Canada faces a long, hot summer of civil insurrection.
First Nations and their activist sympathizers are trying to shut down the country’s economy in order to halt construction of pipelines from Alberta to Pacific Ocean tidewater in British Columbia.
They also had the Teck Resources’ $20.6-billion Frontier oilsands mine in their gunsights.
That’s off the table because Teck cancelled the project, ironically just hours after the Alberta government and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation settled their project-related dispute.
In the Freedom Summer of 1964 a handful of Canadian university students travelled to Mississippi to volunteer, along with 1,000 Americans, to help register African-Americans to vote.
Under Jim Crow segregationist law, poorly educated and illiterate African-Americans had to complete a 22-page examination including an essay on the state constitution, before they were registered to vote.
The registration exam was a cynical way to disenfranchise unwanted voters.
The Freedom Summer volunteers helped African-Americans overcome the obstacles by preparing them for the examinations.
In the 10-week Freedom Summer, three Mississippi blacks and four civil rights workers were murdered and four critically wounded by segregationists.
Thirty volunteers were badly beaten, 37 African American churches and 30 black-owned homes and businesses were bombed or burned.
In 1965, the U.S. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act prohibiting racially based barriers to voting.
Compared to the nobility of the Freedom Summer and the courage of the volunteers in 1964, the Shut Down Canada movement in 2020 is just plain shabby.
The first casualty has been the credibility of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation leaders and the well-paid masked agitators who are stirring them up.
Gone also is the credibility of the prime minister and federal cabinet members – none of whom made a conciliatory 90-minute drive from Ottawa to the flagship barricade near Belleville, Ont.
At the Saint Jean Baptiste Day parade in Montreal on June 24, 1968, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau faced down a cascade of bottles and rocks hurled at him by separatist protesters.
On Feb. 20, 2020 and for days afterward, Prime Minster Justin Trudeau ignored a more serious crisis.
He traipsed around Africa and Europe, currying favour with nations on the United Nations Security Council for their vote in June on an application by Canada for a three-year term.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned and Trudeau stroked his ego.
I have a modest proposal.
Justin Trudeau doesn’t seem to want his job and he’s not very good at it.
Let’s give it to Dave Ayers, the 42-year-old arena maintenance man for the Toronto Marlies American Hockey League team who is also on the Marlies and Toronto Maple Leaf practice squads.
Ayres signed a one-game, $500 contract and donned a Carolina Hurricanes jersey to fill in for two Hurricane goalies injured in a game with the Leafs.
Ayres' hockey career ended 15 years ago when he underwent a kidney transplant, but he won the Hurricanes' game against Toronto, even after he allowed two goals.
A hockey winner for a political failure doesn’t seem like a fair swap to the hockey teams, but maybe they could be persuaded to accept the inequity in the national interest.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
