From my perspective, and probably from the world’s as well, this past month was history-making, and not in any particularly good way. The proverbial fallout of many of these events are still happening even as I write this, and between the time I finish this post and the time you see it, some of it may be out of date. I’m not even certain I can make sense of it all, beyond the certainty that the world is now dramatically different at the end of this month than it was at the beginning. It was, without a doubt, a very unnerving month.
Starting off, we saw a cluster of disruptions that can be called ‘protests’ only out of charity, in which a small group of truckers, hyped up on antimasking and antivaccination propaganda, banded together with other groups, and chose to hold Canada hostage. Ottawa was occupied for three weeks by the largest group, but blockades went up at key trade connections to the US in Alberta and the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario. Other attempted occupations happened in some major cities – including my home town of Fredericton – which lasted for days before either police or bad weather cleared them out.
My own personal view of the blockades and city occupations is not favorable to the convoys. I cannot feel that these people, claiming to be fighting for our ‘freedom’, really had our best interests at heart, especially when so many of them were flying Trump flags, “F*** Trudeau” flags, and neo-Nazi / white supremacist symbols and slogans, something the province’s commissioner on systemic racism raised as an issue. Not to mention the fact that the convoy’s stated goal of removing the vaccine and mask mandates soon morphed into a call to overthrow the government, something our Governor General said they simply couldn’t do as they had hoped. One wonders what form of government they would have wanted installed in its place, or how they thought a democracy could survive having a government removed by non-democratic means.
Things got bad enough that the Prime Minister finally had enough and enacted the Emergencies Act for the first time since it became law. I can’t imagine he relished the prospect. The parallels to his father’s use of the War Measures Act in 1970 had to have been foremost on his mind when he finally pulled the trigger – which is likely a major reason why he discontinued the Act about a week after it went into force, when the principal crisis had passed. As for if the Act was necessary, well, that’s up for the inevitable inquiry to decide, which should start sometime in April. I suspect the resulting investigations will be instructive in the goals and organization of the convoy, as well as the failures of local police to contain them where it mattered most.
Moving on, pandemic restrictions in New Brunswick are slowly being rolled back, as they are elsewhere in the country. I wish I could feel confident about this rollback, but our Premier has a habit throughout this pandemic of declaring the crisis sufficiently over that health measures are no longer needed past a certain point, only to have reality come crashing in in the form of rising caseloads, crowded hospitals, and spiking deaths. I am tired of the restrictions myself – we’ve been doing this for two years now with no apparent end in sight – but, with no apparent end in sight, I am more tired of being afraid I might accidentally kill someone by breathing on them. At this point, however, my fears must go unaddressed; the province has decided it will reopen. I can only pray we don’t get as big a backlash this time.
Which brings us to the world stage, and the renewed fear of nuclear armageddon, thanks to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine and the resulting worldwide backlash from that. In just five days we’ve seen the order of things in Europe so thoroughly reshaped. The good news is that the EU and NATO are standing firm, and that Ukraine isn’t simply rolling over as I’m sure Putin hoped. The bad news is, now that sanctions are hitting him hard and his invasion has bogged down, Putin has reached for the nukes. Right now, Russia and Ukraine are talking, but the fighting hasn’t paused.
I grew up in the waning decades of the first Cold War; and until my Grade 9 social studies teacher showed us Threads in the classroom, I confess I never thought much of nuclear war. Threads was an eye-opener. I was relieved when the Berlin Wall fell, when the Cold War ended, because it meant we could look forward to an era when we didn’t fear the world ending because some leader had a bad day. Now that fear is back with a vengeance; and I feel powerless against it.
I have to hope, as with the previous times the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, that rational heads will prevail. The coming days will see if that hope is justified. May God protect us all.