Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Wangersky: Carrying a flag doesn't instantly make you a patriot
Russell Wangersky -Leader Post

© Provided by Leader PostSupporters of a convoy of truck protesters
 against Covid mandates gather on Feb. 11, 2022 in Ottawa.















I’m here in Saskatoon and I can do very little. Things feel far away and out of control. I can help push out a couple of cars out of the street-side axle-deep slush when a sudden thaw comes along. I can make sure there’s traction sand on the icy spots on the sidewalk when the hard freeze inevitably comes back. I can try and be extra-neighbourly here in this time of hardening attitudes and distrust

Sunday, a dark blue pickup truck tooled down my street with “F—k Trudeau” signs in the windows and a big Canadian flag on a stick in the back. A little bit of the convoy protest cruising along the boulevard.

It made me remarkably angry — this is what is supposed to pass as patriotism?

If you want to express your feelings for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, go right ahead. But don’t wrap yourself in our flag.


This is our country’s flag, a flag for all of us, not some cheap form of justification for bad — or even illegal — behaviour.

A retired police officer in Ottawa put it more directly: “The most tragic part of this protest is the fact that the Canadian flag, a symbol of democracy and decency, is now affiliated with hostility and fascism! We can no longer display or wear it for fear of being mistaken for the #carnivalofmisfits.”

I’m not sure I would go that far — I wouldn’t say that every convoy display of the flag is instantly connected to fascism (though some of those elements seem to have found a home deep within the convoy without any effective pushback from other protestors).

But I would say that the co-opting of our flag and our national anthem — the regular singing of which is somehow supposed to put the gloss of justification on everything from blockades to truck-horns to suggestions that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be hung without trial — is both discouraging and insulting.


Let me be clear about one thing.

Protesters are absolutely within their rights to peacefully protest, as long as those protests are within the established laws of our nation. And I know there are people who honestly believe, for whatever reason, that the convoy protesters are not only on the side of the good, but that the public relations display of bouncy-castles and free hotdogs are a more accurate portrayal of the events in Ottawa, Windsor and Coutts than blockades you can see on television news or the weapons the RCMP have seized from a small faction inside the protests.

I understand there are those who think it’s all been nothing more than a party.

And sure, it’s been a great party for some, but it’s a party that has cost, and will continue to cost, hundreds of millions of dollars. Canadians will pay for it, too, out of our own pockets, and for long after the protests are over.

Carrying a nation’s flag — whether right-side-up or upside-down, in pristine condition or scrawled with slogans — doesn’t make you the good guy. Nor does the mere fact that you know the words and the tune of the national anthem represent inviolable proof of good intentions.

And this is not just a protest.

Remember: there are those amongst these “patriots” who have argued they should be able to topple a democratically-elected government — a government elected just months ago — and replace it with a coalition including their own sweet unelected selves. People who insist they will not stop the expensive disruption of trade and commerce in this country until their demands are met.


No number of anthems sung or flags waved can justify the sheer insult of that concept.

In a democracy, patriots meet at the ballot box, not under threats and blackmail.


But who am I? Just one patriotic Canadian among many, shovelling the snow so that my neighbours and other passers-by can walk safely, a Canadian who now feels a troubling discomfort with the idea of publicly displaying the flag of our nation.

Think about that for a minute.

Our flag.

Not your flag.

Ours.

Russell Wangersky is the editor in chief of the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. He can be reached at rwangersky@postmedia.com

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