National Post

Vulgar mobs nothing new on the campaign trail

- Tristin hopper

After protesters caused the cancellati­on of a Liberal campaign event last week, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau told reporters, “I’ve never seen this intensity of anger on the campaign trail or in Canada.”

Throughout Election 44, Trudeau has indeed been followed by some of the angriest protests of his career.

Demonstrat­ions in the Ontario cities of Cambridge and Nobleton were characteri­zed by shouting, swearing and protesters’ generous use of their middle fingers.

Largely attended by demonstrat­ors protesting COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccinatio­n policy, they also featured the ubiquitous display of “F--k Trudeau” flags.

Neverthele­ss, it would be wrong to call the protests unpreceden­ted or even unusual. At multiple points in recent memory, prime ministers — particular­ly those with a term or two under their belt — have been dogged by some supremely impolite demonstrat­ors. Often, some of the most defining images of Canadian leaders were in how they responded to a rabid mob.

Just before his landslide win in 1984, Progressiv­e Conservati­ve leader Brian Mulroney came face to face with hundreds of unemployed Labrador miners who blamed Mulroney for closing their mine while he was president of the Iron Ore Co. A report in the Los Angeles Times noted that Mulroney was “almost mobbed” and that “when Mulroney was unable to squelch the protesters with humour, he began shouting angrily.”

But it would be at the end of Mulroney’s premiershi­p that the issues of NAFTA and the GST would sharply galvanize public opinion against him. In 1990, screaming protesters disguised as chefs interrupte­d a Toronto fundraisin­g dinner that had Mulroney as a keynote speaker. Outside, protesters could also be seen carrying the prime minister in effigy, along with a sign reading “Free trade is treason.” “They chased his limousine, shouted at him to resign and, at one point, tried to spit on him,” reads a press account.

The next year, a Progressiv­e Conservati­ve convention in Toronto was surrounded by 1,200 constructi­on workers who similarly accused Mulroney of treason and chanted “lying Brian go to hell, Canada is not yours to sell.”

In 1992, a protest jointly organized by the NDP forced Mulroney to take a back door during an official visit to Peterborou­gh City Hall, due to security concerns. “Every community has got crackpots, politicize­d crackpots,” was how Mulroney summed up the encounter.

Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was beset by literal riots during his first election campaign as Liberal leader.

On the eve of election day in 1968, the elder Trudeau was attending a St. Jean Baptiste Day Parade in Montreal when separatist protesters started to pelt the grandstand­s with rocks and bottles specifical­ly intended for the prime minister, whom they saw as a traitor to the cause of Quebec sovereignt­y.

Televised images of him calmly holding his ground as other officials dove for cover would become some of the most iconic from the 1968 campaign (which saw Trudeau propelled to a majority).

A 1982 encounter with protesters would shroud the him in less glory. Along with his sons, Trudeau was using the Governor General’s private rail carriage to take a vacation to British Columbia. The carriage was pelted by tomatoes near the Alberta border, and at a stop in Salmon Arm, B.C., the prime minister extended his middle finger to demonstrat­ors carrying placards reading “Trudeau resign.”

Jean Chrétien famously placed a protester in a chokehold in 1996, before throwing the man to the ground. Less well-known are the circumstan­ces that preceded the encounter.

Protesters used screaming and air horns to drown out the prime minister’s speech at a Flag Day celebratio­n in Gatineau, Que. Then, as Chrétien returned to his car, protest mobs broke past his security detail, forcing the prime minister to directly push his way through the angry crowd.

“It had only been three months since someone had tried to assassinat­e me, so my reaction was instinctiv­e and probably angrier than it would have been otherwise,” Chrétien would write in his autobiogra­phy. The attempted assassinat­ion had involved a knife-wielding man similarly ducking Chrétien’s RCMP detail to enter the prime minister’s official residence.

While the sustained nature of the protests against Justin Trudeau are definitely a new addition to the Liberal leader’s experience of the campaign trail, he has faced any number of vulgar opponents — although they usually come from the other side of the political spectrum.

In 2019, Trudeau’s RCMP security detail tackled and arrested a man at a Montreal climate march who had been approachin­g the prime minister with a carton of eggs.

Soon after his 2015 election win, Trudeau’s appearance at a youth labour summit was interrupte­d by organized anti-pipeline protesters. In 2017, Trudeau was repeatedly interrupte­d by anti-pipeline protesters at a Winnipeg town hall. At one point, as a demonstrat­or approached the podium, Trudeau told him, “Stay seated sir, sit down please, you’re going to get tackled.”

LYING BRIAN GO TO HELL, CANADA IS NOT YOURS TO SELL.

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