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Travelling yellow vest protesters return to Estevan to join weekly gathering
Cutline: Jay Riedel, left, and Pat King, right, pictured here with Riedel’s great nephew Kaiden Curtis, were at Estevan’s Yellow Vest protest on Saturday.
The weekly gathering of the Yellow Vest protesters in front of City Hall in Estevan on Saturday had a couple of special guests.
Jay Riedel and Pat King, who operate the Rollin’ with Jay and Pat Show and other social media sites, were present to chat with the protestors and discuss issues they believe are facing the country.
Riedel, who is from Estevan, was the person who organized Estevan’s first Yellow Vest rally last December, and has remained active in the movement.
“It seems like I’ve been gone for about four months, so it’s pretty neat to be back in my hometown,” said Riedel.
They spent the past month in Ontario, hosting town hall meetings when they talked about issues such as pipelines, the carbon tax and illegal immigration. Prior to that, they were in Alberta.
They believe they have held about 20 meetings, with the largest crowd coming for one in Red Deer that attracted nearly 100 people.
The response from the public has been pretty good, although King noted there were some issues with people he called “keyboard warriors” in Arnprior, Ont., which forced them to switch locations in that community.
“They decided that they have the power to get us shut down in the (Royal Canadian) Legion halls, to where we support our legions, we support our veterans, and these people were able to cause a disruption with them (the legion),” said King.
Instead, they held the rally at a hotel where they stayed during United We Roll Convoy to Ottawa in February.
“These people kept going in and harassing the hotel employees,” said King. “They kept going and trying to smear campaign everything. They tried to do their best, but it didn’t work.”
The crowd in Arnprior proved to be one of the largest they had.
They were also in Montreal to investigate issues in Quebec regarding the importation of oil from Saudi Arabia into Canada.
And they visited the Oshawa GM plant and the Windsor Chrysler plant, both of which are facing job losses.
“We basically went around Ontario and talked to people who are really concerned and worried about their jobs and their families because the government doesn’t have the interest at heart of the west or the east, and we proved it’s just as bad in the east as it is out here,” said Riedel.
Closer to home, Riedel and King recently participated in a convoy in Saskatoon that attracted about 50 vehicles.
“The town hall was second to none,” said King. “It was really heart-warming. They had a good contingent of speakers there. Everybody was really informative, and a lot of people went away with a whole new outlook on everything.”
Up next would be a convoy in Kitimat, B.C., named the Kitimat Convoy for Resources.
“We’re going to take everyone out west to Kitimat. We’re going to meet with the First Nations population up there, and sit down and have some conversations with everything that we’ve been talking about,” said King.
“It’s time that we proved now to the east that this stuff is actually happening, and these people are actually on board.”
Riedel said it’s hard to believe that he’s been involved with the Yellow Vest protests for the past five months. Estevan was among the first in Western Canada. As for King, who worked here at one point, he was glad to be back in Estevan on Saturday.
