EDITORIAL – Truckers should make a New Year’s resolution to just drive

An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.

LET’S BE HONEST — we’re simply not going to live up to our New Year’s resolutions, are we?

So the question is, why bother?

Yet, we’ll make them anyway.

And what wonderful things will we do this year? Why, we’ll lose weight, first of all. And we’ll exercise more. And quit smoking. And get organized. In a burst of Cub Scout good intentions, we might resolve to do a good deed every day.

Then there’s that close cousin to the resolution — wishing for good things to happen. Like hoping, for example, for world peace and an end to poverty. And, wishing for our politicians to all work together in harmony.

There’s something extra we can hope for this year, which is an easing of the angst over the pandemic. Specifically, there’s the on-again off-again 2023 edition of the truckers’ “Freedom Convoy.” First, it was going to be a version 2.0 of last year’s fiasco in Ottawa.

Then, it was going to be moved to Winnipeg. But, one organizer says the whole thing has been called off.

However, another faction now says it’s a go for next month, under the name “World Unity Convoy 2023.”

That’s just what we need, another pointless trucker protest, especially when there’s no rationale for it as mandates around pandemic vaccines and masking have all but disappeared.

Instead, they now try to keep things rolling, so to speak, by insisting that they just want to be heard, that their truth, whatever it is, must be told.

How about if the truckers and their ilk resolve to stay home (or, at least, do what they do best, which is to drive from A to B), quit smoking and lose some weight like the rest of us, instead of tilting at windmills that don’t exist?

As for me, I’ve made only one resolution for 2023 and it’s one I intend to keep — my resolution is not to make any resolutions.

I’m Mel Rothenburger, the Armchair Mayor.

Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops, former TNRD director and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.