Carriages. Gelato. Theatre. Heavy horses. Miles of peace-loving grapes. A mayor we call “lord.” Heritage buildings. Towering trees. A river. A lake. A fort. Wineries everywhere.

Is this the perfect small town? An outlier in the GTA where weary people leave soulless tract homes to crawl along clogged, desperate highways and emerge in NOTL paradise?

That’s the vision. And we’re damn good at promoting it. Look at Queen Street these weekends.

Shoulder-to-shoulder shuffling humanity. Given the division, angst and political anger across the border, this must be the promised land. We’re immune from all that polarization. And better, right?

Well, not so fast.

Days ago a bunch of dudes with muscles and white masks marched on Brock’s Monument and managed to make national news. These are the Second Sons Canada, a quasi-militia bunch with chapters across Canada, who chose our little lovenest in which to have their national shindig.

It’s a man-only organization dedicated to “patriotism,” which is the new catch-all buzzword for white, Christian, conservative and angry.

They like General Brock because he beat back the Yanks in the 1812 war, but also because they celebrate 19th-century values. You know, like when women were women and men were men (only better).

Local leaders (like our lordly mayor) condemned the Sons for being racist and were appalled they had chosen this hallowed ground on which to march, chant, drill and scare the tourists.

But it’s worth noting there is a deep vein of right-wing sentiment in this community, and the Sons are just the latest visual made-for-TikTok version of it. Recall that the monumental Freedom Convoy, which shut down Ottawa for three weeks in an anti-vax, trash-government rage, had a major rallying point here.

Then there’s Tamara Lich. This charismatic firecracker of a woman, now a felon, was a leader of that trucker mayhem — recently convicted and soon to be imprisoned for her actions. Her sentencing hearing is Oct. 7.

The woman has a history of feeding far-right causes, including a separatist movement in Western Canada. Oh, and she’s a rocker, too. No surprise her marquee 2023 concert happened on York Road — to a packed audience — as she belted out “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

The Central Community Church in town was one of the few locations agreeing to screen the controversial pro-trucker film, “Unacceptable,” and drew a capacity audience a year after the feds had used emergency powers to defeat the convoy.

No judgment here. Just the facts. NOTL has a big mess of people you might call maple MAGAs. They’re predisposed to the politics of Trump, irritated at immigration and link economic injustice plus loss of influence to the creep of “wokeness,” gender confusion, over-population, DEI policies or leftyism. This, they say, is patriotism. Canada first.

As we all know, the last few days have been ones of anguish, grief and pure anger for American conservatives. The assassination of Trump confidant and youth activist Charlie Kirk on a Utah campus is consuming that country.

The guy was lionized by supporters, which included the president. He awarded Kirk the highest civilian honour, posthumously, while his casket was picked up by the vice-president and flown home on a presidential aircraft. 

This was a man known for anti-Muslim, anti-trans, anti-gay and unapologetically pro-Jesus comments. His influence was legion, in person and on social media. He promoted free speech while seeking to have opponents silenced. Tragically, that happened to him. And now America is a lit fuse.

So why am I writing this?

Because, clearly, the same sentiments exist here in this bucolic garden of a place. No sweeping them away. What’s motivating the Second Sons and the Tamaras needs to be learned. Dissing them as lowlifes and bigots doesn’t work.

Not if we hope to keep the bullets on the other side of the river.