Here’s something I don’t like to think about – my “class.” Being Canadian, there seems to be a kind of denial that a hierarchy of class exists. After all, we’re nothing like our British colonial settlers, right? The British nobility and upper class and primogeniture and all that – no one knows anyone like that here in Canada.
No. We were raised on Fred Flintstone and I Love Lucy. Our neighbours were our friends – the Americans taking freedom and liberty so seriously that we didn’t have to. Like we had a big brother who would beat up anyone who threatened us, we just kind of did what we wanted. Laughed a lot. I used to laugh a lot.
But I sure got an eye opener this past week.
Thousands of truckers from BC were heading to Ottawa, meeting up with others along the way. Starting out by protesting Trudeau’s mandate that all truckers be vaccinated to cross the border, the convoy grew into a freedom rally: ALL mandates had to be stopped. Anyone who refuses vaccination in this country has been subject to draconian policies for two years and now cannot leave the country or go into a pub or restaurant for a meal.
I am still in awe that the truckers are standing up for me and my freedom so publicly. The few doctors and nurses who tried were shot down and shamed – even investigated on spurious charges brought forward by public health officials. New Public Health slogan suggestion: BC Public Health – Working Hard to Put the “Officious” in Official Every Day
I immediately did what any good, oppressed, shunned, fired for standing up for herself, freedom-loving Canadian would do: I got out my biggest marker and Canadian flag and went to work. “NO MANDATES” – took me hours because all I had was a marker nearing its end of life so I had to keep letting it “rest.” I didn’t care if I was the only person out there, I was going to show my support as the trucks rolled by. (You can read about my experience, here: Rumble in the Belly: Freedom Convoy 2022)
$7 Million – 90,000 Person Minority
After that, I wanted to follow along as the convoy made its way east. There wasn’t much mainstream media coverage and even then, the stories had a negative angle and totally missed the excitement and hope that the grass roots people filming on their phones were able to capture. They also failed to see that raising over $5 million in three days, mostly in small increments of $20-$50, meant that thousands of ordinary people were in support. (This keeps growing. As of Friday, January 28, 2022, the Freedom Convoy 2022 has raised $7 million with over 91,000 people contributing.) To pledge money is not just to agree, either – it means you STRONGLY agree.
UPDATE: The Freedom Convoy 2022 raised over $10 million from 125,000 but was taken down after pressure from our authoritarian government.
A NEW site was quickly set up. It is easily overwhelmed so please keep trying! In two days, over $4.5 million has been raised. The new site to give to the Freedom Convoy 2022 is on GiveSendGo, here.
To put your money where your mouth is, as we lower class people like to say.
Most people in the media don’t think much of truckers and their education level. This is a stereotype perpetuated by the PM himself. Recently our leader has done interviews where, according to the Toronto Sun, “…he called the unvaccinated ‘racist’ and ‘misogynists’ — despite coming under fire in the past for his treatment of women in his cabinet and, as a younger man, appearing in blackface…Trudeau called convoy participants a ‘small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa … holding unacceptable views that they are expressing’ and that they ‘do not represent the views of Canadians.’ ”
Don Cherry was fired for saying “You people” when he referred to a minority. But I guess it depends on who’s doing the slagging. Minorities, it appears, can be gleefully denigrated by our elite leaders and their minions in the media. In the immortal words of Napoleon the pig in Orwell’s Animal Farm, “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”
But who really are the “fringe minority” here?
Trudeau is part of an elite class in Canada. His relatives were politicians from rich families on both sides (are there any other type of politician?). He has had the best education, in English and French, lived in houses that didn’t just have addresses but names like “Stornoway” and “Cormier House,” a generous allowance from shares in a numbered company from a very young age and, something I envy above all, got to attend a real camp every summer. Man! That is SO rich.
Let’s face it. A guy like that can say what he wants to anyone deemed “other” or “lesser” and there’s nothing anybody will do about it because his friends all grew up in the same way. The only time he gets in trouble is if he crosses one of his rich supporters. These elites own the media and therefore, control public sentiment.
It’s strange how many educated people support the erosion of their own freedoms. I had assumed that educated people were intelligent. Covid has taught me otherwise. I didn’t realize that a majority of liberal elites are downright pissed with anyone who questions their moral superiority in this country.
The conspiracy theorists get suspicious and start seeing connections everywhere. They’ve got me wondering if the people who run this place all own shares in Pfizer or something. Where’s the kickback?
