THE EFFECTS ON TEACHERS ARE SIMPLY OVERLOOKED. — DANIEL BUCK

In June of 2022, Sarah Mur­ray, the mother of a Nepean High School stu­dent, was awakened to the “cul­ture of silence” around viol­ence in schools. Her son was beaten in a school wash­room, the whole epis­ode was pos­ted on social media, and it was all hushed-up by local Ott­awa school offi­cials.

“Nobody’s speak­ing about this viol­ent assault. I’m in shock,” she told CBC News Ott­awa. “He’d been punched and kneed in the face and the head. There’s people walk­ing by totally indif­fer­ent.” What upset her the most was the silence of adults. “They’re com­pli­cit in the atti­tude that you don’t talk about trau­matic exper­i­ences.”

“Nobody’s speak­ing about this viol­ent assault. I’m in shock,” she told CBC News Ott­awa. “He’d been punched and kneed in the face and the head. There’s people walk­ing by totally indif­fer­ent.” What upset her the most was the silence of adults. “They’re com­pli­cit in the atti­tude that you don’t talk about trau­matic exper­i­ences.”

Fists and knives are more of a threat than guns in Canada’s 4,700 pub­lic schools offer­ing high school pro­grams. Now, after a down­turn in school viol­ence dur­ing the pan­demic clos­ures, teach­ers and school prin­cipals in Canada as well as in the United States are cur­rently report­ing higher levels of viol­ence, mis­be­ha­viour, assault, and drug abuse.

School shoot­ings like the recent lunch­time epis­ode involving a Grade 10 boy at Toronto’s Weston Col­legi­ate Insti­tute make national head­lines. Com­pared with the United States, they are still rel­at­ively rare. But reg­u­lar and ongo­ing viol­ence in and around schools has got­ten worse since the POST-COVID resump­tion of in-per­son school­ing.

School shoot­ings like the recent lunch­time epis­ode involving a Grade 10 boy at Toronto’s Weston Col­legi­ate Insti­tute make national head­lines. Com­pared with the United States, they are still rel­at­ively rare. But reg­u­lar and ongo­ing viol­ence in and around schools has got­ten worse since the POST-COVID resump­tion of in-per­son school­ing.

In Janu­ary, Ontario’s high school teach­ers’ union pres­id­ent Karen Lit­tle­wood finally blew the whistle, call­ing for help from pro­vin­cial and local author­it­ies to help insure that schools, and classrooms are safe.

As the advoc­ate for 55,000 edu­cat­ors in hun­dreds of high schools, Lit­tle­wood expressed alarm, not just for the well-being of stu­dents, but for the safety of teach­ers, men­tal health sup­port per­son­nel, child and youth work­ers. While GTA dis­turb­ances attract the most atten­tion, she repor­ted that its now wide­spread in the wake of the COVID-19 school dis­rup­tions. “These incid­ents were hap­pen­ing across the province, and it’s now reached a crisis level,” she said.

Trucker ter­ror­ist? Tamara Lich doesn’t come off like a rabble-rous­ing, sedi­tious mis­chief maker.

A grand­mother and fit­ness buff, she’s agreed to meet with me, driv­ing north from her home in Medi­cine Hat to Cal­gary. “It’s been a year and two days and I still don’t know what I did, to com­mit mis­chief,” Tamara explains, on the heels of yet another round of vir­tual meet­ings between her law­yers and the Crown pro­sec­utor in Ott­awa.

Her grit is undeni­able, even if you are one of the many Cana­dians who dis­agree with her. What sus­tains this woman’s unflag­ging resolve? She had an epi­phany that she didn’t expect — namely, Canada is worth fight­ing for.

“Canada got a lot smal­ler for me,” she reflects. This, from a woman who was a driv­ing force behind the launch of the Mav­er­ick Party, a fed­eral polit­ical party com­fort­able with the notion of west­ern prairie provinces sep­ar­at­ing from Canada, if needed. Days after arriv­ing in Ott­awa with the con­voy, she resigned from the Mav­er­ick Party board.

“Talk­ing to the Que­becers and they had 1,000 truck­ers ready to go and it’s sur­real and I had this epi­phany moment. This has all been a lie, the Que­bec vs. Alberta divi­sion ... In that moment I real­ized, I don’t want to leave Canada, these are good people.”

The trial against Tamara is set for Septem­ber; she’s already spent weeks in jail and has ser­i­ous bail con­di­tions (no social media, no unsu­per­vised meet­ings with con­voy organ­izers, no COVID protests) to keep a protest from reviv­ing.

Make no mis­take, this woman’s actions cre­ated a lot of incon­veni­ence for people and deployed ques­tion­able tac­tics. The cops ini­tially charged her with coun­selling to com­mit mis­chief. That was Feb­ru­ary, last year. A month later, six more charges were added befit­ting a ringleader of the trucker con­voy: mis­chief, coun­selling mis­chief, obstruct­ing police, coun­selling to obstruct police, coun­selling intim­id­a­tion and intim­id­a­tion by block­ing and obstruct­ing one or more high­ways.

Make no mis­take, this woman’s actions cre­ated a lot of incon­veni­ence for people and deployed ques­tion­able tac­tics. The cops ini­tially charged her with coun­selling to com­mit mis­chief. That was Feb­ru­ary, last year. A month later, six more charges were added befit­ting a ringleader of the trucker con­voy: mis­chief, coun­selling mis­chief, obstruct­ing police, coun­selling to obstruct police, coun­selling intim­id­a­tion and intim­id­a­tion by block­ing and obstruct­ing one or more high­ways.

Tamara is stay­ing at the Ser­vice Plus hotel, near the Deer­foot Casino. As I roll in, I see snow clouds banked up along the east­ern slopes of the Rock­ies in the dis­tance and a few big rigs parked out front. Once inside, Tamara strides toward me, in a sleek black suit, a Cana­dian flag pin on her lapel and a small neck­lace, a heart, at her throat. We greet one another and then slip into the aban­doned break­fast room.

“The Crown pro­sec­utor who is pro­sec­ut­ing my case in Septem­ber seems like a dog with a bone,” Tamara shares, her voice even and her back ram­rod straight. The pro­sec­utor sug­ges­ted to a judge last year that the case may be worthy of a sen­tence of 10 years in prison if Tamara is con­victed.

I’m not a crim­inal law­yer — my shtick was cor­por­ate law — but even I know that talk of ser­i­ous jail time for a first offence mis­chief charge is over the top. It would cripple most people.

“Hon­estly, after the inquiry, I don’t have any anxi­ety about this trial because all I can do is exactly what I did, walk up and tell the truth. (RCMP Com­mis­sioner) Brenda Lucki walked in with a briefcase, (Deputy Prime Min­is­ter) Chrys­tia Free­land had to have her notes ... but when you are speak­ing truth, you don’t need bind­ers.”

Hav­ing pub­lic offi­cials arriv­ing pre­pared isn’t inher­ently a bad thing, but I get her point.

But what’s going on behind the media glare? Every­one has seen the clips of Tamara’s arrest, a slight woman hand­cuffed by tower­ing RCMP officers. What happened to her after that arrest? That happened almost one year ago, a Thursday, when the judge decided Tamara would go to jail for the week­end.

“When I was arres­ted I didn’t feel afraid, maybe nervous because I didn’t know what the whole pro­cess would look like.

“On intake (at the Ott­awa-car­leton Deten­tion Centre) they are ask­ing me all these ques­tions about have you been vac­cin­ated, and I was like, holy sh-t are they going to make me get vaxxed or get tested? Because I haven’t done either.”