Laura Koot

On April 16, 2008, I hit the button to start the printing press for the inaugural edition of The National newspaper. Two hundred days before, I had landed in Abu Dhabi in 50°C heat to find deserted streets in the middle of a Ramadan afternoon. I checked into my hotel and burst into tears – I had made a terrible mistake.

I am Canadian, born and raised. And in the course of one week, I went from feeling great pride for my home country to being filled with shame and horror for the unprecedented violation of civil rights perpetrated by Justin Trudeau, our Prime Minister. For the past few weeks, I have followed with interest the Freedom Convoy – a parade of lorry drivers rolling into the capital city en masse to demonstrate for their one wish: an end to vaccine mandates.

“We are far away from far away," Rex, the kind man at the wheel, tells us as we drive closer and closer to the end of the Earth. Quite literally we have travelled to one of the four corners of the planet – according to The Flat Earth Society. Any farther east and we’d be in Europe. We drive for an hour to a place appropriately named Farewell and catch a ferry to Fogo Island. Rex has packed partridgeberry muffins to snack on, a nice touch after a two-and-a-half hour flight from Montreal to Gander.