About a dozen cars showed up the North Country Freedom Ride, a mobile protest against vaccine and mask mandates in Saranac Lake on Saturday. (Provided photo — Karla Nayson)

SARANAC LAKE — Twelve cars drove from the Lake Colby boat launch to a strip mall parking lot on Lake Flower Avenue on Saturday, honking and waving flags to protest vaccine and mask mandates.

The event, called the North Country Freedom Ride, was a locally-organized protest in the style of the trucker convoy in Ottawa, Canada, which ended last week after three weeks of big-rigs and other vehicles occupying city streets there. Police dispersed the encampment in Canada and arrested nearly 200 protestors.

Here, the protestors didn’t block roads. They parked in a parking lot, honked, played songs and waved homemade signs.

“This is about supporting freedom of choice, the truckers, and people to support each other,” ride organizer Samantha Rushlaw wrote in a Facebook message.

Attendee Karla Nayson said they were protesting “all socialist mandates restricting our Rights and Freedoms.”

“We support the Truckers in Canada and around the world and their message of Freedom to Choose,” Nayson wrote in a Facebook message. “Enough is enough and need to get back to our right to make choices for ourselves!”

New York recently dropped its broad mask mandate, but masks are still required in schools. At the protest some signs read “Unmask our children.”

The state has mandated that health care workers get vaccinated against COVID-19, but before the weekend delayed a booster shot mandate.

Employees at the state Office for People With Developmental Disabilities, which includes the Sunmount facility in Tupper Lake are required to be fully vaccinated by Feb. 26 through a federal mandate.