Back home this morning after a difficult trip to Ottawa. The full force of the state was brought to bear on the Convoy — and Tamara and Chris in a series of connected courtroom scenes that felt like a Kafka novel. The Crown and Justice Perkins-McVey will be from this moment forward forever known for lowering the status of well-meaning and brave human beings into nothing more than blank vessels to be punished and scolded for violating The Rules. There are times when they sound like chirpy hall monitors passing judgement on the cool kids. No disrespect intended.
Oh no, the protest wasn’t violent they admit. And yes, Tamara and Chris implored the protestors to behave which they did, but according to the judge and the Crown that really wasn’t the issue. The protest was just too big, lasted too long and at times was too loud. It was what they are calling a “mass mischief” — a new kind of criminal mischief that punishes peaceful protesters for being too good — attracting too many people and raising too much money. It was just too successful.
Tamara and Chris performed a kind of miracle in front of the whole country. Smashing the stereotype of the working class-thug. The racist deplorable. The leering sexual assaulter. The only group in Canada we are encouraged to hate and smear, showed the country and the world how to behave. And they did it at a time we all needed to see it and to know it. They allowed us to take ourselves back from the crushing weight of the privileged managerial state that was destroying everything we held dear. No shots were fired. No punches thrown. It was a perfect show of civil disobedience from the men and women our government had been telling us to hate.
I believe that was the real crime. The Freedom Convoy showed them, day after day for nearly three weeks that our working class people, the people who farm our fields, fight our wars and yes, deliver our goods - are the real Canadians. Still here. Still solid and true blue. For the failing elites who rule by fear and aggression it must have felt like a shot over the bow. They were losing control. Their messaging was being exposed as a fraud. The people were saying no — and they were saying it peacefully to the whole world.
That is why Tamara and Chris — plus the rest of our truckers have been placed on a spit to be roasted over judicial fires.
They are — alongside our relatives who fought the great wars — perhaps the most courageous Canadians in history. Their embers burn but fewer and fewer supporters show up at the courthouse. The ones who do often carry incoherent messages. As the urgency fades for some, those of us who remember what the truckers did and how they did it — will always hold the images of those days as the best of us.
The fight ahead including for me and our doc team, is too make sure this history is written in truth and I fear after this week, that won’t be happening at the Ottawa courthouse.
Below is the photo of my grandfather — a Finish fisherman and boatbuilder named Thomas Johnson. Shanghaied and taken to sea as a teenager only to wash-up on the BC coast. He built Lulu Island Marine, a boatbuilding and gillnet fishing business, now long gone. Paved over by progress. But I can still smell the diesel fuel wafting up toward his house on Fraser River. The icy cold drinks from the Coke machine in the office. The majesty of the giant commercial vessels pulling in to gas up before heading out so sea. I always wanted to jump on board and go with them. Sometimes the crew would invite us out for the short trip upriver to get ice for hold.
I learned a great deal about perseverance and truth-telling from this great man who spent months away, on the high seas, alone and fishing this small craft. Sometimes he navigated by the stars. Perhaps we must now, too.
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