The Battle of Billings Bridge

A story of Canadian heroism

Julia Marsiglio
6 min readFeb 14, 2022
Image by 101cats from Canva Pro

It was a cold February day in Ottawa, Ontario, the capital city of Canada. A pair of men on horseback rode down the snowy streets, between rows of transport trucks moored to the ice. The video zoomed in on the second figure, proudly waving his blood-red flag high in the air — and the caption read: “the calvary has arrived”.

It’s not uncommon in Canada to see police on horseback in our cities. Sometimes they are dressed in mountie-red, with their iconic striped breeches and singular hats. But this was no mountie, and the symbol he displayed was not Canadian.

It was a Trump for President 2024 flag, being lauded as a hero by the Ottawa occupiers — a group intent on unseating our recently re-elected prime minister over dissent targeted at his covid policies.

But their grievances run deeper than that. For the convoy participants, it’s personal. Many seem to believe that Trudeau is the unclaimed son of Fidel Castro, is part of an elite cabal intent on enslaving the world and is trying to kill us with vaccines and masks: some variation of “the great reset” conspiracy theory. Many hold up Trump as an anti-Trudeau — a figurehead who represents their worldview more closely.

They seem to have a particular disdain for what they call “legacy media”, which…

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Julia Marsiglio

I answer rhetorical questions. Intersectional feminism. Neurodivergence. Trauma. Grief. Canada things. A smattering of poetry and fiction.