April 28 2022 - Not enough Friday the 13ths - Port Dover Day moves to the Capital

 

Are there not enough Friday the 13ths in 2022? There aren't - only one coming up in May.  Why do I ask this question?   CBC tells me that more than 800 RCMP offers may be brought into Ottawa this weekend as they prepare for a second convoy involving hundreds of motorcycles instead of trucks.  This is the test of whether they learned something from the truck convoy.   And doesn't it make you wonder where you live?  It turns out that we have alternate news just like in the US:  "The Shed" offered the 24=hour live feed of activities during the truck Freedom Convoy.  It is highly involved in this planned convoy. The CBC article HERE describes more about it. "Protests planned for Ottawa this weekend are being organized by several people who took part in the weeks-long occupation of the city during the Freedom Convoy earlier this year.  "Rolling Thunder Ottawa" and adjacent events are planned to begin Friday with events running through Sunday. There are different motives for each of the groups officially involved in organizing the event, but organizers were all involved in the Freedom Convoy in some capacity. " Poor Port Dover!  Will they lose out to Ottawa as the most number of motorcycles congregating?  We'll have to see what happens in only a few weeks on May 13th 2022.   Alas, I don't have Dog-Tooth Violets in my garden.  This is one of our ephemeral Spring flowers in Ontario, like our beautiful white and red Trilliums. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

February 15 2022 - Hockey Riot vs Astroturfed Movement Siege

 

The Toronto Star had an article yesterday on what it terms the "lacklustre" response of the Ottawa police force to the trucker convoy.  The article compares the response of the Ottawa police to the Vancouver police in 2011 to the riot that followed the Canucks' Game 7 loss in the Stanley Cup finals.    At that 'siege', 155,000 people congregated in the streets of downtown Vancouver and it was titled "The Night the City Became a Stadium".  It took only 928 officers to quell the riot in just three hours.   It seems like a miracle in comparison. The article asserts that both police forces knew of the impending problem - the trucks drove across Canada to converge on Ottawa.  There's more going on now, according to author Christopher J. Schneider in his comparison in the Star HERE  He is a professor of sociology at Brandon University and author of "Policing and Social Media:  Social Control in an Era of New Media."  He says: "The Vancouver rioters were not motivated by politics, which made it less politically problematic for police to quickly bring an end to the melee. The rioters had no political agenda, whereas the “freedom convoy” is obviously politically charged, which, in part, helps explain why there are images on social media of officers in Ottawa posing for photos with occupiers. One would be hard pressed to find any photos of Vancouver Police standing with rioters!" He has brought insight to the situation.  Can he point the way to the solution? Not in that article so far.   A new term to describe this siege comes from the Guardian. An article named this "an astroturfed movement" with this definition: one that creates the impression of widespread grassroots support where little exists, funded by a global network of highly organized far-right groups and amplified by Facebook's misinformation machine.  We can expect to see more written about this before and after the clearing of the streets in Ottawa.  How will the Ottawa citizens pay the $8 or so million for the lacklustre policing and clean-up activities?  Maybe via gofundme.  Here's our post-Valentine's Day image - I call this one Silly Clown.  Chicoree is a "coffee substitute." Don't suggest any chocolate substitutes on Valentine's Day.

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Feb 6 2022 - Convoys across the world ... Canadians say Sorry

 

There is a picture on the cbc.ca website from the Ottawa truck protest.  One of the signs has the headline - "Honk if You Failed Civics"  The caption says these are counter-protesters opposed to the demonstration.   Satire is excellent as a weapon.   In Toronto it was reported that the police succeeded in keeping a truck convoy away from the provincial legislature and University Ave. hospitals.  They clogged Bloor Street and Queen Street.  The National Post published a picture with a man holding a sign that said: IM NOT A SACRAFICE FOR THE "GREATER GOOD."  I would suggest there be a counter-protest sign that says "Honk if you failed English" or perhaps "Honk if you failed Spelling".  Perhaps it is optimistic to hope the protestor got as far as English. Given protests are all across Canada, the world news sites are covering the events. CNN, USA Today, The Guardian, ABC News, National Observer, Los Angeles Times, the Time of India, and the Times of Israel all have coverage.   And it seems this might be catching on in other countries.  Australia has its own freedom convoy in Canberra.  It too has GoFundMe funds being questioned and frozen.   There are plans to do the same in Austria.   A person in New Zealand was interviewed as having seen the Canadian truckers and deciding to start her own convoy.  In New Zealand, she'll have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to get on the ferry to go the North Island.  Not a great trend to have started in Canada.  We can give the Canadian response to this:  Sorry. It is a model train day today.

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