Sunday February 13, 2022

I’m trying to find impartial and unbiased words I can write about the convoys of trucks and truckers who have occupied Ottawa, blocked the border at Coutts in Alberta and Emerson in Manitoba, and snarled traffic at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit. 

            And I can’t find any. 

            I have no sympathy for them, or their cause. 

            I can accept that Canadians are tired of the COVID-19 pandemic. They don’t like masks. They don’t like social distancing. They don’t like lockdowns. 

            Neither do I. And I claim that the pandemic precautions have hit me harder than most of the protesting truckers. My wife died March 13, 2020, the same day as the first lockdowns. 

            I’ve gone two years without having any human touch on my skin. 

            You don’t think I want to get back to a more normal life?

            But making demands to restore things the way they were before the pandemic is ridiculous.

            The coronavirus is not going to go away. People will get sick. Some will die. The truckers cannot change that, regardless of their bravado.

            Despite their sophisticated organization – conspiracy theories, anyone? -- they’re doing the wrong thing, the wrong way. 

Put in a personal context

            To get some idea of why the truckers’ tactics are wrong-headed, translate them into a personal context. 

            Would you praise a father who kidnapped his daughter, held her for ransom, to compel his wife to submit to his terms for a divorce? That’s what the truckers are doing to the city of Ottawa. 

            Would you endorse a woman who barricaded the local food bank, forcing people without food to make do with even less, to change the food bank’s management? That’s what the truckers are doing at the border crossings.

            Would you buddy up with a man who uses his size and strength and loud voice to shout down anyone else’s viewpoint? That’s what the truckers are doing when they use big rigs –so big that even towing companies won’t attempt to remove them – as a bargaining tool.

            Bluntly put, the truckers are bullies. 

            We would condemn them if they were bullies in a school yard. But because they claim to be demanding “freedom” for all of us, we let them act as if they were above the law.

That “Freedom” slogan

            Freedom for whom? For what? From what?

            In their convoy across Canada, the truckers have already used – and perhaps abused – their Constitutional freedoms of speech, mobility, and assembly. They have freedom of choice – including the choice not to get vaccinated.

            No one has forced them to get vaccinated at gunpoint.

            The Constitution does NOT guarantee freedom to harass others, to disrupt people’s lives, or to break laws.

            As I write this, the government has not invoked the War Measure Act or called in the military to enforce order. Although I confess to wondering if heavy artillery on Sparks Street might shut down the blockade.

            “Freedom” is, in reality, an American catch-phrase, not a Canadian one – as American as the Trump posters and Confederate flags on display. In the American context, it seems to mean freedom to be racist, homophobic, bigoted, prejudiced, and narrow-minded.

            According to comics Bob and Doug MacKenzie, freedom for Canadians involves sitting on a log in a parka drinking beer from a can. Hoser, eh?

Setting the stage

            I do not see the truckers working for freedom. I think they’re being played as patsies by the American far-right and its sympathizers in Canada. That’s where the media support is coming from. That’s where the money is coming from. That’s where the organizing expertise is coming from. 

            I fear for my country, if they succeed in any way at all. 

            They will open the door to governance by any disgruntled minority able to cause enough trouble. They will make elections pointless – why campaign for votes, if you can get your way by brute force? 

            They are setting the stage for a lawless society. 

             And I don’t like it.

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

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Your turn

When I sent out Soft Edges earlier this week, I had to apologize for not including any letters from you. They were all stored in the mailing program on my primary computer, an aging iMac. When the iMac went into a shop for a tune-up, the letters went with the computer. 

            The same goes for today’s mail. Sorry again.

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)

               Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.

               I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/

               Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE

               The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns