Artifactuality, season 2, episode 2.
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:00:01] On this episode of Artifactuality, we unveil the mystery behind a piece of guerrilla art that created quite a stir in Ottawa. We reveal who created it and why he remained anonymous until now. My name is Kim Thuy on this podcast from the Canadian Museum of History. Together, we’ll explore what objects and stories from the past can tell us about who we are today. What will resonate tomorrow? How will the events unfolding around us be remembered in the future?
[00:00:44] Ottawa, January 2022. There’s gridlock in the downtown core. Big rig trucks, tractor trailers, and other vehicles clog the streets. Public transit has to be rerouted. The Rideau Center and some local businesses are forced to close because so many people are not wearing masks. Thousands of protesters from across the country are here, and they’re fed up. The group calls itself the Freedom Convoy. They say the federal government’s Covid 19 rules have gone too far, and they’re not leaving until the mandates are revoked.
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:01:29] Meanwhile, many Ottawa residents are tired of the blaring horns, smelling diesel from idling vehicles, and seeing trucks blockading the streets. Two and a half weeks after the so-called Freedom Convoy arrives, a group of locals get together to form a counter-protest.
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:01:54] These residents meet at the corner of Bank and Riverside. They’re here to block Billings Bridge, a route many Freedom Convoy demonstrators use to get downtown. What starts off as a few dozen counter-protesters in the morning turns into hundreds by the evening. On that day, they block 35 trucks from reaching the demonstration in downtown Ottawa. Patrick McCurdy was there.
Patrick McCurdy [00:02:23] They are self-described as moms and dads and dog walkers, and they just stepped in front of some cars and blockaded these cars.
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:02:31] He’s a professor at the University of Ottawa who studies social movements, protests and mainstream media. So when the one year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy protest was approaching, Patrick came up with an idea to influence the way reporters marked the event. He designed a small brass plaque a bit larger than a piece of paper. Patrick copied the City of Ottawa logo to make it look official, put a cheeky message on the plaque and covertly installed it late at night at the bridge where the counter-protest took place.
Patrick McCurdy [00:03:07] I realized in hindsight how I should have put the plaque up was going in the middle of the day with a high visibility vest and just put it up and walked away and it would have blended in, but I took the decision to do it at night under the cover of darkness, despite there being a CCTV camera which focuses right on that spot. But it took me three attempts to do it. The first attempt I chickened out. The second attempt, I had put the glue on the plaque in my car and then walked over to the spot, but it wouldn’t stick. It fell in the snow and I had to go home. And then on the third attempt, I was able to put the plaque up with a clamp. It had become a little crooked. But yeah, it took three attempts to get it up there.
Kim Thuy [00:03:46] Could you please read us the text, your text.
Patrick McCurdy [00:03:49] “At this spot on February 13th, 2022, everyday citizens and Ram Ranch Resistance members peacefully stood in the way of those who had trampled citizens right to peace, free movement, and free expression. This plaque commemorates the ordinary people who did something extraordinary when their leaders would not. February 2023.”
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:04:08] The Ram Ranch resistance is the name the counterprotesters adopted.
Kim Thuy [00:04:13] So what happened to the plaque?
Patrick McCurdy [00:04:15] So the thing is, with street art and interventions, these things never last long. Within hours, maybe, certainly under 12 hours, 10 hours, within hours of the plaque becoming public, somebody removed the plaque. Don’t know who. We moved it. If you look online, there’s a picture of a tool on the ground and then blank space where the plaque used to be, and then you could see some splotches of the construction glue is all that remains of the plaque.
Kim Thuy [00:04:42] How did it become public? You know, when you put it on the bridge, did you take a picture and share it with everybody or how did it work?
Patrick McCurdy [00:04:50] Yeah, so I took some photos. I shared those photos with a friend who posted those photos online on a website called Reddit. And from there, the existence of the plaque started to create a lot of discussion, and some of the discussion was trying to think about is this plaque, is it real? The internet responded fairly quickly. They didn’t know if this was a Photoshop job, but there were some people, I guess, who went out rather quickly to see if it was a physical plaque, which it was. Yeah.
Kim Thuy [00:05:18] And so it disappeared and nobody looked for it. Was it the city? Because you were not allowed to put anything on the bridge, right?
Patrick McCurdy [00:05:26] The city maintains they did not take it down. I’m not sure where the plaque is. It could be at the bottom of the Rideau River. It could be on somebody’s fireplace mantle as a souvenir. Maybe it’ll end up on Antiques Roadshow at some point. But certainly the fact that somebody rushed so quickly to take it down meant that there was a response to it. There were a lot of people who were quite, you know, some people really enjoyed it. They understood the message in it, and other people felt offended by it so much that they wanted to tear it down.
