Some months ago, well before civil disobedience had sprung up across the nation, we were short of gas on our way home to Dresden along Highway 401. We might have continued on but that yellow warning light suggested a stop at Moraviantown was in order.
    The station attendant was behind plexiglass enclosed in a secure booth with a small sliding door through which transactions could take place. I noticed, too, a hand-painted sign nearby advertising what I could only imagine was cannabis, with the words “freakin’ high” or some such phrase.
    I only needed gas, though.
    Back in the car and starting to roll – the wheels – the attendant, equipped with a loud speaker, issued a warning. I could not quite make his words, so I stepped out. It turned out that the little door to which the gas cap is accessed was open.
    I looked toward the booth, used my carrying voice, and uttered the words, “Good. I thought my pants were down around my ankles.”
    The resulting guffaw from the fellow, whom I assumed was a member of the Delaware First Nation, was genuine. I could only be pleased at hearing it.
    The Moravians, or perhaps more correctly the Delaware or Leni Lenape, have a long history in Southwestern Ontario, dating back 1792 when the place was still known as Upper Canada. Their legacy has long been associated with Moravian missionaries of European descent who accompanied them from their Atlantic coast homeland across much of Northeastern America as the relative newcomers to this land and perhaps even some of their indigenous brethren did their best to have them wiped from the face of the earth.
    Even the shield of British rule was not enough to provide a safe haven. During the War of 1812 American forces burnt their thriving little settlement to the ground and further injustices would follow.
    It was a transitional time. People were on the move and not just indigenous peoples. Americans, who by then had become a distinct society, were making their way to Upper and Lower Canada. There were also settlers from the British Isles arriving in increasing numbers. Most were of modest means but others saw the colonies as a place where the rule of the British elite could be extended.
    That type of governance, based on nepotism, was embodied by a group known as The Family Compact in Upper Canada and only lasted a few decades. The Rebellion of 1837-38 resulted, an inept affair but not without bloodshed. More than 300 died, mostly rebels, in Lower Canada. The same might have occurred in what is now Toronto had the several hundred, armed men marching down Yonge Street not fled in confusion after a short exchange of gunfire with a smaller group of militias loyal to the crown.
    Discontent is again simmering in what is now still referred to as the Dominion of Canada, a curious place of privilege layered upon division.
    The words author Salman Rushdie come to mind, “It shouldn’t be this way.”
    Privilege, in this era, is often construed as somehow being connected to things like race, gender and sexual orientation and automatically assigned, whereas the concept is merely a human construct, a tool that when applied intelligently or otherwise, simply divides.
    The civil disobedience, some might call it the Rebellion of 2022, is about no single issue, something the leadership of this country – regardless of stripe – has yet to acknowledge, preferring instead to cling to their false narrative. Yes, it’s true, many of the protesters are unvaccinated but many are fully vaccinated, a point that was brought to the forefront – of all places – by the Al Jazeera news network.
    There are issues more pressing than the pandemic: the lack of transparency in governance, the failure to address in any substantive way the environmental crisis, hunger, homelessness, the rural-urban divide, seniors held captive in retirement homes, the disintegration of a health care system focused on profit and, yes, the continued failure to fully engage the indigenous communities in this nation, this nation of privilege.
    It shouldn’t be this way. ◊