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LETTER: ‘Freedom convoy’ can get their own flag

‘We’d really like our flag back’
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Hundreds of people were at the Lickman Road overpass in Chilliwack on Saturday, Jan. 29, 2022 in support of truckers protesting vaccine mandates. (Jenna Hauck/ Chilliwack Progress file)

Hello “freedom convoy” and your flag-waving supporters. From the rest of us, we’d really like our flag back.

It’s had a lot of use around the world, representative of our common beliefs in such missions as peacekeeping, famine relief and disaster support. Right now it’s flying above a group of Albertan Search and Rescue volunteers who are combing the rubble of Kyiv, locating survivors of Vladimir Putin’s madness. And please forget using another Canadian icon, the hockey stick, as a flagpole while you’re at it. We all put out our hockey sticks to remember the Humboldt hockey team crash victims. That was the best possible tribute that represented all of us and our common grief. When Sidney Crosby popped in that golden winning goal in the 2010 Winter Olympics, sending the U.S. back home with their hockey sticks between their legs, we all raised our sticks and beers to the Canada flag too. That was so Canadian, eh? All for one, and one for all.

Take a look at Ukraine, where people are getting blown to smithereens by Russian rockets, refusing to surrender because they only want what two generations of Canadians fought, suffered and died for – and you have so taken for granted. Democracy.

How about making your own flag and giving us our one back? We’d really like that. You could come up with another symbol for sure. How about a truck replacing the maple leaf? Oh wait, that wouldn’t represent the vast majority of truckers who don’t share your views – heroes of the pandemic, who still deliver all the things we have come to depend upon, including toilet paper. Maybe a ventilator would be a better symbol, because it does represent the majority of unvaccinated users who clog up our hospitals, denying thousands of Canadians life-saving and life-changing operations.

We’re much too nice to suggest a more fitting symbol like a horse’s ass. All we are asking is that we can all look at the Canadian flag without feeling that it represents the views of a minority of selfish and entitled few, some of whom have urinated on our national war memorial, held a city hostage, prolonged the pandemic, and forgotten what a privilege it is to be Canadian.

Graeme Wilson