EMILY HSUEH
SHAWVILLE Jan. 16, 2021
For the third weekend in a row, protestors took to the streets on Jan. 16, this time in Shawville, with handpainted signs to voice their disdain for the lockdown.
Some of the signs were a familiar sight, having appeared at the previous two rallies in Shawville and Fort Coulonge. The group consisted of 23 people, six of them being children. There was a . . .
lower total turnout that the previous protests, which had 50 and 30 participants respectively.
The protest started outside the Pontiac Archives a little after 1 p.m. on Saturday. The group proceeded to walk silently down Centre Street, went westward on Hwy. 148, onto Victoria Street and ended back where they started, which took roughly 30 min. Chants of “No more lockdown” rang out as they returned.
A police officer tailed the procession, and several cars honked as they drove past.
“We’re out here because obviously with the lockdowns and what’s been going on, basically you’ve got two sides: you’ve got the doctors and authority on the government side saying that there’s this deadly virus and they’ve basically taken people’s rights and freedoms away with having to wear masks,” said protester Paul Croteau. “Now we’re in a curfew with next to no cases in the Pontiac, we were just thrown together with Montreal.”
Croteau also called out Premier François Legault for going back on a statement in March 2020 that he would not implement a curfew.
“As time goes on they’re just going to take more and more freedoms and rights if we don’t start standing up. If we don’t stand up and start fighting this it’s going to come to a point where we’ll be like Nazi Germany.”
Another protester, Stephen Buttee, attended with his family and wanted to highlight their issue with the double standard of officials urging people to stay home while some of them “are taking family vacations to Hawaii.”
“It’s just a as ridiculous as having one kid in school allergic to peanut butter and making sure no kid in the school brings peanut butter sandwich,” Buttee said. “Why wouldn’t you just take that one kid away and have him eat lunch away from everybody else, let everybody bring peanut butter sandwiches to school. The idea of quarantine isn’t so that a bunch of healthy people lose any semblance of a livelihood.”
“All I can say is, I’m not going to take it,” said participant John Henry. “You can tell that to the bank, to God or to Satan himself. I will stand for my freedom no matter who’s going to stand in front of me.”
