Pop 89: We Live in Whole Other Worlds

By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com

On Tuesday, the 15th of February, the PM declared The Emergency Act. I recalled a similar declaration, The War Measures Act, in 1970 when Trudeau Sr. suspended civil liberties in Quebec after a series of bombings by the FLQ. But this week’s declaration is the response to a peaceful, albeit noisy, act of civil disobedience begun by a convoy of truckers parked in downtown Ottawa in what is referred to as the “red zone.”

According to a spokesperson of the protest occupation, which calls itself the Freedom Convoy, the truckers’ demands are: “the end of all Covid mandates and digital vaccine travel apps.” They are not, they assure us, wanting “to overthrow the government, remove elected officials, or have a confrontation with law enforcement.” They would also like to stop being “referred to as racists.”

My sister lives in Ottawa. She lives far enough away from the noise of the red zone so that she’s not as affected by the endless honking as are some. A friend of hers who lives in a downtown apartment measured the noise level at 84 decibels, which is 13x above safe levels. She is part of a volunteer group that walks people home from work at night because they are afraid. Another friend of my sister was spit at, presumably because she was wearing a mask.

“Why would anyone spit at someone for wearing a mask. How is a mask hurting them?” I wondered out loud. “Hell, they’ve been wearing them for pollution in Tokyo for years.”

The mask has become a symbol of safety for some and control for others.

“I will say,” she added. “You never know who will react to the mask. Those you think will, end up being respectful. And the ones you think will be nice are rude.

It’s a whole other world down there. It’s scary,” she said.

She mentioned a group that calls themselves the Ram Ranch Resistance. I looked them up. Their idea of a counter-protest is to jam the convoy’s walkie-talkie app with a hardcore pornographic anthem involving a dozen and a half-naked gay cowboys. The assumption, I guess, is that all truckers are homophobes. Never mind that some of the truckers are undoubtedly gay, is hardcore porn, of any stripe, really a viable response to the situation?

We ended our phone call saying we can use this as “an opportunity to have a civil conversation.” And as always, saying, ‘I love you.”

Mainstream news sources cherry-pick what they see and hear and are heavy on their descriptors. So I started to watch live feeds provided by guys walking up and down the red zone, day and night. With 24hr camera coverage, it’s less possible to hide what’s happening and what’s being said at any given moment. Two of the guys openly support the convoy, and one, an Ottawa resident, is refreshingly quiet. “I welcome everyone on these walks,” he says. “No opinion is wrong. As long as it’s informed.” He stops at red lights even at 5:30 in the morning. So Canadian.

Today Trudeau accused the Conservatives of aligning themselves with “Nazi flag wavers.” I searched for evidence of that flag. I read blogs, looked for images. I found a video of a black man saying: “I saw that guy, he was carrying that flag, yes. But what people don’t know is he was yelling, ‘you want this to be your flag? Because this will be what happens if we allow draconian measures to continue.’” Then he added, “He had an eastern European accent which makes me think he lived under a Nazi regime.”

Besides the hundreds of Canadian flags, some held aloft with hockey sticks, I saw three Metis flags and several Quebec flags. And plenty of F*** Trudeau flags, which cast a shadow on the hand-written Peace and Love signs. I saw one Don’t Tread On Me flag, with a provenance dating to the American Revolutionary War, since adapted by the Tea Party and later by many white supremacists in the States. In this case, it lay on the hood of a car, held down by a djembe, an African drum, painted the colours of the Jamaican flag. On the windshield was a sign that said: The Creator Sees Everything. The owner was a young black man wearing a beret, one of six black people I counted during eighteen hours of live-cam viewing.

I saw a guy on a stage playing “All Around the Circle” on the tuba accompanied by a woman playing the spoons and three others doing an impromptu jig. I heard one man claim that all the hockey sticks were confiscated overnight by the police. I’m not sure he witnessed the cops or assumed it was them. Someone donated a dozen more, and the kids’ hockey games continued.

Today the new police chief said he has everything in place and is “equipped to escalate if need be.” Will these be the same police witnessed shaking the hands of truckers earlier in the week? Or the ones I saw turning a blind eye to wagon loads of fuel being delivered under their noses? Why are they supporting the truckers? With what exactly are they aligning themselves?

I recall Chris Hedges, author of America, the Farewell Tour, saying in an interview that resistance happens when the police no longer listen to the government but stand with the people. But the people themselves are not of one opinion. Every person has a perspective, and every issue begs to be taken on a case-by-case basis. But I hear, time and again, both protestors and those opposed to the protesters refer equally to Germany during the rise of fascism. And they say exactly the same thing: by doing nothing, they would be standing by and watching the fascists take over.

The vaccine mandate’s intention is to protect a population from contracting a virulent and deadly virus. That’s a responsible and legitimate intention. The passport is not a star of David scapegoating a religious group. Truckers must have digital passes in order to work and show them daily. I myself chose not to get a digital passport on my phone. I have two pieces of paper with my name printed on them by a nurse. I work as a writer in my home, so I rarely have to show them to anyone.

But the protest-occupation has become bigger than the mandate. The mandate was the tipping point. Freedom is the most-used word in the red zone. How does a nebulous yet essential word like freedom translate into the rights and freedoms of every Canadian, many of whom are less interested in the whys of the protest than in when will it be over.

Perhaps a step in ending the protest is to ask ourselves what freedom looks like. Brian Peckford, the last remaining signatory of Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, spoke today, saying that the Emergency Act “has been invoked against a peaceful and civil disobedience.” He said it’s like “killing a fly with a sledgehammer.”

This protest-occupation reminds us Canada is a country of whole other worlds. (Just ask Indigenous protesters who continue to take a stand against the appropriation and desecration of land.) Some Canadians fear that police will incite violence. Others that the protesters will bring on violence by their stubborn determination to “hold the line.” This country of worlds is watching.