Take Back the Flag – Canada!

#FIFA Fans Celebrate

Four years back, a group of Canadian truckers usurped the Canadian flag in their protest against our Covid Public Health constraints. With understandable concern about legislation requiring them to be vaccinated in the conduct of their business, truckers converged on Ottawa, paralyzing the nation’s capital.

#Canadian Truckers Protest

Patriots in their own minds, they parked 18 wheelers on public roads, diesel engines idling day and night. Truckers tended roadside bonfires and blared horns for days on end. The protest might have brought the capital to a standstill had most civil servants not already been working from home.

Napolean’s Army Defeated by the Russian Winter

Drawing heavily on American populism, the truckers were outraged by the Canadian civility described in our national mantra of Peace, Order and Good Government. Avoiding physical confrontation, the Government used soft power and obtained injunctions against the leaders. They even denied them access to truck fuel and froze the leader’s bank accounts in an attempt to undermine the infrastructure of the protest. Eventually, it was the brutality of the Ottawa winter weather that broke the strike. Much like the Russian army which defeated Napolean, after one long month of protest the truckers eventually left downtown Ottawa. Despite the drama, the protest ended up being not much more than a diesel stoked display of “you can’t tell us what to do” by a bunch of grownups who might have known better.

Since then, remnants of the truckers’ army have been parading around Canadian cities, towns and villages, their Ford 150’s and Dodge Ram trucks defiantly flying the Canadian flags from windows and truck beds, their resentment confirmed by their “F*ck Trudeau” bumper stickers. While within their right, the ugly belligerence from this rowdy bunch of “mother truckers” has been polluting the sensibility of everyone in their immediate vicinity.

For a while, it seemed that this situation might go on forever. Then fate intervened as the World Soccer Federation global finals came to the United States, Mexico and Canada. Tens of thousands of Canada’s soccer enthusiasts who immigrated from the participating countries have been indicating their support by fluttering their national and Canadian flags affixed to car windows. There are so many that in their enthusiasm they have drowned out the truckers, depriving them of their last remaining middle finger gesture.

So, on this, Canada’s 159th anniversary, I call on all Canadians to” re-capture the flag”. While many will hoist the red maple leaf over their homes and properties, displaying the flag from car windows and the truck flat beds by hundreds of thousands will reclaim the flag as a symbol for all Canadians. It might even convey solidarity to the orange tinted bully presently rampaging over the presidency of our neighbour to the south.