North and southbound travel to and from Canada reopened Thursday after a protest of vaccine requirements for truckers effectively shut down the border at Sweet Grass for nearly a week.
Travel on the Canadian side of Montana’s northern border crossing had been at a standstill since Saturday as truck drivers established a blockade to protest Canada’s mandate that truckers be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to enter the country. This shift removed the “essential” services exemption that previously allowed truckers to pass back and forth over the border and sparked the so-called “Freedom Convoy,” a fleet of thousands of anti-vaccine protesters who hit the road in Coutts, across the border from Sweet Grass, and Ottawa, Canada’s capital.
Sweet Grass Port Director Mark Hanson told the Montana State News Bureau in an email Thursday north and southbound travel in Coutts had re-opened. The Calgary Herald, however, reported Thursday that truckers had established a second blockade about 12 miles north of Coutts.
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Vehicles line up at the Port of Sweet Grass on the border of Montana and Canada on Aug. 9. It was the first day the border was open to non-essential travel by fully vaccinated U.S. residents heading north since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a fluid situation and it could still change at any time,” Toole County Sheriff Donna Whitt said in a phone interview. “But as of right now, north and south are both open.”
In Montana, a group of 50 to 75 people arrived at the border Saturday in a show of solidarity with the Canadian truck drivers.
T.J. Wanken, a farmer from Toole County who drove up to Sweet Grass to show support for the protest, said Montana’s contribution to the demonstration was about “as friendly as can be,” and only lasted the weekend.
“There was like 50 people on the bridge right before Canada with flags,” Wanken said. “There was a little barbeque in the gas station parking lot. It was just some friendly folks showing support for the Canadian side.”
The blockade hampered commercial shipping operations headed north, but also delivered some business to the Shelby, a Hi-Line town about 37 miles south of Sweet Grass. The city’s community development director said hotels and gas stations were loaded with trucks and trailers. Whitt, the sheriff, said trailers were overflowing from the business end of town into the residential streets.
Anti-COVID-19 vaccine mandate demonstrators gather Monday as a truck convoy blocks the highway at the busy U.S. border crossing in Coutts, Alberta, Canada.
“They just had nowhere to go,” she said. “I’m sure it was good for business in the area.”
Whitt had also gone up to Sweet Grass on the weekend to survey the situation. She said she was pleased to report “no issues” with those who protested on the Montana side of the border, and added that law enforcement checked with the truckers who were unable to pass through.
“We tried to make contact, especially in Sweet Grass, with as many as we could, just to make sure they had enough food and water, medications and things like that,” Whitt said. “We didn’t want anyone to end up with a medical issue because they didn’t have access.”
Officials advised travelers to find different routes into Canada to skirt the protest, like the Del Bonita border crossing north of Cut Bank, or the Whitlash port north of Chester.
Dick Irvin, Inc., a trucking company that specializes in shipping dry bulk materials like lime and borax, has been routing its trucks through those other ports, a dispatcher there said.
The U.S., after reopening its border with Canada in November, installed its own vaccine mandate for non-U.S. travelers entering the U.S. at land ports on Jan. 22. Montana in the last month has been throttled with new COVID-19 cases propelled by the omicron variant, and surpassed 3,000 deaths this week.
Duane Williams, CEO of the Motor Carriers of Montana, said the trade group made efforts late last year to avoid such a mandate, including communications with Montana’s congressional delegation urging them to oppose the vaccine mandate for truckers. The Motor Carriers of Montana worked with Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Office and an Albertan trucking association last year to set up a vaccine drive in Conrad for Alberta truckers, a deal made in hopes of maintaining trade routes across the border.
Williams said 1,200 doses of the vaccine were administered at the Conrad site, and as many as 70 truckers a day were getting shots in the early days of the month-long vaccine drive.
“We got good results on that,” Williams said. “That wasn’t a mandate, it was there if you wanted it.”
In fact, the Canadian Trucking Alliance has estimated that more than 80% of truckers in Canada are vaccinated, and on Saturday the group disavowed “any protests on public roadways, highways and bridges.”
The protest has drawn international coverage, and the attention has been exploited by those who traffic in misinformation. In Ottawa, Nazi symbols have been appeared within the groups of protestors.
Wanken, the Toole County farmer, said rumors have been bountiful on Facebook. One page said officials on the border were cutting protesters off from food on the Montana side of the border. He got a case of water and drove up to the border only to find nothing of the sort was going on. When he first heard of the protest days earlier, social media had told him to expect thousands of trucks from all over the U.S., especially from states with more stringent vaccine mandates, like California.
“Nothing like that ever materialized,” he said.
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