FREE the POPCORN
Ottawa police detain a man but can't find the law that justifies it (just like Trudeau)
I drove 300 miles to be in Ottawa and see with my own eyes what was happening on the ground. Let me tell you straight: the legacy media are lying to you. But I don’t want to focus on that right now. Still digesting the kindness, the joy, the partying, the open hearts and the mostly very lovely interchanges I witnessed between the Ottawa Police and the protesters.
First, me start with the Popcorn Incident.
FREE THE POPCORN
Walking up from one group of protesters near the Chateau Laurier toward the other group of protesters on Parliament hill was a man pulling a popcorn maker and behind him his son, dragging the generator to heat up the popcorn. Many police officers were watching him without concern when one young officer bolted out of her car to speak with him. No popcorn on The Hill, she said. That’s “aiding and abetting.”
Canadians as you know are nothing if not polite, so the father asked politely what law he was breaking. She couldn’t say, wasn’t sure. Um.
So she walked back to her cruiser to discuss this with the other officers and the father and son joined her. A crowd gathered and asked me what was happening. I explained that he was being detained for bringing popcorn to Parliament Hill. We laughed. A Haitian-Canadian man from Montreal came up to me and asked what was happening. I explained again that the (now 6) police officers were trying to find the law that prevents popcorn from being distributed on Parliament Hill.
“Oh!” he said with a broad smile. “I love Canadians!” He walked through the now growing crowd to watch up close. I stood back to see the whole picture. Then I heard the man from Montreal shout (with a grin): FREE THE POPCORN! FREE THE POPCORN!
The crowd chimed in, laughing good-naturedly. “FREE THE POPCORN!”
“I didn’t realize it was a crime to serve popcorn,” said one man beside me.
“Only in Canada,” I said with a smile. He and I were of the same vintage which meant he’d get the joke — Red Rose Tea used to have TV ads about this rather simple orange pekoe brand of tea being available “only in Canada.” When I lived in France, my sister had to periodically mail me my supply of that cheap but delicious-to-me tea. Turns out, I don’t drink wine to calm myself down. I drink Red Rose Tea. Only Red Rose Tea. I am Canadian, after all.
Anyway, the police never found the law that prohibited popcorn distribution in the nation’s capitol. They were now stumped. Finally, they made a compromise: they’d let the popcorn maker go on up to The Hill, but the generator had to be put back in the trunk. “There are lots of generators up on The Hill,” they said. “Use one of them.”
The father shrugged and dragged his popcorn cart up the hill. The son dutifully returned the generator to the car. The crowd dispersed peacefully.
BUT HERE IS THE THING: Why would it be considered OK for police to stop a citizen without a law to support their intervention? Police aren’t supposed to make up the rules. Countries where police make up the rules as they go are Police States. Canada is supposed to be a Parliamentary Democracy.
They were just ahead of the game, because now the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has invoked what was formerly called the War Measures Act and is now referred to as the Emergency Act. In short, Trudeau has formally established a “temporary” Police State and is calling for war on his very own people who have been peacefully protesting in Ottawa, which is one of the rights that we have in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Our own governments break the law
Beyond the protesters on the ground, his government has announced that our banks can — with impunity - freeze all assets affiliated with anyone who may have donated $25.00 or more to the FreedomConvoy @GiveSendGo. What his government is doing is illegal, in my opinion, although with the Emergency Act he has 7 days to be an Extreme Tyrannical Dictator before he has to get approval in Parliament.
Reality Check for those of you with hand on hip, complaining that the unvax’d need to “do their part” — why? Why exactly? Show me the science that says that if we vax the crap out of every man, woman, and child in Canada we will all be save from Covid.
You won’t find anything to support that. The vax’d and unvax’d are equally “dangerous” to each other. We can pass the virus around no matter what our vaccination status. Yet many of my wide-eyed, terrified friends keep insisting that it’s only right to force people to get a vaccine they don’t want and if they don’t, to punish them. Lose their jobs. CHECK. Lose the right to get on a plane or a train or a bus. CHECK. Insist they be accompanied by a health officer at Costco if they can’t prove they’ve had a vaccine. CHECK. Make them 2nd class citizens in their own country. CHECK.
Our Constitution and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not support the creation of 2nd class citizens. In short, what our provincial governments and Justin Trudeau have been doing to citizens who won’t or can’t get vax’d is illegal.
The truckers want our Charter of Rights to be respected. They want governments to stop treating unvax’d citizens illegally, to have our governments stop breaking the law. The last remaining co-author of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Brian Peckford, sides with the truckers.
An incident on Friday night
As I walked toward my hotel on February 11, at the front of the Chateau Laurier I saw a dozen police officers bundled up for the cold, all wearing matching red tuques. Maybe they were just security guards. It’s hard to tell when all of us bundle up for freezing weather.
There was also a man there, a protester, who was highly agitated and trying to shove his way past the police to get into the hotel. It took three police officers to physically subdue him and take him back to the street. I think they were explaining, respectfully to this outraged man, that this was private property and he had no right to be in the hotel. The police turned to return to the hotel entrance when the man suddenly raced toward them, hurling insults. The police stood there calmly but obviously on edge, as the man was very unpredictable.
Two women walked past me toward the party on The Hill (great dancing, live music, etc.) and stopped to watch what was happening. Then one of the women walked up to the man and gently put her hand on his shoulder. “Come on, come on, let’s go to the party,” she said gently. I don’t even think she knew the guy.
The man shoved her hand off his shoulder and kept yelling. The woman didn’t move, and then two more protesters came quietly up to the man, put their arms around him and guided him away from the police and toward the party. “It’s not worth it, buddy,” said one of the men. “Not when there’s great music up on on The Hill.”
The four protesters, with the agitated man now calming down in their midst, walked up toward the music. The woman who had first intervened turned back to the police and said, “Thanks, officers.” They nodded.
These are the people that Trudeau has refused to speak with — even once. These are the people Trudeau called “terrorists” and “racists” and (weirdly enough) “misogynists”. These are the people that Trudeau and the Liberal Party and the National Democratic Party have decided to wage war on.
For shame.
Breaking news: We’re hearing that the Ottawa Police Chief is resigning. More to come.
FREE the POPCORN
Thanks - Canadians are really special. But they're also tough and I think our Prime Minister, who is a Trust Fund baby, has forgotten this fact.
Beautiful writing! I was especially touched by your account of the soothing of the distressed man.