Opinion | With Trump’s return, and our sovereignty to defend, boomers are ready to return to their activist pasts. Age-related impairments be damned!

 

In Norman Jewison’s subversive 1966 Cold Ward film ‘The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,’ set off the coast of a small New England island, tensions between the Americans and the Russians are defused when a little boy falls from a church roof.

At a dinner party of three-quarter-lifers last weekend, Donald Trump’s economic and possibly tactical invasion of Canada dominated the conversation. After hearing our resistance plans, I’ll say this to Trump: you have no idea of the freedom-fighter you’ve unleashed in Canada’s over 60s.

The zesty host, to my right, plotted a subversive cell of himself and four friends, all lifelong backwoods skiers. “We’ll dress in white, and with our white hair against the white snow, they’ll never see us coming,” he said, eyes ablaze. “We’ll call ourselves the 69ers.”

“Hasn’t C put his back out, though?” said the guest to my left. A quick tally of the 69ers revealed one was deaf, one partially-blind, the third had a torn meniscus, and the fourth, trouble standing after a recent fall — while cross-country skiing. “Minor impairments!” said the host. “So long as everybody’s in bed with a heating pad by 8 p.m.” 

We goofed around at dinner, until we didn’t. The leader of the most powerful country in the world, with whom we share the longest international border in the world, says he’s coming for us. Our high spirits waned at the dessert course (a delicious pistachio bundt cake), when a deep foreboding took hold of our party. 

“Everyone is so sure that Trump is grandstanding, but what if he’s not?” said S, forlorn at the far end of the table. “Who could have imagined what they’ve done to women’s rights? It was inconceivable that they could engineer such a backslide.” The idea that the world would come to our rescue was also quickly put to rest. People will wear “I ‘heart’ Canada” T-shirts for a while, then move on to other things. We have vast stores of what everyone wants: water, minerals and energy. And now not one but two superpowers, Russia to the north and the U.S to the south, with a yen for expansion.

“Today’s threats to our climate, economy and security are unprecedented,” said Emily Hunter, a 40-year-old climate activist in Toronto. I’d called her after the dinner party, and she did not mock me and my companions. Instead, she doubled down on our own superpower. 

“What we’re seeing right now is a regalvanizing of the boomer activist base from the ’60s and ’70s.” Hunter is intimately acquainted with some of the players from those days: her father is the late Robert Hunter, first president of Greenpeace. “Boomers are concerned about their grandchildren and their children, but also they’re part of the counterculture movement that fought for civil rights.” Which doesn’t mean Hunter’s generation, coming of age in a long period of social and political stability, can’t teach boomers how best to connect with a culture that’s reshaping itself, “from identity politics to the feminist backlash of trad wives,” she said.

Hunter’s most urgent message, however, crosses generational divides: “Get off of your phones and computers — they’re being used against us — and get back to the tried-and-true community tactics. We’re stronger together and in person.”

My own resistance cell, where we’ll go without the internet (how will I check my daily step count or The New York Times top recipes? Sacrifices must be made), includes four Canadian politicians: Doug “come-for-us, we’ll-come-for-you” Ford; the super chill former Prime Minister Jean “U.S. will ‘suffer much more” Chrétien. “Trump says he doesn’t need our electricity,” the 91-year-old told CTV with a grin. “But he’ll be walking up the Trump Tower by candlelight”; Stephen Harper, who talked tough on American conservative podcast Standpoint. “Our desire as Canadians, to be strong and beside the United States, is hinged on us believing that the U.S. doesn’t want to conquer or annex Canada.” But if the U.S. continues to threaten our sovereignty, “we will be forced to take a very different approach.” And last, not least, Chrystia Freeland, who spat in the eye of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2022 and did again with Trump as she announced her leadership this week. “If you hit us, we will hit back,” she wrote for this paper on Friday. “We will not escalate, but we will never back down.” Mark Carney’s not invited to join my resistance cell, after he chose to slyly tease his campaign for liberal leadership on Jon Stewart — precisely when we are under threat of annexation from the south. It felt like a smack in the face to Canadians, and, to me, his off-the-cuff humour sounded scripted, especially after his rambling responses to the media questions at his official leadership launch in Edmonton on Thursday.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/with-trumps-return-and-our-sovereignty-to-defend-boomers-are-ready-to-return-to-their/article_eb754f28-d501-11ef-8ddf-97ebd0f9341f.html