Leaked information has revealed that at least 137 Sudbury-area donors contributed to convoy protests through the Christian crowdfunding website GiveSendGo.
The documents list more than 92,000 donations in total, of which 36,000 came from Canada and 56 per cent came from the United States, according to The Canadian Press. Another two per cent came from the United Kingdom and the remaining three per cent came from other countries.
Singling out postal codes that begin with P3, which is limited to Greater Sudbury jurisdictions, reveals a list of 137 donors. Although there are also Greater Sudbury area addresses with postal codes that begin with P0M, none were listed in the leaked documents.
Donations ranged from $5 to $2,000, averaged approximately $119 and totalled $16,142.
Messages accompany each donation, with the top donor noting it’s a “Wonderful cause to fight a tyrannical government.”
A local donor who pledged $1,000 wrote, “May the Holy Spirit fire keep spreading and engulf the world. Thank for standing up and fighting the good fight. Keep the line, we know how the story ends.”
Others blessed fellow donors for helping Canadians get back their freedom and for keeping up the good fight.
The 137-donor estimate is limited to those who listed a Greater Sudbury postal code on this particular fundraising platform, which doesn’t apply to Holden Rhodes, a man with business connections in the Greater Sudbury area whose home address is in London.
Rhodes and his wife Carey gave US$25,000, which tops the list of single donations from Ontario, according to the CBC.
His Linkedin page includes numerous current business interests, including a few in the Greater Sudbury area. These local area connections include his role as partner with Manitoulin Brewing Company, an owner/president role with Sportsman’s Inn Resort and Marina in Killarney, and an owner/president role with Killarney Mountain Lodge and Conference Centre.
Sudbury.com connected with Rhodes by email. “Inundated with media inquiries,” he prepared a lengthy written response.
In it, he confirmed the donation of US$25,000 and calls the hack and subsequent leak of private information a “pathetic and weak way of disagreeing with someone.”
As of this morning, the GiveSendGo campaign had raised $9.5 million of its $16-million goal.
This, Rhodes said, is “hardly a ‘fringe minority’ as our prime minister has been calling the folks who believe in freedom,” and although there are few large donations like his, the majority are smaller donations, which speaks to the “magnitude and breadth of the people financially supporting this movement.”
He claims that “millions” of Canadians cheered on the convoy across the country as it made its way to Ottawa and that “hundreds of thousands” showed up to support the truckers in Ottawa. This is vastly greater than the estimates of officials on the ground. Online fact-checkers have also dismissed supporters’ estimates as being exaggerated.
Meanwhile, various other fundraisers and means of supporting the convoy opposed to vaccine mandates have appeared in recent weeks. More than $10 million was raised in a GoFundMe online fundraising campaign, which the website pulled the plug on and either reimbursed to donors or redirected to charities. Donations issued through GiveSendGo have been frozen as a result of a successful petition by the Ontario government.
With some fundraisers being blocked, donors are also using things like cryptocurrencies, which are more difficult to trace, in order to support the anti-mandate efforts.
Financial donations are only a small part of people’s support for the convoy, Rhodes said, with Canadians cheering the various incarnations of the convoy on as they made their way to Ottawa.
During the convoy’s initial trip through the Greater Sudbury area in late January, hundreds of supporters lined Highway 17, while others greeted them at Nairn Centre, where truckers were handed various donated supplies to help them on their journey.
Although the movement started out as a protest to vaccine mandates at the Canada/U.S. border, Rhodes said it has since expanded its focus but kept “freedom” at its core.
He takes offense to various measures taken against protesters, which he said should be “absolutely alarming for anyone who believes in a peaceful and free society.”
“Without freedom, we have nothing,” he added. “I am not prepared to accept a country without freedom for my family, my children, my friends, my neighbours and every other Canadian. That is why I am doing what I am doing.”
In last month’s build-up to the convoy’s arrival in Ottawa, the Ontario Trucking Association aligned itself with the Canadian Trucking Alliance in disapproving of the convoy protests, clarifying that the vaccination rate among truck drivers is in line with the Canadian average of 80 to 85 per cent.
“Such actions – especially those that interfere with public safety – are not how disagreements with government policies should be expressed,” according to the alliance.
“Members of the trucking industry who want to publicly express displeasure over government policies can choose to hold an organized, lawful event on Parliament Hill or contact their local MP. What is not acceptable is disrupting the motoring public on highways and commerce at the border.”
That’s exactly what protesters proceeded to do by camping out in Ottawa and at international border crossings, where traffic was blocked, resulting in Premier Doug Ford declaring a state of emergency to help force an end to the blockades.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act this week as another means of ending the blockades.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
