History Repeats Itself

Reprinted from The Rubicon Free Press, March 20, 2024, by editor, Rob Bogunovic

Mark Twain once quipped that a “favorite theory of mine” was “that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often.” A similar thought, which is often ascribed to Twain, is that “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

Events of today often echo events of the past in ways that are quite remarkable. George Santayana wrote in 1905 that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, and because all societies are full of people who are quite ignorant of the past, society repeats its mistakes ad nauseum. Those who study history often see past dramas play out in present time, and marvel at the similarities.

Two of the most remarkable social movements in Canadian history, the Winnipeg Strike of 1919, and the Freedom Convoy of 2022, are separated by over a hundred years of history. Our society is nothing like the world that was inhabited by those strikers, yet these two events are remarkable in how well they rhyme. The Winnipeg Strike of 1919 was the largest general strike to ever occur in North America, and it brought Winnipeg to a stand-still for weeks. The Freedom Convoy was the largest convoy protest to ever occur in North America, and it brought Ottawa to a stand-still for weeks. That is just the first stanza of many.

Consider, for example, the contributing factors. The 1919 Strike emerged after years of Federal and Provincial governments abusing emergency powers granted to them by the War Measures Act. Governments had given themselves broad powers that greatly limited the rights of the people. Moreover, in the preceding months, Canada was hit by a devastating global pandemic – the Spanish Influenza – that left over 50,000 Canadians dead, and millions globally. Consequently, the people had just spent a year wearing masks, restricting their movements, and avoiding public gatherings. Moreover, because the War Measures Act labelled many foreign-born citizens as “enemy aliens”, many people were being segregated from the larger society, interned or isolated, being treated as second-class citizens. “Enemy aliens” were made to carry identity papers and report regularly to the police. People were also arrested and interned because of their political beliefs. The War Measures Act empowered the government to censor and suppress communications and was used to ban hundreds of publications.

Fast-forward a century and change, and one finds that, prior to the 2022 Freedom Convoy, Federal and Provincial governments were abusing emergency powers granted to them by declared states of emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Governments gave themselves broad powers that greatly limited the rights of the people. The Covid-19 pandemic claimed over 50,000 lives in Canada and millions globally, and because of emergency health orders, people spent more than a year wearing masks, restricting their movements, and avoiding public gatherings. With the roll out of vaccines – and the mandating of them – large segments of the population were segregated from general society, left interned or isolated in their homes – a kind of house arrest without charges or trials. People were made to carry passports to demonstrate their compliance with vaccine mandates and were denied service in many establishments and institutions if they couldn’t. Media outlets censored journalists and commentators who dared to question the government’s narrative regarding the safety and effectiveness of masks or vaccines, and hundreds-of-thousands faced severe sanctions and the suspension of their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

Both events rhymed in the polemic responses they generated. The strike in Winnipeg inspired dozens of sympathy strikes in other Canadian cities, just as the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa spawned similar events in other cities, and saw massive support rallies that mostly centered on the overpasses, mostly timed for when the convoys would pass by.

However, the response by establishment forces and their subservient media outlets was inflammatory and insulting. Mainstream media outlets were remarkably uniform in their collective condemnations. In 1919 the Strike was denounced as a communist revolution influenced by foreign powers. Strikers were called “Bolsheviks”, and those opposed to the strike called for violent crackdowns - and celebrated when police started beating people with batons and trampling them with horses. In 2022 the Convoy was first dismissed by the Prime Minister as a “small fringe minority … holding unacceptable views”, and when it turned out to be a bit larger than he anticipated, Trudeau went into hiding, and the Freedom Convoy was denounced as an occupation. The mainstream media refused to call it the Freedom Convoy without first putting the word “freedom” into sneer quotes - or prefacing it with the qualifier “so called”. Media outlets said that MAGA Americans were funding the movement. The government and their media allies went to great lengths to malign the strikers in 1919 and the truckers in 2022.

The government response also rhymed. In 1919, Federal cabinet ministers who ventured to Winnipeg during the strike refused to meet with strike leaders. The government was not interested in hearing what the strikers had to say and made no inquiry into their grievances. In 2022, the Freedom Convoy sought an audience with the Prime Minister, but the Liberals refused to meet with the Convoy’s leaders and maligned any politician who did.

Given the numbers involved in these events – tens-of-thousands - the 1919 strikers and the 2022 truckers both displayed incredible discipline in the face of provocations – which were considerable. Though technology has transformed the way police conduct their duties, somehow one of the rhymes in these events appears to be police trampling people with their horses. They also deployed batons. In Winnipeg, police used their batons to strike strikers; in Ottawa police reportedly used them to smash truck windows. In the deep chill of an Ottawa winter, the police seized the fuel of truckers in an alleged attempt to freeze them into submission. Ultimately, two people were killed in the Winnipeg Strike, thirty more were injured, and over 90 strikers were arrested. The Convoy protests saw fewer injuries, with perhaps the most dramatic incident being when an Indigenous woman was knocked over by a Mountie’s horse, suffering a shoulder injury. However, there were over 190 arrests.

The leaders of both movements were targeted by law enforcement. Numerous strike leaders and Convoy organizers were arrested and charged. In 1919, the most common charge these strike leaders faced was sedition. In 2022, the most common charges are mischief or counselling others to commit mischief. The nature of the charges, and the evidence offered to support them, were often ludicrous, especially when contrasted to other criminal acts that weren’t aggressively prosecuted, like the war profiteering of Canadian industrialists during WWI, or the fraudulent claims and corruptions influencing the Covid-19 pandemic response efforts. The message was clear: friends of the establishment get one standard of treatment before the law, enemies get another.

