Anti-vax “convoy” meets in Oshawa en route to Toronto protests at Eaton Centre, Nathan Phillips Square

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Published January 11, 2022 at 10:34 am

"Not an anti-vaxxer" Jody Ledgerwood spread vaccine misinformation in the Eaton Centre.

An Anti-Vaxxer convoy from Trenton and Peterborough converged at the Oshawa Centre before heading off to Toronto for protests against vaccines and new lockdown measure introduced by the Ontario Government last week.

The call to join the went out to the Ontario Protests and Freedom to Assemble Facebook page shortly before 9 a.m. January 6 from an anti-vax activist called Stephen Rogerson amid reports of similar protests in Belleville and Trenton.

The call was followed up with a Facebook post that has since been deleted, though the comment section is still available to read:

Similar calls went out encouraging people from as far east as Kingston to converge at the Oshawa Centre Monday morning to join the Bubble Bus crew for transport to Toronto. Another group was set to arrive from Peterborough

The Bubble Bus, which recently roared down the streets of Courtice and Oshawa, is a protest initiative run by Jim Kerr. His most recent escapades in Durham saw Kerr dressed as Santa Claus atop the bus as it loudly made its way through a Courtice suburb.

The post below was shared amid COVID-19 misinformation and memes likening Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.

The convoy was set to leave the Oshawa Centre at eight a.m Monday morning. Shortly before 10 Rogerson shared a video from Nathan Phillips Square showing a woman addressing a sparse crowd in front of the Toronto sign over a microphone.

Referring to the world she hopes to build for her children she says, “In ten, twenty years from now they’re going to know exactly who we are and they’re going to be warriors because of it, because they’re going to see from our example that it doesn’t matter if everyone around us wearing a mask. I do not consent.”

“My three-year-old daughter knows how to say ‘my body, my choice,” she continued, saying she and her daughter “share (and) smile unapologetically” among people wearing masks “to feel strong in their power.”

Chants of “my body, my choice” from a middle-aged man co-opting the language of abortion rights activists were then heard as the crowd marched around the area flying flags emblazoned with the logo of The Line Canada.

The Line, described on its website as “where we unite against tyranny and oppression,” was associated with protests in Bowmanville last April that led to “enforcement action” from Durham Police.

A man is heard singing, “stick your vaccine mandate up your ass,” as the group marches past a Ryerson University campus. Following a detour by an indoor vaccination clinic, the group arrived at the Toronto Police Headquarters for chants of “keep your hands off our kids.”

The next stop in the anti-vax tour was the Eaton Centre around 11:45, with a man saying in the video, “They did have all the doors locked but we somehow managed to breach it,” over the sounds of a wannabe William Wallace shouting “Freedom!”

Eventually, the group sets up camp, complete with the returning microphone, in the middle of an Eaton Centre hallway for a speech from Jody Legderwood, fresh off her trespassing arrest at a Whitby Children’s Vaccination Clinic. Prior to her arrest she is recorded screaming COVID-19 misinformation at children as young as five and their parents as they enter the clinic.

This time Ledgerwood rhetoric got even more outrageous. “Remember that you complied. You allowed your children to not only starve to death, but to be poked with poison,” adding starvation to the list of bogus vaccine side-effects listed by anti-vaxxers.

She claims that 45 children have died of the vaccine in the last three months per the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a self-reporting tool. The very VAERS website she cites read, “The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.”

As of September there have been fewer 287 incidents of myocarditis/pericarditis, an anti-vaxxer “vaccine injury” of choice, since the pandemic began, per Public Health Ontario Study, none of whom died. Over the same period, 10,441 people have died of COVID-19 in Ontario.

Undeterred, Ledgerwood claimed 4,500 children died of the vaccine, showing a clear lack of understanding of correlation versus causation, according to noted lawyer, advocate and anti-vaxxer critic Caryma Sa’d.

“It’s ok to say you were duped,” Ledgerwood says to the vaccinated, flexing her absence of self-awareness.

“And please don’t think we’re anti-vaxxers, we’re pro-choice,” Ledgerwood says before entering another tirade about the danger of vaccine injuries, showing that if it quacks like anti-vax, it probably is.

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