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What I don't think is well appreciated by some, either in certain bubbles or outside Canada, is that, while the protest was very controversial, its support was quite broad. This was not like some fringe far-right or populist movement that all respectable people were against. Throughout the pandemic, a lot of people across the political spectrum thought the Covid restrictions had gone too far, but they tended to be quiet about it. Not all of these people supported the trucker protest, but a lot of them quietly did. I know some pretty progressive people who weren't too vocal about it, but they would say things like "enough is enough, what do they expect people to do?". I know well-respected successful progressive professionals who donated to it. There was a very widespread feeling, from people who wouldn't ordinarily support something like this, that you can only push people so far and that something had to give. Canadians tend to be very trusting of and deferential to their government, but I witnessed a lot of that trust get burned up by its handling of the pandemic.
I don't know if I agree that the protest was successful though. My impression is that the covid restrictions were reversed the moment the polls showed a majority were against them. I followed the pandemic policies pretty closely for the first two years and it seemed like the politicians, especially Trudeau, were just doing whatever the polls said was popular.
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