Contrast: The Elite Life vs. The Average Experience
My house didn’t have a name but neither did anyone else’s on the block. There was only one family of “rich” kids and they had a piano and got lessons. I used to watch them practice through the window from the safety of a bush across the street. We all felt sorry for them, though, because their Dad worked as a transmission lineman and was never home. Consequently, their Mom was the neighbourhood busybody and snitch.
The rest of us made up games outside with rocks and sticks, digging holes into embankments and calling them “forts.” The older kids gave the younger kids their bikes as they outgrew them. Mine was spray painted purple, had a banana seat, and cool ape hanger handlebars. It came from the girl up the street, as did most of my Barbie doll’s clothes. I broke my front teeth attempting to do the longest skid on that bike, hitting a patch of gravel and sliding sideways on my face. No helmets in those days.
We didn’t go to summer camps but we roared around the neighbourhood in massive games of hide ‘n’ seek or Nicky Nicky Nine Door. Of course, we had to be home when the streetlights came on. Other than that, we were free.
I Felt Lucky as a Kid
I went to the “worst” elementary school in our town because all the nearest schools were full – I am at the tail end of the baby boomers. They bussed us over.
My very first day, at five years old, I was so excited to get to ride on a bus that I ran straight to the back. Unbeknownst to me, that is where the “bad” kids sat. One of these kids, Kenny Hewitt, gathered us little kids around, bent down so the bus driver couldn’t see him, and said quietly, “Do you want me to tell you what the worst swear word in the world is?” We all nodded solemnly. He said, “You cannot tell anyone – not ever.” I can still feel the fear that I might slip up and the absolute sacredness of how important this secret was, over 50 years later. OK, OK! We all pledged to do this.
Now, Kenny Hewitt had an older brother and he knew all kinds of things, we soon found out. But this was a word never to be used unless in an extreme emergency. He made sure the bus driver hadn’t seen him, bent back down and whispered, “Hooer.”
For years I have kept this secret. I never revealed it to anyone and most certainly have never used it. But I, ordinary in nearly every way, have been privy to the worst swear word in the history of all mankind. Truthfully, I still only have a vague idea of its meaning.
The Trouble With Spitballs
Sadly, Kenny Hewitt had to go sit up front shortly after that for one too many spitball fights on the bus. Soon he was gone from the school entirely after he and his brother were smoking under their bed and lit the mattress on fire. They were unharmed but the house was not.
That was my school. It had kids in it that lived in apartment buildings who had no Dads. They’d come to school wearing cords with holes everywhere and sometimes no lunch and we never thought anything of it. I cringe at that now.
We were the “rich” elites who got bussed back to our safe neighbourhood every day after school.
The Ideal Family? The Brady Bunch
That house! Alice, the cook / housekeeper / confidant! (I didn’t realize how much the Brady Bunch factored into my psyche until I found my ideal house: Buying a Fixer-Upper: Back to 1975, Baby!)
I never thought about money until I got to high school. Everyone had to wear this certain brand of jeans and have expensive Nikes to fit in. I begged my parents for these things. When I finally got a pair of Nikes, they had a red swoop and were marked down because everyone wanted the blue swoop. I loved them anyway and washed and polished them with white shoe polish every night. (Read: Conform or Be Cast Out: Have Courage Unvaccinated Friends)
Did our Prime Minister have a cook and housekeeper? Did his Mom go out and get her hair done even back then, when the rest of our Moms were perming each other’s hair in their kitchens over coffee?
Blind Arrogance or Simply Hubris?
For Trudeau, so wealthy and privileged, to call anyone who doesn’t agree with his policies and his mandates “fringe minorities” is pure arrogance. His lack of awareness – his hubris – is shocking. How could he, with all his advantages, categorically dismiss anyone who doesn’t share his views or outlook in such a callous way? Instead of being a leader and demonstrating understanding and tolerance, he divides public opinion and brands people, calling them names and encouraging prejudice.
He has cried for other marginalized groups and publicly apologized for the cruel ways they were treated by his predecessors. But he has no compassion for those of us who oppose the government mandating what we put into our bodies. He will punish us. Fire us. Banish us from society.
Today’s unfairness is tomorrow’s apology. History will not be kind to JT and his elitist friends.
I am so angry that it is hard for me to be kind.
In fact, in a dark moment of weakness, I might even have called him…a hooer.