Kim Thuy [00:05:56] But that’s what art is, right? That’s what art is. It provokes. Yeah. Reactions, emotions. And so it worked.
Patrick McCurdy [00:06:03] It worked. And luckily I made two copies of the plaque. When I was looking at how much it would cost to do the plaque, it was $118 USD to make the plaque, or that’s about $160 Canadian for one. But the shipping, to ship a single plaque was, $142 USD, or about $190 Canadian. So it didn’t make sense to me to pay more for shipping just for a single plaque. So I ended up ordering two and it worked out well to have two. So then I have the second one, which I ended up trying to think what to do with. I was making two then I knew that with with one being sort of gone because it was taken down so quickly, I wasn’t about to go and rush and put the second plaque up on the wall because it would be torn down. And because I’m public about this now, I won’t do it, but I always thought it would be funny. As we approach the, you know, two year anniversary of the convoy, the one year anniversary of the plaque, I honestly thought about doing a plaque which would alter the text and have a plaque commemorating the plaque that was put up, but the joke’s over. It’s got its moment. It’s served an objective to really bring into, sort of, focus the important role of counter-protest and challenge some of the narratives that are out there. So that’s a positive for me.
Kim Thuy [00:07:13] So for the first anniversary, was the media interested in talking about the plaque?
Patrick McCurdy [00:07:19] Yeah. So the internet is always really quick to respond. Reddit was super quick to respond and the media was quick to report on this as well. I think the first story was on CTV, but quickly others followed – the Ottawa Citizen, CBC and you know, of course, as the media stories were published, the Reddit thread gathered more and more steam. Eventually you saw the term “Battle of Billings Bridge” trending on Twitter. So yeah, they were certainly interested in this. You know, the plaque was put up anonymously and this was on purpose. The first, the primary reason was, is that this wasn’t like the intervention wasn’t about … sort of, me. It’s not like “local man puts up plaque” was not the story, but I wanted the plaque to go up as an intervention to talk about the role of counter-protest and also to bring into focus the abject failure at multiple levels which led to the convoy’s encampment. And so, from my perspective, putting it up anonymously sort of helped keep the focus on the counter-protest on the anniversary of the counter-protest as an intervention and thinking about the convoy, of course, being aware of media, the idea of anonymity also provided a bit of mystery, which is always a good news hook. And I mean, I’m talking about this now with my name, voice associated with the project. I was a bit wary. I know, you know, some people have experienced harassment, even threats as a result of, sort of, some counter-protest actions. And I didn’t see, like, becoming sort of the subject of a lot of online hate, vitriol or threats for this type of intervention.
Kim Thuy [00:08:54] So what do you think, about having a plaque in the museum now, the second plaque?
Patrick McCurdy [00:09:00] Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s funny. When I came up with it, it always is the question – what am I going to do with this second plaque? Right, like, I have it. Am I going to put it up in my office? Is it going to sit in a box in the basement? I heard from Jamie at the museum, but we started to have a conversation about the museum acquiring the plaque, and that was wild to me. It was not why I had done this project, but it seemed like an interesting place to put this object, because I think the plaque is an interesting object because it provides a means to frame the story of the convoy, not just as a protest that encamped itself in our city for a month until it was forcefully removed. The plaque also provides a means to talk about how the convoy was exploited by politicians for their own gain, at the expense of residents of Ottawa. It provides a means to tell the story of the failure of some local politicians to act, and it provides a means to talk about the importance of counter-protest, of direct action.
James Trepanier [00:10:02] So on the table in front of me here, we have a number of objects from the last couple of years of collecting here at the museum tied to pandemic experiences in Canada. Right in front of me, we have a plastic and metal lawn sign.
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:10:15] After I spoke to Patrick, I went to the Canadian Museum of History and met with James Trepanier. He’s one of the curators responsible for collecting artifacts that reflect all the ways Canadians experienced Covid 19. We’re standing in front of a table of objects, including Patrick’s infamous plaque.
James Trepanier [00:10:36] On the other side of the table. Here we have probably about a meter long and maybe 30cm in depth. It’s a handmade lawn sign. So this one simply reads and painted white lettering…
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:10:47] James and his colleagues knew they had to be quick and creative when it came to collecting items from Covid. He says the museum has little to show from the pandemic of 1919.
