“China eats weird animals disease”

Sometimes it’s what you don’t do, rather than what you are authorized to do, that keeps a potential nightmare from ever waking up.

This was on display Saturday. And Toronto set the standard of how to keep something with the potential to blow up from doing just that. While tempers continue to flare with civic leaders in Ottawa over the truckers protest, Toronto’s mayor and police chief set a different tone here.

Think they sent enough cops? #TaxDollarsHardAtWork#TruckersConvoy2022 #TorontoConvoy #ThankATrucker pic.twitter.com/pvkCunbqkF

— JV ⚡️ (@JV_crypto) February 6, 2022

Trucker convoy: Ottawa ‘under siege’ amid ‘nation-wide insurrection,’ officials say

The nation’s capital is a city “under siege” by the trucker convoy that has dug in over the past nine days amid what the chair of the police services board called a “nation-wide insurrection.”

“We are on day eight of this occupation. Our city is under siege. This group is emboldened by the lack of enforcement by every level of government,” said Diane Deans, chair of the board.

“This group is a threat to our democracy. What we’re seeing is bigger than just a City of Ottawa problem. This is a nation-wide insurrection. This is madness. We need a concrete plan to put an end to this.”

The new measures announced by the chief of Ottawa police against truck convoy protesters are those used by oppressive regimes around the world, says a lawyer representing organizers of the Freedom Convoy protesting COVID-19 mandates in Ottawa.

“He effectively announced that he is going to be taking away Canadians’ charter right of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression,” Keith Wilson, a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), said in a video on Feb. 4.

Free speech has been one of the chief casualties of the pandemic.

So we’re finally seeing a genuine, bottom-up, working-class revolution. In Canada, and increasingly in the United States, truckers and others are refusing to follow government orders, telling the powerful that, in a popular lefty formulation, if there’s no justice, there’s no peace.

Naturally, the left hates it.

For more than a century, lefties have talked about such a revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the “intellectual vanguard” of the left.

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.

Langley, B.C., contractor Damian Conn says he can “agree to disagree” with friends who are opposed to vaccinations or believe in conspiracy theories and still maintain a relationship.

But when he realized he had friends who support the convoy protest in Ottawa — which is now entering its second week of demonstrations, snarling the nation’s capital, to call for an end to vaccine mandates and other public health measures related to COVID-19 — those relationships ended.

He’d known some of those friends since high school.

The sound of honking trucks echoed through the streets of downtown Toronto Saturday as a large crowd of protesters descended upon the city to demand the end of COVID-19 restrictions.

The protest, organized by the “Freedom Convoy,” started at noon at Queen’s Park, with protesters carrying signs and flags and chanting against COVID-19 vaccine mandates, including proof of vaccination in certain indoor settings.

These are the people that I protest against. Me, a Jewish Ukrainian woman, who had large numbers of her family exterminated in camps, only to suffer under communism for decades more. #TruckerConvoy #TorontoConvoy #FreedomConvoy https://t.co/m9Lc0UeQIA

— Ravyn Skye 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇪🇬 🇺🇸 (@RavynSkye2) February 5, 2022

On Yonge just spur of Bloor pic.twitter.com/0ISjy89G3L

— David Rider (@dmrider) February 5, 2022

A divorced anti-vaxxer dad from New Brunswick, Canada, has lost his right to see his three children in person after refusing to get the COVID shot.

The unidentified dad has an immunocompromised 10-year-old daughter but he and his new partner have refused to get the Covid-19 vaccine, leading Justice Nathalie Godbout of the Court of Queen’s Bench to order him to stay away from all three kids.

Ottawa protest faces rising resident anger, uncertain finances in its 2nd week

… Protesters have maintained a near-constant level of noise and disruption in the downtown core of the nation’s capital, blocking traffic, honking horns, setting off fireworks and organizing loud music.

Local officials and residents have spoken out about instances of harassment and intimidation by protesters, while some demonstrators have also displayed symbols of hate, including the Confederate flag and swastikas. Protesters have also put up a plywood building and tents in the area.

On Saturday, two protesters rode horses through the streets, one carrying a flag supporting former U.S. president Donald Trump.

The nation’s capital is facing a “real risk” of violence as the trucker convoy digs in, setting up infrastructure and heavy machinery in what Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the Ottawa police chief are both now calling an “occupation” of the city.

Tensions are only expected to rise on Saturday, with police estimates of up to 1,000 counterprotesters and thousands of additional convoy supporters making for what former Ottawa police chief Charles Bordeleau called a “volatile” mix

At the end of the day yesterday in Winnipeg. A provocateur deliberately ran over a protester with his suv and injured 3 others. He’s been apprehended. All Day long the crowd of protesters were peaceful, lots of smiles, hugs and laughter. Let’s pray for the injured and the driver. pic.twitter.com/KoJboNTIt5

— Tobias Tissen (@TissenTobias) February 5, 2022

Update

UPDATE: Police Give Briefing on Winnipeg Attack:

The driver hit four Freedom Convoy protesters and fought the police during his arrest. The driver faces numerous charges including Assault with a Weapon.pic.twitter.com/9nAfm0fPrl

— Election Wizard 🚛 (@ElectionWiz) February 5, 2022