Canadian national hero Terry Fox (1958-1981), after having had a leg amputated due to cancer in 1977, embarked on a cross-country run in 1980 to raise money for cancer research. An annual event held across Canada continues to honor his memory. Terry Fox became a national hero because he represented the spirit of courage and defiance, of rising above the odds, of refusing to surrender to the trials of his condition. He began his “Marathon of Hope” in St. John’s on the island of Newfoundland and ran many thousand kilometers to Thunder Bay, Ontario.
In a telling parallel, the Freedom Convoy, taking issue with the vaccine mandates and demanding the resignation of Canada’s discredited prime minister Justin Trudeau, traversed the country from Prince Rupert, British Columbia to the nation’s capital in Ottawa, travelling approximately the same distance, almost 4,000 kilometers, enduring sub-zero temperatures and without accommodations and salaried income. GoFundMe predictably suspended trucker crowdfunding, only a small portion of the over $10 million sum accumulated having been released owing to obstructionist government intervention. The transparent pretext is that the funds may be used to promote “extremism,” “hate” and “violence.”
Though hampered by spiteful authoritarian manipulations, maligned by the press and the political elect, and libeled for the heinous act of profaning the statue of Terry Fox, the truckers, in fact, embody the buoyant spirit of Terry Fox as they bravely protest the sickly condition in which the country now finds itself—a corrupt media, a coercive government, a heretofore apathetic public and probably the absolute worst prime minister who has ever defaced not a statue but his very office. They want their traditional freedoms back. They want their Constitutional rights restored. And they are prepared to assert these rights.
It is hard to miss the irony of an avowedly socialist prime minister cynically abusing the class of working people whom he presumably represents and on whom the nation depends for its survival, accusing them of racism and of stealing food from the homeless. It is equally hard not to see that the truckers are the avatars of Terry Fox. A majority of Canadians now approve of their mission. The truckers are on the way to becoming national heroes. As Chris Queen at PJM writes, “what started as a convoy within one sector of the Canadian economy is turning into a national movement advocating for freedom. It’s enough to warm your heart, even in the cold Canadian winter.”
The punditocracy and the cartel of leftist organizations are not impressed. True to form, Wikipedia parrots elitist propaganda, reporting that “illegal acts committed by protesters drew widespread condemnation. Protesters were seen desecrating the statue of national hero Terry Fox, the National War Memorial, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and several emergency vehicles were attacked with rocks.” Utter fabrications. They were never seen to do any such thing—though one would not put it past the intention of hired provocateurs. The ironically named Shepherds of Good Hope soup kitchen claims that truckers harassed its members for meals. In point of fact, the opposite is the case; the truckers have been feeding the homeless.
Writing in The Globe and Mail, well-known Canadian columnist Andrew Coyne added his compromised voice to the general chorus of media obloquy, smearing the truckers as “conspiracy theorists and other assorted yahoos on the streets of Ottawa” and as “the pseudo-Trumpian grift known as the ‘trucker’ convoy—organized and led by documented racists and QAnon-style nutters.” Such crassness makes one blush for Coyne, who once upon a time enjoyed a solid reputation as an editorialist. James Menzies at trucknews.com denounces the truckers’ behavior as “shameful,” regards them as having been “duped,” and faithfully repeats the catalogue of fake news to guilt them even further.
The mayor of Coquitlam, British Columbia, Fox’s hometown, was no less sanctimonious, claiming that “thousands if not millions of people in this country are going to see what they did to the Terry Fox statue and be absolutely disgusted.” Indeed, a feedlot of media types, mayors, party leaders, and premiers have been braying their disapproval, nay, horror, in an orgy of mendacious self-righteousness at this spectacle of ostensible depravity.
The truth is otherwise. As National Post columnist Rex Murphy writes in his typical phenolic manner, “No Molotov cocktails. No vulgar harassment of police…No rocks for every Starbucks window and those of small businesses…No arson or looting. Jan. 6 insurrection Canadian edition? Ha! It is to laugh. I’ve seen more threatening picnics thrown by a few nuns…Plain, straight reportage uninflected by the personal dispositions or ideological pre-sets of the reporters or the corporations they work for was hard to come by. Our stern reporters, always ready to squeak agreement to power, worked to set a context.”
Meanwhile, the statue of Terry Fox silently observes the scene unfolding before it. How was the statue defaced? Pictures of the statue show the figure of Fox wearing a cap, an upside-down Canadian flag in hand (a symbol of distress), another flag draped from his neck, and the sign “Mandate Freedom” clasped to his chest. Some defacement! Fox was harmlessly recruited as a trucker, appropriated in a friendly manner as part of the convoy, and the symbolic garb was easily removed. The statue was neither toppled nor graffitied nor egged, as were many other statues and monuments, including that of Canada’s founding father and first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, whose statue was taken down in several Canadian cities by officials eager to appease the apostles of Woke. Such acts of vandalism and egregious disrespect received no recrimination from media and officialdom.
And how did these supposed “yahoos” behave? The actual reporting and video data provided by Canada’s only honest media outlet Rebel News, whose staff was physically embedded in the Convoy, and by innumerable people with smartphones and cameras along the highway route and in attendance on Parliament Hill, gives the lie to such outrageous slander. As Tucker Carlson reported, the evidence shows the truckers shovelling snow from sidewalks, playing pick-up hockey, cleaning up trash, and singing the national anthem. The chasm between the working class and the permanent political class, the salt of the earth and the pontificating aristocrats, laborers and loafers, patriotism and virtue-signalling, honor and dishonor, truth and lies could not have been clearer.
The question needs to be posed. Who are the real yahoos? Who are the real defacers and defamers? Who are the real thieves and grifters and hypocrites? Who are those who inspire genuine disgust?
The answer is self-evident.
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