James Trepanier [00:10:59] Earlier in my career at the museum, I worked on the new permanent exhibition space of the Canadian History Hall, and early in the development process for that, we were talking and discussing whether or not and how to include the story of the 1919 pandemic. So over a century ago, and there was virtually nothing in the collections tied to that moment. Of course, a massive experience across the globe, not just in Canada at the time, but we were kind of stuck. We didn’t have much in the way of artifacts or even images to show about that huge experience of the last pandemic of 1919. And so when Covid first hit, we started discussing this is something we need to collect. As a research team, we had been discussing the need to come up with flexible ways to collect sort of on the fly or as we called it, rapid response collecting, for future exhibitions. So the idea of collecting what might be seen as historic 10, 15, 50 years from now in the present. So making sure that we can collect objects that would be of use to curators of the future.
Kim Thuy [00:11:58] But when does a story become history, you know?
James Trepanier [00:12:02] That is – that is the million dollar question, perhaps, but something like Covid, which very quickly, it was a global international event and had such a massive impact, domestically, you know, shutting down travel, people being ordered to work from home, sort of on a dime. Schools shutting down. It became very apparent to us on the research end that this was an event unlike anything we had seen in our lifetimes, and could shape responses to future pandemics. You know, the idea that these diseases are coming perhaps at a quicker rate than in the past, collecting items from this experience could be useful for the future as well.
Kim Thuy [00:12:34] As soon as you heard about the plague made by Patrick McCurdy, was it right away an item you wanted to have for the collection?
James Trepanier [00:12:44] It was definitely an item that I personally was quite excited about. One of the research methods we used once we started collecting items connected to pandemic experiences, was really watching what was going on through the news, through social media. So when I first saw the news article here in Ottawa about this plaque that had gone up somewhat a piece of guerilla art, if you want to call it that, here in Ottawa, as a satirical look and commemoration of that moment of the Battle of Buildings Bridge, I said, wow, this is a really creative example of somebody using a form, a plaque, which traditionally comes from official sources like government or heritage committees, to designate something well after the fact as being significant. And here was somebody using that format, to kind of poke fun, but also to highlight an important moment of Ottawa’s pandemic experience as the national capital.
Kim Thuy [00:13:31] And at that point, you already knew that Patrick was the one behind the plaque, or was he still anonymous?
James Trepanier [00:13:38] That’s also a fascinating story. So initially, the plaques maker remained anonymous. Nobody knew who it was. The initial media coverage of the discovery of the plaque. People were speculating they didn’t know who the artist was. The city of Ottawa didn’t know. Other levels of government didn’t know. And then I think about a day after the media coverage first began, there was a post on the social media platform Reddit. It was a social media account created in the voice of the plaque representing the plaque itself. And this came across my social media feed. And the plaque’s account started talking about how, you know, this is why the plaque was created and the plaque has disappeared. But I can guarantee you it wasn’t us that took it down. But there’s a second plaque in existence. What should we do with it was sort of the question that this anonymous social media account threw out to the public. So I created an account on Reddit for myself, and I actually sent a DM or a private message to that plaque account saying, “I work at the museum. We’d be really interested in having further discussions with you. We understand that you want to remain anonymous for now, but we think the plaque is really an interesting example, both of using commemoration somewhat subversively, but also of a particularly significant moment during the pandemic, which was the convoy presence in Ottawa and its eventual break up with the invocation of the Emergencies Act. But in the interim, that citizen response was also a very key moment.” And so the plaque’s maker, Patrick, eventually reached out to me through his own personal account, and we started chatting one on one that way. But yeah, initially it was a very careful outreach to try to recognize that there was some concern by the plaque’s maker about potentially being outed and being targeted for online campaigns of whatever sort of harassment he might face. So we tried to respect that privacy as best we could.
Kim Thuy [00:15:19] So what are the examples of items you kept that some of us may have just thrown in the trash?
James Trepanier [00:15:26] Yeah. So it’s part of the interesting experience of collecting objects and stories as they happen, is the reaction you get from folks when you reach out to them about whatever they’ve made that you’ve learned about, and you say, I think this belongs in the museum, and they kind of give you this double take of “what do you mean?” So some great examples of that would be something as simple as the rapid antigen tests that have become so ubiquitous during the pandemic, an incredible medical innovation, the idea that you could take a test at home and with a reasonable degree of certainty, know whether or not you were carrying enough of the virus to be infectious, a really valuable tool during the pandemic. But they also became a source of frustration and almost wanting to forget them. So in some ways, it became a question of getting some of those before they disappeared. They’re very ephemeral things like disposable masks again, things that we don’t think twice about now but at the beginning of the pandemic, were quite new for many of us, and they became part of our everyday lives. And you see them strewn about and in garbage cans and these sorts of things.
