FEAR ITSELF: NOTES FROM THE ROAD

And of course the Freedom Convoy was a Western affair.

The pure white prairies are racing by, outside my crew-van window. I’m folded into the backseat, surrounded by gear, legs squeezed pretzel-like with 100 kilometres to go before Calgary. I’m nervous — as I am on all highway drives and I cringe whenever we pass, inches apart, any vehicle bigger than ours. I lost my nerve on highways a few years ago, during C-19 when my brain rewired itself from months and months of social isolation.

Fearlessness was my middle name back in the day. Once, while on a shoot for The Fifth Estate we got trapped in Rwanda, a country on its knees after a propaganda-driven massacre during which 800 thousand were killed, mostly be machete. The airport in Kigali had temporarily stopped big commercial jets from Sabena, the Belgian airline, because of fog. But here I was, waiting with my suitcase to flee the sadness and hollowed-out eyes of the Rwandan orphans we’d visited for an afternoon.

Small planes seemed to be taking off and landing so I grabbed my bags, ran down to the tarmac and stuck out my thumb as a twin-engine Cessna marked Care Canada was about to start its run for take off. I was grateful when the pilot slowed to a stop and told me to climb in for the trip to Nairobi where I had booked a ticket on a 747 to London. I collapsed into the seat, mesmerized by the view, as my benefactor flew low over the jungle canopy toward a quick stop for a bottle of Scotch at the duty free at Entebbe. I didn’t know this kind man, or if his aircraft was even sound — but I wasn’t scared. Not even for a minute.

Then there was the time I’d hired a pilot/fisherman in Valdez, Alaska to fly me over the gigantic oil spill released from the hull of an Exxon tanker run aground on the Bligh Island reef. This hazard was well known and local mariners are still scratching their heads. We became disoriented and lost high above Prince William Sound in a fog bank so thick there was no visual possibility of determining up from down, trapped in a dangerous flight channel overrun with traffic. It could have been a Kobe Bryant crash moment. But I was cool

I was still free wheeling on highways in 2019 when heading into Seattle from SEATAC Airport in production for my Amazon Studios series on serial killer, Ted Bundy. The Air Canada flight from Pearson arrived around 11 pm and I’d grab my rental, then zoom into town and my hotel. I felt not a hint of anxiety. But that project was the last time I was able to travel easily. Falling for a Killer dropped on the streamer just before the lockdowns hit.

As we sprint down an Alberta highway, my mind wanders to quell the fear and I can’t help but think how different things and people are out here. Rural Canadians mostly do hard jobs and know how to fix things. They opened the gates for us during our dark days of lockdown captivity. Of course the Freedom Convoy was steered by those who spend their days getting themselves and us from here to there, actually and metaphorically.

The people I’ve met here see through nonsense, a word I probably use too often but that has come to define these times of rigid narrative aggression and nuclear-level lying.

So on we go, through Alberta to learn more about how the miracle of the Freedom Convoy came to be and how it was brought down by a prime minister whom, at this moment is, himself in free-fall.

I’m gripping the seat tightly in our van but also feel like I have the best gig in the world.

Stay critical.

#truthovertribe