Opinion | Ottawa is boring again — to everyone’s relief

At the height of the convoy protest this winter, exasperated residents of Canada’s capital pleaded to “make Ottawa boring again.”

Mission accomplished with the “Rolling Thunder” protest this past weekend. A few hundred motorcycles did orderly laps near the War Memorial, the police were out in force, and the first really nice spring weekend in Ottawa was, well, almost boring.

Sure, there were some echoes of the occupation of the city earlier this year: flag-draped protesters roaming downtown, the now familiar, if inconsistent, chants about vaccine mandates and Justin Trudeau. But Rolling Thunder will be remembered more for what it is wasn’t than for whatever it was supposed to be about.

The first, most obvious difference was the police presence. Cops of all kinds were everywhere, making sure that no vehicles made it past blockades erected at the heart of downtown, where winter protesters had parked their trucks, barbecues and hot tubs.

On Friday night, as an unruly gang descended on the corner of Rideau and Sussex, the flashback tension was palpable. As I made my way over to the Metropolitain Brasserie that sits at this historic intersection of the capital, I heard two residents telling a protester: “You know that all you’re doing is harassing normal people living their lives here, don’t you ? All the people you’re mad at aren’t anywhere near here.”

That was the other, obvious difference: residents of Ottawa were in no mood for a replay of the temper tantrum that turned into a hostile occupation last February. As the Star’s Raisa Patel reported from her trek around Saturday’s protests, some creative Ottawa residents came prepared to be interviewed by media outlets known to be friendly to the convoy gang. Every time a microphone was turned to them, they replied with noisy, squeaking toys.

Counterprotests sprang up, too, organized by never-again-swearing denizens of the city, with memories of February too fresh in their minds to tolerate even this mini-replay. Ottawa even managed to sneak in another couple of events in and around the protest zone: a May Day labor rally and a charity cycling event. It was a gorgeous weekend to ride a bike around Ottawa, or walk the streets yelling at the prime minister, if that was your preference.

The relative lack of drama around this protest could and should raise questions about how last winter’s convoy debacle happened. Everything that went right with the Rolling Thunder crowd management will of course highlight what went so terribly wrong with the truckers’ convoy.

On CBC TV, host Rosemary Barton asked Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino about the difference between this weekend and the occupation last winter, which prompted the federal government to use the 34-year-old Emergencies Act for the first time in its history.

“There are some very big distinctions between what we’ve seen this weekend and last January and February,” Mendicino said. “The size and the volume of the crowds were considerably smaller.” As well, he said, this weekend did not also feature similar protests at border points across the country, as we saw in the winter, nor were emergencies declared in Ottawa and Ontario. Combined with better police preparation and reinforcements from the RCMP and OPP, the minister said, Rolling Thunder was no emergency.

One other big difference was political. As far as I could see, mostly by monitoring their social media channels, none of the Conservative leadership contenders was doing much to publicly feed the Rolling Thunder protest or feed off it.

Pierre Poilievre, the candidate most closely aligned with the “freedom” convoyeurs, was out and about in the GTA over the weekend, far away from his own Ottawa-area riding and definitely not mugging for the cameras with the motorcyclists, as some might have expected. On Sunday, Poilievre did post a video on Twitter, in which he vowed to end vaccine mandates, but he didn’t include any nods to the protests winding down in Ottawa.

None of the other main leadership candidates were posting about Rolling Thunder either. Perhaps, after seeing how the winter’s “Freedom Convoy” blew a hole right through the top level of the party — forcing Erin O’Toole’s resignation — Conservatives are more careful now about hitting their fates to an angry, ill-defined protest movement. They were no doubt delighted to see Ottawa streets awash again in Trudeau haters, but they probably have those votes locked anyway.

Canada Day will be interesting in Ottawa this year. Many residents have learned to flinch at the sight of people roaming around with flags or the noise of fireworks. But on the first nice spring weekend of 2022 in the capital, a convoy-hardened Ottawa proved it has learned to roll with the thunder; maybe even find it a little boring.

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