” Riedel said..“[Locals] felt like second-class citizens because they had to go through check stops in their own country to go get the mail. And a lot of them just couldn’t believe the waste of resources over something like that.”.Riedel said he talks to the paper in Estevan and to independent Canadian media, but distrusts the rest..“I keep telling everybody you can’t trust any media that’s funded through the government. It needs to be back the way it was,” Riedel said..“If the government is paying, of course they’re going to say what you want them to say. So how do you ever win? You can’t. You can’t open the debate. That’s been our biggest problem with all this COVID stuff.”.KFYR-TV in Bismarck, North Dakota never got a tax dollar courtesy of Prime Minister Trudeau, so Riedel was more than happy to talk to them on February 18. The network also interviewed trucker Jason Hysjulien in front of the flag Riedel’s group had given him in the previous month’s exchange..“You always stand up for your brother. And when Canada gets punched in the face, we Americans get nose bleeds,’ said Hysjulien, who lives in Lignite, ND..For once, Riedel was encouraged by TV news..“That’s so awesome to hear how these guys feel about what we’re going through,” Riedel said..“We need our American brothers and sisters to come out with and support us in this too. And you’re starting to see a lot of it in the last little while.”.Lee Harding is a Western Standard contributor who lives in Saskatchewan.
