Sheri Gress holds up a sign outside Medicine Hat city hall to protest a mask bylaw prior to of Wednesday's special meeting of city council on mask use.--NEWS PHOTO
Roughly 50 Hatters gathered outside the doors of Medicine Hat city hall on Wednesday to express belief that a mask bylaw is a step in the wrong direction.
The majority of those in attendance also sought entry to the evening’s city council debate – which had a 50-person capacity and resulted in a mandatory mask bylaw passing through a 6-3 vote. But many also expressed a belief that the protest was about much more than just masks.
“It’s definitely about more than masks,” said Maria Lee. “I hope (council will) see that there’s more at stake here than just masking. It’s about slowly taking our freedoms away, and us not being able to make decisions for ourselves. The next thing, what? We’re going to be vaccinated against our will? As it is right now we can’t even have family over.”
Lee, a mother of seven, stressed that Wednesday’s protest was about a wide range of issues stemming from COVID-19 and related public health guidelines, from mask use, to getting kids back in school or even dining out – something a family of nine can’t do together under current restrictions.
“This is just morally wrong, what they’re doing to families,” she said.
Jenny Crawford agreed the issue extends beyond mask use, and into the way current provincial guidelines are restricting gatherings inside the home. Crawford lost her son, Brandon, to aplastic anemia 15 years ago and says she saw the toll isolation can take on an individual first hand.
“He was immunocompromised for eight years, a common cold could kill him. We took that seriously. As a family, for three months when he got out of the hospital – and he was 15 – we took the third and fourth level of our home and outside of that door it was like you were going into surgery before you went down (to see him),” she said. “My 15-year-old son says to me after three months, ‘Mom, I’m not living to die. I don’t want this anymore.’ He knows a common cold could kill him. What is this doing to the psyche of our young kids?”
We Choose Freedom – Medicine Hat organizer Stephen Campbell, who arranged the protest, says the message behind the gathering isn’t meant to discourage the use of masks, but rather to encourage freedom to choose.
“We’re not anti-mask, we’re for choice and we think everybody in Medicine Hat will make the right choice,” said Campbell. “As the mayor said, 90 per cent of people are already masking up. The point of a bylaw is useless at this point.”
Eldon Barrand says he too came out to the protest to stand up for his personal freedoms rather than to stand in opposition of mask use.
“I’m not an anti-masker. I’ll respect what anybody wants, but I’m here for my freedom. I don’t want to have to be told what I can do and what I can’t do … It’s much larger than masks, this whole thing,” he said. “This is about control and what they’re trying to bring in our way.”
All in all, Barrand says he’s been satisfied with the way new public health guidelines related to COVID-19 have been handled leading up to Wednesday’s debate, particularly by the educate-first approach taken by local law enforcement.
“They have been very good about everything with this whole COVID thing,” said Barrand. “They’re being decent about everything. They wave to you and say nice things. We’ve had no issues with them at all.”
Masks or not, Crawford says she hopes for civility moving forward, as the mask debate seems to have driven a wedge between two perspectives in Medicine Hat, when she says we should all be pulling in the same direction.
“It’s sad to see the division,” she said. “I just hope and pray that our city starts to unify and respect one another, because that’s what this is all about.”
