Over the weekend huge crowds of people took to the streets in Montreal to protest lockdown measures, particularly the return of the 8 p.m. curfew that was rolled back from 9:30.
What began as an incredibly dangerous stunt, given that many of the attendees were . . .
unmasked during a time when variants are spreading rapidly throughout the country, quickly devolved into pure mayhem as people set fires and trashed nearby businesses.
Protesting is one thing, but wantonly destroying public and private property during a time of serious economic hardship is just cruelty. Full stop.
Giving in to the primal urge to break things and scream at the top of your lungs might provide a small dopamine hit or a brief adrenaline rush, but it’s a real problem when you scale that up to something this size.
It doesn’t matter how many of the people who attended articulated valid grievances with the curfew. Once the first window was broken, everything was drowned out by a cacophony of stupidity.
It’s hard to blame people for being at the end of their rope and feeling hopeless, but now is not the time to give up or give in to darker impulses.
As Tim Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta is quoted as saying in the Montreal Gazette:
“We often hear it’s a race against the variants, but I think it’s also a race against complacency and rage.”
This past year has been an absolute catastrophe, and those without the wealth to insulate themselves from the most restrictive public health measures have had the worst go of it. There is plenty of rage to go around but some of it is more righteous than others.
Imagine being an underpaid long-term care worker or ICU nurse, witnessing hundreds of jackasses making your job more difficult. You can’t really compare that with someone who is ticked because they can’t host karaoke or travel to Florida.
The silent majority of people have been following this ever-changing, at times contradictory set of rules in the hopes that we can move on with our lives at some indiscernible point in the near future. The rule-breakers are far more vocal, like the owner of the Méga Gym in Quebec City who openly flouted the rules and caused over 400 infections and counting.
Places like the Atlantic provinces have been enduring much more stringent restrictions and have a much lower death count than jurisdictions that implemented half-measures and hoped for the best.
Anger can be an excellent motivator, and there’s plenty of anger being directed in a whole lot of directions, much of it justified. However, this energy needs to be directed into something constructive or it will consume us alive.
Caleb Nickerson
