The thrust of the Ottawa protests is clearly reactionary, but there were plenty of people on the streets who seemed genuinely baffled by the media’s description of them as part of a far-right movement. They’d been infuriated and in some cases unmoored by Canada’s pandemic restrictions, which have been stricter than America’s. (As The National Post reported, during the Omicron wave, the provinces of Quebec and Ontario “closed schools and imposed blanket bans on indoor dining, gyms and bars,” and Quebec enacted a 10 p.m. curfew.)

Most people I met said they’d never been to a protest before. Their willingness to not just go to Ottawa, but in many cases to stay there in the freezing cold for weeks on end, is a sign of how profoundly the pandemic has eroded trust in the authorities. Two years of Covid has created a climate of suspicion, confusion and grief that the far right has been able to exploit…

I didn’t see any Confederate or Nazi flags, though there had been some early on. I saw one Gadsden flag, and a guy in a MAGA hat who’d taped over the word “America” and written “Canada” on it. I saw lots of anti-vax paranoia, but few efforts to own the libs. The one word that was repeated over and over again — on signs, in chants and in conversation — was “freedom.” Many who’d found the pandemic intolerably alienating were reveling in human connection. Several people hugged me after I interviewed them, even though I told them I was from the hated mainstream media.