I lived in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for one year way, waaaaaay back in 1984 and into 1985. It was my first year of College and, coming from the sunny (and warm) state of Florida, it was a hell of a change and was the main reason my stay wound up being so short.

My very early years were spend in Canada, Nova Scotia in particular, and I loved the time and figured I’d love returning to Canada. While my stay wound up being short lived, I had fond memories of Ottawa and its a beautiful and -at that time anyway- a very mellow city to live in.

For the past 10 days or so, though, its been ground zero for anti-vaccine groups which are protesting the vaccine mandates for truckers and… well, its really a right wing anti-government thing in the end, isn’t it?

And its pretty ugly.

Car horns are blasted at all hours, streets are clogged, and at times ambulances have been slowed or stopped from doing their function.

Reading the various reports on this (you can read one of them, by Christian Paas-Lang and presented on CBC.ca here), its clear the regular citizens and the government has had enough. They’ve given them some space but it looks like after all these days, that patience has ended and more aggressive actions will now be taken to end what some feel is nothing more than a “siege”.

Interestingly, there is some evidence right-wing characters within the U.S. have had a stand in this protest and GoFundMe.com had approximately $10 million in donations for the protests which they are now giving back (you can read about that here), which is prompting some, usually right-wing figures, within the U.S. to protest.

One person who reacted negatively to this news is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla (you can read about that here).

I… I wonder about Mr. Musk sometimes.

He’s a hell of a mind. He’s done something that no one else has done regarding changing the whole concept of what a car can -and I would argue should– be. He touts sustainable energy, he is clearly convinced that we need to reduce pollution and that global warming is a very real and dangerous threat to our world.

He moves ahead with scientific research, his SpaceX is doing things with rockets that are -whether you like him or not- amazing. He clearly has a great intellectual curiosity and has managed to do something about it.

He has his detractors and that’s understandable. He often goes on twitter and shoots himself in the foot with stupid statements.

Is this one of them?

I feel like it is.

I will try to give him the benefit of the doubt in the sense that he tweeted a few days back his feelings regarding the GoFundMe issue and his “support” of the truckers who are protesting. Since then, we’ve had reports some of them are incredibly… out there, with confederate flags (or worse) and racist elements. The disruption of the city of Ottawa seems to be devolving too from “protest” to (again, as described by some) a “siege”.

Sometimes it might be better to sit back, assess, then -and only then- make your public statements. For better or worse, whenever Musk tweets, the world does listen and sometimes the stuff he tweets is used to justify many peoples’ criticisms of him, whether justified or not.

Ah well.