While we in Maine hunkered down last Saturday waiting out the heaviest snowfall of the winter (until then), our neighbors in Canada were coping with what seemed almost deja vu all over again. A protest rally gone sour.

Billed a “Freedom Convoy,” it was a rally begun by over-the-road truckers, many from Western Canada, who drove to Ottawa to protest a regulation that affected few of them.

Though the damage to Parliament Hill was far less than what we saw on Jan. 6, 2021, on Capitol Hill, the sour taste sticks in Canadian throats. At least most of them. By Thursday, most of the truckers had left, and the aftermath was starting to come clear.

Part of that aftermath is a leadership purge in the first political party to govern Canada, the Conservative Party, called Tories. More about the Tory leadership in a minute.

Background first. Host Adrienne Clarkson once repeated on a CBC newsmagazine an old Canadian quip. “Given our history and geography, we could have had French culture, English government and American know-how. Instead, we got French government, English know-how and American culture.” (Clarkson later became governor-general.)

As in our culture, Canada and especially Western Canada (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia) has a growing far-right movement that has established itself inside one of the three major political parties, the Conservatives.

The protest was a spillover of this far-right incursion into a party that once called itself Progressive-Conservative. As it moved in, the far-right purged the word “progressive.”

Sparking the rally was a regulation that went into effect last week requiring Canadian truckers returning from the states to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The U.S. has a similar rule for truckers entering from Canada. According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, more than 90% of Canadian truckers are fully vaccinated.

The protest likely had little to do with the regulation. The trucking alliance said the rally had been heavily infiltrated by folks who weren’t truckers. One Ottawan said there were way more pickups than real trucks.

The rally painted a most un-Canadian scene. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sums up Canadians in a way we Yanks recognize: “Canadians: We’re polite, we’re reasonable.”

Usually orderly Ottawa is a mess. Trucks still block traffic in a city where many ice skate to work in winter on the frozen Rideau Canal that bisects the city and leads right up to Parliament Hill.

Videos I saw from Ottawa showed confederate flags and a swastika drawn on a flag of Canada. (A member of Parliament drew a standing ovation when he condemned the presence of that secessionist emblem of evil in a country that abolished slavery 31 years before we did.) A woman cavorted on the tomb of the unknown soldier. Any number of signs on trucks read the Canadian equivalent of “Let’s Go, Brandon.”

Ottawans complained of truck horns blaring through the night and of noxious diesel fumes since most truckers ran their motors through the cold night. Some Ottawans said the snow around the National War Memorial was yellow. You can figure how that happened. Protesters demanded to be fed by a soup kitchen set up to feed the homeless.

Ottawa police said on Monday that they were investigating possible criminal acts, including the making of threats and the desecration of the National War Memorial.

If our American experience is a guide, the investigations will take a long time. It took the Conservative caucus in the House of Commons far less time to act. On Monday, it removed leader Erin O’Toole, a moderate conservative who won the leadership by kowtowing to the right wing. It appears he didn’t endorse the protest strongly enough.

Believe it or not, the interim party leader is named Candice Bergen, a Tory MP from Manitoba who has been photographed wearing a MAGA hat.

Unbeknown to most of us, Canada has a bit of a history of pioneering. It had the first transcontinental railway. In fact it had three, and we still have none. Canadian University Service Overseas was the model we adopted for our Peace Corps. And CBC radio came up with the innovative news program “As It Happens” that was the model for NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Part of “As It Happens” is broadcast every weeknight at 9 p.m. on Maine Public radio.

So, how will the Republican Party solve its moderate vs. right-wing tussle? Will it take the same path as the Tories? Will it yield its last sense of moderate conservatism to the right-wing-nuts? Oh, wait, maybe it already has.

Bob Neal worked nearly five years in Montreal. He found Canadian politics fascinating, always wondered why Canadians looked southward so often to learn how to behave. Neal can be reached at [email protected].