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I am far from the only one who is now triggered by the sight of a pickup truck flying anything other than a hockey pennant. I assume such a vehicle is driven by someone who wants to overthrow the government that was legitimately elected by us voters not six months ago.

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You could even argue most of the protesters are so confused about how the country they claim to love actually works that they couldn’t find their way out of a referendum question without a map, a guide and at least six bouncy castles.

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There were a lot of weird political talking points during the long occupation of Ottawa these past few weeks, but unless I missed something, not one person talked about an independent Quebec, or federalism in general. There was a lot of incoherent babbling about what fundamental rights Canadians actually have, but other than that the Constitution went mostly uninvoked.

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Yet here, and there, they were. In Quebec and in Ontario both the Quebec and Canadian flags flew happily side by side, in complete harmony. I’m from Quebec City and I can tell you how rare it is to see a Canadian flag there. To see so many flown — in the name of freedom, no less — is … crying out for some kind of explanation.

That doesn’t make sense, I thought to myself. You never see those two flags side by side except … at federalist rallies and not since Jean Chrétien was prime minister anyway. The last time I saw so many together in the same space was in downtown Montreal in October 1995, a few days before the second referendum. Remember that famous love rally? Of course you do. It’s not the sort of thing one forgets easily, 100,000 people stuffing themselves in a public park in Montreal to implore Quebecers to vote no and stay together, no matter how uninspiring our marriage of convenience is.

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I don’t have a clear one. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that many of the people who run the political parties that are in sync with the protests — the provincial Conservative party in Quebec led by Eric Duhaime and the People’s Party at the federal level headed by Maxime Bernier — are libertarian Quebecers. They’ve been part of that group for a long, long time. I know because I used to be part of that same libertarian crowd for a few years in the late 1990s. We were against big government. We didn’t care what colour it was. That’s why I’m finding it beyond weird to see the movement today carry so many flags of all colours.

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We’ll also have to ask why there were so many other flags present, including the Stars and Stripes, the confederate flag, the Gadsden flag, a few Indigenous banners and … puzzlingly for this veteran of our endless constitutional battles, the fleurdelisé. What the heck is happening to make the decades-old, bitter divide between Quebec and the Rest of Canada seem like it’s suddenly not an issue?

I first noticed the incongruous coexistence of Quebec and Canadian flags behind Confederation Park in late January. No doubt they had been on display elsewhere before, but that’s where I first saw them, during an early-morning skate on the Rideau Canal.

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I’m from Quebec City and I can tell you how rare it is to see a Canadian flag there. To see them flown alongside the fleurdelisé during the trucker occupation — in the name of freedom, no less — cries out for explanation.

The trucks have left and so have most occupiers. Except for the ones we’re hosting at the local jail and the gang hanging out in rural areas throughout the region. We will be dissecting the lessons of the occupation for some time to come. Some of those lessons will be obvious, others less so. And then there will be a few mysteries to explain, like the flags.

I am never again going to declare separatism dead. But it seems pretty moribund among members of the far right. What this means for the future of the country, I don’t know. Consider the issue flagged for future discussion.

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