Kim Thuy [00:16:23] In Quebec, you know, I remember that all of us, we were drawing rainbows, you know, and put them in the windows. Was it the same in Ottawa?
James Trepanier [00:16:33] Yeah. So when we first started collecting, that was one of the first things we identified as what kind of objects would speak to that experience of the combination of isolation of the first year in the first rounds of lockdowns, or various stay at home measures that were in place. And how did Canadians try to recreate their communities and sense of solidarity with each other? And so homemade signs and people’s windows. We collected a beautiful wooden sign that a family put out on their front lawn and it says simply, “Thank you, essential workers”. So it was a combination of trying to show solidarity with folks that still had to go to work, whether it be nurses or grocery store clerks. You know, the people that were keeping our ability to stay home operating and keeping us safe. So people got creative and we tried to collect a few examples of those things. Of course, those are very ephemeral. Not very many people have kept those. And so that family, when I reached out to them about their sign, they said, oh, we were just going to throw it out. You know, it served its purpose and now we’re done with it. We said, oh, no, no, this is an excellent example of the kind of things that Canadians were doing across the country to try to stick together, kind of thing.
Kim Thuy [00:17:32] What are some of the more controversial artifacts that you collected?
James Trepanier [00:17:36] Some more controversial ones would include, including voices and perspectives from folks who were opposed to public health measures, whether they be mask mandates in terms of mandatory masking inside public spaces, and things like grocery stores and schools and those sorts of places. Or eventually later in the pandemic, when vaccines were developed, the adoption of vaccine mandates in workplaces around the country. So the opposition to that was quite controversial. And in some quarters, that opposition was often rooted in very racist or even anti-scientific or poorly researched argumentation. And so collecting what we would call conspiracy theories, or sometimes what was just downright racist material could often feel very uncomfortable because it’s not something you necessarily want to amplify or glorify. But again, thinking about 50, 60, 80 years from now when trying to explain about some of the controversies in the pandemic, you need to have the presence of those voices as well. To really explain this is sort of the opposition and tension that existed during that time.
Kim Thuy [00:18:38] So the pandemic is still so fresh in our minds, right? It’s still present. Could you already imagine how it would be presented to Canadians in the future exhibition decades from now? You know, how would we look back at Covid 19? I don’t know, 20, 30, 40 years from now?
James Trepanier [00:19:00] Yeah. I’ve been thinking about this question about how would a museum do an exhibition about Covid, especially museum like ours that, you know, has to speak to a national experience of a broad base, a swath of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. And I think your question about, you know, 20 years from now versus 50 years from now creates maybe a very different type of experience. So if we did an exhibition of Covid in the next 10, 20 years, I suspect that what the museum would want to do is really to create an exhibition experience where visitors who themselves lived through this could connect to the artifacts. I’ve noticed as a historian that works with more contemporary history. That personal connection to the past. If there’s somebody in your family or your immediate group that experienced it, having that conversation is a very intimate way to connect with the past. Now, 50, 60 years from now, once we have that generational turnover, the exhibition would look quite different. It would be a little bit more distant. Probably similar levels of artifact explanations about these rapid home tests were used by everyone in order to be able to be cleared to go to school or to go to work, and they were quite innovative for the time, but they also became quite cumbersome, you know, having to do a test three days in a row to make sure that you were negative things that we all took as burdens, sometimes irritating. They might seem completely different to a generation from now. Who knows where medical technology will be? It might seem like a very foreign thing to stick a swab up your nose to test for a virus. So the further you get down the line, the more foreign the past becomes. And so the onus to contextualize and put people back into that period gets a little higher.
Kim Thuy (Voice over) [00:20:35] Imagine one of those rapid response kits in a museum display decades from now. Or disposable masks. Drawings of rainbows. Stuff so many of us have tossed, becoming important and curious objects for curators and museum goers of the future.
[00:20:54] Thanks for listening to Artifactuality, a podcast from the Canadian Museum of History. I’m Kim Thuy. Artifactuality is produced by Antica Productions. Ann Lang is our producer. Soobin Kim is the researcher. Laura Regehr and Stuart Coxe are Executive Producers at Antica. Mixing and sound design by Alain Derbez. Jenny Ellison, Robyn Jeffrey and Steve McCullough of the Canadian Museum of History are the executive producers of this podcast. Check out historymuseum.ca for more stories, articles and exhibitions from the museum. For more information about the Billings Bridge plaque and other artifacts collected during Covid 19, check out the links in our show notes.