I’ve been looking up the various insurrections, coups, revolts and revolutions that have jolted the world, unravelled monarchies and ripped countries apart over the course of history. How else to get a better understanding of the terror and mayhem unfolding in Ottawa?
You know the story we’ve been hearing from the best and the brightest — former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who alone have stared the horror of Ottawa in the face and called it for what it is: sedition, occupation, insurrection.
As these voices have revealed to us, Ottawa is an inferno. From their scripts and musings, there’s a novel waiting to be written: “War and the Peace Tower: 18 Wheelers and the Apocalypse.”
As our prime minister has solemnly declared, and our best political science departments (the wells of bottomless wisdom that they are) have confirmed, the Ottawa “siege” has our poor, vulnerable country teetering on the precipice of utter dissolution.
The questions emerging from the depths of the anguished souls of these gifted observers are dire: Can Canada survive? Does a country that includes among its citizenry a pack of diesel-burning Huns barrelling down the Trans-Canada Highway from the badlands of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba even deserve to survive?
We have been cautioned. This is the most tense collective moment in Canadian history since the last episode of “Reach for the Top.”
How deep is the terror in our once cozy capital? I am told there are certain fine bakeries in Ottawa where it is no longer possible to get a fresh croissant. There are advisories warning about heading out alone to go to yoga classes. And there are rumours that DoorDash delivery from the better Italian restaurants can take over an hour.
It is a horror, a scene too grim for the human mind to grasp, or the human heart to bear. In occupied Ottawa, you may, unasked, be offered soup. Where is the United Nations? Is the Security Council asleep?
Not to despair completely, however, as Canadians know that when the politicians fail, the police stand idle and the military are still, they have the Ottawa press gallery.
It is they who alerted us to the Confederate flag guy. The tribunes of the CBC have been all over him. There’s hardly been a report without the mention of a Confederate flag at the protest. Mention of the wildly more numerous Canadian flags have been wisely subdued.
The national press have been unmatched in getting the word out on what the brigands and racists and misogynists and white supremacists and yobs and Islamophobes and louts have inflicted on our national capital.
With strong earplugs and stouter hearts, they have braved the chaos, enduring “taunts.” They shuffled past parked transport trucks, some of them with Alberta drivers in the cabs!
But the real glory belongs further up. The fact that Canada is, for the moment at least, still functioning as a country is a miracle due to the steel will and captivating oratory of our resolute prime minister. Much like England in those tenebrous days of 1939, our country has found its Churchillian voice.
There are other heroes, too. Mark Carney, the wonder banker, has alerted a sleeping nation that “sedition” is in progress. Canada should be so thankful of the fact that, should Trudeau tire of his burdens, we have Cincinnatus Carney ready to shoulder them.
Then there’s Jagmeet Singh, who may be the Paul Revere of our day. What a stalwart of the working class, a leader so close to the sensibility and marginalization of the least well-off, and least regarded, that he declaimed against these insurrectionists as racists.
Back in downtown Ottawa, signs of imminent social collapse are everywhere. A couple of truckers were caught on cellphone cameras handing out snacks to some homeless guys. Others were seen skating — without masks. There is no end to the brutalities of this occupation. Oh, the humanity!
