Angry Canucks hit the streets again; cowardly Conservatives MIA

Ed. tells me that at least one reader has demanded to know where I've been since Tuesday. He (the reader) accuses Ed. of having me drawn and quartered, then burying me in the backyard, under the blanket of creeping charlie. Terrible stuff that. If you stand still for more than five seconds it'll curl around your shoes and pull you down.

The accusation is baseless, of course. Ed. doesn't have a horse, let alone the four required for a proper quartering. In fact Ed. hates horses, because they're smarter than he is. Smarter, in fact, than most humans and all animals except maybe pigs. And there's some debate about that.

Pigs are very smart. Did you know that pigs can be trained to shit in one corner of their pen and to push, with their snouts, a button which flushes the excreta into a trough? I have seen it with mine own eyes, at the Central Experimental in Ottawa, Canada.

Which brings me to the reason for my absence. I was preparing to be part of the latest iteration of February's Freedom Convoy, which saw 100s of truckers and other fed-up Canadians take to the streets of the world's second-coldest capital to protest against vaccine mandates, Just In Trudeau, censorship, Trudeau, the lickspittle media, Trudeau, Covid lockdowns, Trudeau, inflation, and... You get the picture.

The new rally for freedom, unfolding right now, has been dubbed "Rolling Thunder", and I thought I would fit right in, since Mrs Walt says rolling thunder is the noise I make when we play "Dutch Oven" in bed on cold winter nights. Turns out the new protest is being led, not by truckers but by bikers! So it seemed you needed a motorcycle to participate, and I won't get on one of those things since Dave (an old buddy of Agent 6 and my goodself) got seriously injured when his bike jumped on top of him.

So I didn't go, and spent last night in the company of Poor Len Canayen, watching the final game of the Montréal Canadiens' season, about which he will write later this weekend. While we were crying in our beer (Molson, of curse), Rolling Thunder started rolling. Many of the demonstrators were also part of the Freedom Convoy. 

The protest started relatively calmly on Parliament Hill, but as night fell a line of big rigs, campers and other trucks made their way into the city core. Protesters gathered around the trucks, and police in tactical gear formed a line and faced them down. Police said in a release that seven people were arrested on various charges, including assaulting police, and 24 vehicles were towed. At least one truck also had its windows broken.

Rolling Thunder protest is expected to continue today Saturday) with the convoy of hundreds of motorcycles moves through downtown Ottawa, with a stop at the National War Memorial, before moving to Parliament Hill for another rally.

I'll be waiting to see whether any of the candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (yes, the "help wanted" sign is in the window again) shows up to support or at least talk with the protesters. When the Freedom Convoy hit Ottawa in February, Prime Minister Blackie McBlackface went to ground at a cottage somewhere in the Laurentians. Then Tory leader Erin O'Tool was said to have met with some of truckers at an undisclosed location out of sight of cameras.

"Mad Max" Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada, mingled with the truckers and made supportive noises, but he's just a conservative with a small C. The only big-C Conservative who did likewas was Pierre Poilievre, now the front-runner in the race to succeed Mr O'Tool. [You're out of space. Come back later. Ed.]