In Winnipeg, J.S. Woodsworth, the editor of the Western Labour News (a strike bulletin) was charged with seditious libel for quoting from the Bible. The “seditious” verses were Isaiah 10:1 (“Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed”) and Isaiah 65:21-22 (“And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of the tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.”) Woodsworth ended up spending five days in prison before being released on bail, and the charges against him were never filed. Charges were filed against Fred Dixon, the other editor of the Western Labour News, but he obtained a jury acquittal. Other strike leaders were not so lucky. Rules were changed so that certain foreign-born leaders could be deported, while others were convicted of sedition and were sentenced to serve up to a year in prison. The trials focused less on the actions of these strike leaders than the men’s political beliefs.

We don’t yet know the ultimate outcome for those Convoy leaders who have been charged. Tamara Lich is perhaps the most well known of the leaders facing jail time. She’s primarily being prosecuted for the “mischief” she allegedly counselled others to commit. Lich was arrested on February 17th, 2022, and applied for bail on February 22nd. That application was rejected by a judge who ran for a federal Liberal seat in 2011. That denial was overturned on March 7th on the condition that Lich refrained from using social media. On March 24th, Lich was charged with six additional offenses: counselling mischief, mischief, counselling to obstruct police, obstructing police, counselling intimidation, and intimidation by blocking and obstructing one or more highways. A month later she learned that she would be awarded the 2022 George Jonas Freedom Award, but accepting that award led the RCMP to claim that Lich had breeched her bail conditions. She was re-arrested on June 27th, had her application for bail rejected on July 8th, but that denial was overturned on July 26th. It is now 2024 and Lich’s case has yet to be resolved.

At the urging of the strikers, a provincial royal commission was launched to inquire into (and report upon) the causes and effects of the General Strike. Headed by H.A. Robson, the report helped ensure that the verdict of history has been favorable for the strikers – even though strikers achieved none of their goals and endured much hardship for their efforts. Robson concluded that the striking workers had legitimate cause to be dissatisfied, and that it wasn’t primarily caused by radical socialists seeking to overthrow democracy. This finding was a repudiation of the establishment narrative.

Whether the verdict of history will be favorable for the Freedom Convoy participants is yet to be determined, but early signs are good. The Emergency Act required that an inquiry occur at the conclusion of the emergency. Liberals chose Paul Rouleau to lead the commission of inquiry, and on February 17, 2023, Rouleau issued his Report. It was a mixed bag. Rouleau acknowledged the presence of extremists in the protests, but he also suggested that these elements were peripheral, and said, “the presence of controversial and extreme elements at the protests … should not detract from my findings that many and perhaps most of the protesters sought to engage in legitimate and lawful protests.” Rouleau admitted that the convoy had Canada-wide support and stated that the protests were “the culmination” of two years of restrictive lockdown measures that created much suffering. Rouleau said that for hard-working Canadians tired of pandemic restrictions, the convoy protests were a ‘powerful symbol’. All of this repudiates the mainstream media’s reporting about the convoy, and the characterization of it by Liberal and NDP MPs.

Rouleau viewed the use of the Emergency Act as justified. However, Richard Mosley, a Judge of the Federal Court of Canada, recently ruled that its use by Trudeau and his Liberal government was unconstitutional and unjustifiable. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, immediately announced that they would be appealing the decision.

The party politics of these events also rhymes, though there is an interesting inversion in play. The 1919 Borden government was a kind-of-coalition. Borden was a Conservative, but in 1917 he formed a Unionist party, bringing Conservatives and pro-Conscription Liberals together. That Unionist government was arguably the most illiberal government Canada has ever had. Borden rigged that election by enfranchising the female relatives of soldiers (who were likely to vote for conscription) while disenfranchising the “enemy aliens” his government has spent three years abusing. Then they imposed Conscription on the nation and ignored the cost-of-living crisis being created by inflation. Things did not go well for the Conservatives in the wake of the Winnipeg General Strike. In 1921, support for the Conservatives collapsed. They lost 27% of their prior support, lost 104 seats, and finished in third place behind the Progressives.

Trudeau’s current government is also a kind-of-coalition, relying on the support of the New Democratic Party. Even though Trudeau identifies as a Liberal, he has presided over the most illiberal government Canada has known in his lifetime, and the polls are showing that his political support is collapsing. Because of inflation, Canadians are struggling to pay the bills and afford a mortgage. Conservatives are now projected to win every province except Quebec, and they are leading Trudeau’s Liberals by 14 points.

The inversion is that, while both Robert Borden and Justin Trudeau led illiberal governments that imposed harsh measures and controls upon the Canadian people, the two occupy opposite sides of the political spectrum. This same inversion applies to the polemic attitudes that existed during 1919 and 2022. In 1919, support for the strikers came predominately from the political left. In 2022, support for the Freedom Convoy came predominately from the political right.

Robert Borden did not lead his party into the 1921 election. He resigned, urging that his finance minister take his place as Prime Minister. However, the finance minister declined, so Borden turned to his Minister of the Interior, Arthur Meighen. Meighen led the government’s response to the Winnipeg General Strike, working to subdue the strikers, and following the strike he enacted amendments to Section 98 of the criminal code, banning association with organizations the government labelled as seditious.

Chrystia Freeland is Canada’s current finance minister and deputy Prime Minister, and she would likely assume the office of Prime Minister should Justin Trudeau resign. As finance minister she engineered the policy of freezing the bank accounts of those found to be supporting the Freedom Convoy, and she was a key figure in the roll out of the Emergencies Act, which a Federal judge ruled was unconstitutional.

I’m not saying we’re about to see Freeland take over as Prime Minister, but if she did, and if she then got clobbered by the Conservatives in the next election, it would add one more rhyme to this unfolding verse.

Rob Bogunovic served as

the editor at The Rubicon Free Press (2021 - 2024)