These grassroots anti-mandate movements may be able to emulate Ottawa’s successes while also learning from its mistakes. Even as the easygoing atmosphere played an important role in the protest’s success, it also grew increasingly directionless and disorganized toward the end. As the convoy expanded into a festival of sorts, replete with bouncy castles, hot tubs, and costumed mascots, it began to lose its political potency. So long as the encampments represented a justifiable political protest in front of Parliament, the Trudeau government was reluctant to move against it; but once its festive atmosphere eclipsed its political objectives, the crackdown began in earnest. A serious country simply does not allow a prolonged open-air dance party in front of its government buildings. “They were loud, but they . . . were no longer saying what they wanted clearly,” my frustrated Nigerian Uber driver told me on my way to the Ottawa airport. “And once you’re not saying what you want clearly, you’re not being heard.”

In a way, however, the disproportionate police response to the protest also validated the reason for the convoy in the first place. The striking visual of armored trucks, officers perched on rooftops, and a phalanx of police in riot gear moving into the encampments galvanized a righteous indignation in many corners of Canadian politics. It also exposed the authoritarian nature of the pandemic state; all government diktats, ultimately, are enforced at the point of a gun.