Small, fervent group of Canadians rallying behind Trump

The line of cars snaked through downtown, large Donald Trump and “Stop the Steal” flags protruding from their windows.

The motorized rally last Wednesday was in some ways a familiar sight in this season of endless dispute over the U.S. presidential election. As it unfolded, protestors egged on by President Trump stormed the Capitol building in Washington.

But the vehicular demonstration didn’t take place anywhere in the United States. The pro-Trump event traversed downtown Toronto, as other fans of the U.S. president held similar gatherings in Vancouver, Calgary and Red Deer, Alta.

And some Canadians actually made the trip to Washington, one describing on video his interactions with police outside the Capitol, the wider confrontation there triggering Trump’s unprecedented second impeachment on Wednesday.

Polls indicate that few people in this country think much of the hugely controversial U.S. leader.

But his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud have propelled a small coterie of Canadians to voice their loyalty in surprisingly visible ways.

“He is a true hero,” said Nasser Pooli, the Iranian-Canadian activist who organized the Toronto rally. “The whole world is behind Donald Trump ... He stands with people, not with the government, not with the media — they lie to your face.”

Pooli’s Canada for Trump Facebook page is full of Trump accolades.

“We’ll take him in Canada for 4 years,” says Dan Morgan of Maple Ridge, B.C. “The swamp here is brimming and needs a loooong deep drain!”

One poster on the page, identifying herself only as “Yisrael Canada,” said she had travelled to Texas to rally for the president, and posted photographs of a woman at a Trump rally holding a sign with a Canadian flag. Yisrael Canada’s own Facebook timeline also contains crudely anti-Semitic memes and posts promoting conspiracy theories about COVID-19, vaccines, the 9-11 attacks and the U.S. election.