Don Martin: The thunder of overreaction as Rolling Blunder wheels toward Ottawa

There’s panic in Ottawa that thinks it’s hearing the distant rumble of an angry rerun of the Freedom Convoy heading toward the national capital.

The Public Safety Minister is vowing federal help to block Friday’s Rolling Thunder biker rally from becoming another Ottawa occupation.

Public health officials caution about the mental stress so many baritone-belching mufflers will inflict on downtown residents.

Restaurants are bracing for more frightened-off customer interruptions.

And the Ottawa police chief is talking tough, vowing the feeble police force of February will unleash a serious crackdown this time, action he undoubtedly sees as essential to making his interim job permanent.

• What to know about the Ottawa motorcycle convoy

A large chunk of downtown Ottawa will be sealed off to traffic starting Friday with various police forces on standby to control a mob with the stated goal, according to event planners, of laying a wreath on the “desecrated” National War Memorial.

Honest. That’s it, by way of stated intention anyway.

This is clearly not a Hells Angels gang invasion, the return of the insurrectionists or another downtown-paralysing takeover by illegally-parked trucks.

This is shaping up to be a Seinfeldian-level protest, a rally about nothing more than "freedom" from mandates that have already been repealed while "liberating" a National War Memorial that was briefly fenced in last February but has been open for respectful remembrance ever since.

It could be more Rolling Blunder than Thunder when thousands, but more likely hundreds, of bikers are forced to U-turn away from the barricades of a vehicular-obstructed Parliament Hill.

• Capital Dispatch: Stay up to date on the latest news from Parliament Hill

As was the case with the Freedom Convoy, it’s the organizers of Rolling Thunder who are giving the event's modest purpose some ominous overtones.

Planners darkly warn of a ‘free-for-all’ if cops actually shut off all routes to the National War Memorial as planned. I suspect the only "free-for-all will be the scramble to find parking spots once bikers find themselves cut off from motoring by the war memorial.

Then there’s the proposed rally on Parliament Hill, minus any actual rallying cry, which so far inexplicably lists only one speaker, a yahoo with a racist, homophobic and anti-vax background named Chris “Sky” Saccoccia.

Despite all the advance hysteria and twisted communications, the more likely scenario is this: A few hundred beer-bellied 60-plus bikers blasting Born to be Wild from their Harley Davidson speakers – hey, that also sounds a lot like me riding my Honda – will approach the downtown core emitting many decibels from their noise-enhancing tailpipes.

Encountering roadblocks everywhere, they’ll be forced to walk to the National War Memorial for a wreath-laying ceremony and look around for a place to have lunch before heading home.

There will be no Conservative politicians pledging support or leadership hopefuls showing up to burnish their right-wing credentials. A usual-sized Parliament Hill rally will feature the usual anti-vax suspects carrying upside-down Maple Leaf flags. And no one will remain overnight on any streets because, unlike in the big rigs, sleeping on a single-seat Harley just isn’t very comfortable.

Now, of course, we have to be careful about predicting the unpredictable. Only an idiot would dismiss these guys as "fringe" elements before seeing what actually develops. Wait . . . didn’t somebody say that about the Freedom Convoy?

But this is not that.

This has every indication of becoming a modest reunion of nostalgic protest compared to a February event which unleashed global copycats and forced the feds to invoke an Emergencies Act, now being covered up by a limited public inquiry.

All the alarms now being sounded by police and politicians could look extremely alarmist in hindsight if the rally delivers what the website promises, specifically a gathering of peaceful and tolerant bikers around the war memorial.

Let’s hope Rolling Thunder Ottawa ends up being grown-up boys on their 1500CC toys playing rebels without a cause to the rallying cry of Born to be Mild.

That’s the bottom line.