#11: AGENTS OF CHAOS 💥

Good morning. And didn’t I tell you this would happen? 

Over the long weekend, Ontario teenagers ran amok with fireworks and knives.

Driven by Unemployed Restlessness and a lust for TikTok fame, they looted stores and assaulted employees; they shot low-grade explosives at civilians and their homes. 

Kitchener became the epicentre. That’s what our big story is about this week. 

And I’m pleased to publish a piece from our first-ever guest writer, Max Krueger, who encountered a strange confluence of Boomer Populism and Christian Fundamentalism at a lackluster Canada Day celebration on Parliament Hill. 

Enjoy. 

- Peter

Today’s read is 4 minutes long. ⏰ 

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” - Dr. Johnson

“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” - Dr. Thompson

Today’s youth are a curious mix of saints and hedonists; consumers and content creators; furries and skins. 

Still, they share much in common: they all outsource their thinking to large language models and flood their brains with chemical tsunamis. 

They are a numb, restless bunch requiring heavy stimulation. 

In the evening, they crawl out of their blue-light caves and meet with peers at the group-chat-ordained location. Sometimes, they bring knives. 

On Tuesday evening in Kitchener, 200 teens gathered in Victoria Park to watch the city’s fireworks. They also brought their own.

As dusk fell, hundreds of men, women, and children crowded into the park to watch the show.

The city’s fireworks came and went with little ado. The families were sauntering back to their cars when a BANG rang out through the darkened park and SPARKS rained down indiscriminately upon the retreating crowd.

In a Mad Panic, the men grabbed their children and ran like hell, leaving the women to defend the rear. They tripped and fell over each other while trying to fend off unholy hordes of masked teenagers wielding fireworks and barbecue lighters. 

One woman witnessed the Mad Stampede from a distance. 

“I was walking down towards Victoria Park after the fireworks pushing my daughter in a stroller and all of a sudden there was a mass of people running, and a woman yelled at me to get my kid out of there as someone had a weapon,” wrote a user named DinoRiders on the Kitchener subreddit. 

“Saw a couple cops meander over with zero urgency... Needless to say, I avoided the park after that to get home.”

One Kitchener resident who lives in Victoria Park said police did “their best” to control the teenage hordes, but were ultimately too outnumbered to stem the chaos. 

“The kids (middle and high school age) were out in droves. About 200? Again. Some were lighting fireworks and throwing them into the crowds,” wrote KitchenerBarista on Reddit.

“The kids all think it's so funny or ‘crazy’ but stick around with their phones out trying to get a clip to post online. That's not me guessing, that's what the 8 kids who ran into my backyard said they were doing.”

Someone else said the kids aimed fireworks at their house. 

“Fireworks were directed at my home last night, leaving char marks on the siding,” wrote a Kitchener Reddit user. “They went off around 11:30 PM. This is very likely random: I am a bit of a hermit.”

A day earlier, a gang of teenage boys attempted to rob a Phatboy Fireworks store in Kitchener. They assaulted an employee and tried to escape with armfuls of fireworks when a customer grabbed them.  

“We pulled them back into the store,” the employee told CTV News. “We ended up getting our fireworks back, which is good, and then basically they wrestled us off and they ran away.”

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the long weekend, another Kitchener teen was caught on video setting off fireworks under a stranger’s car. 

And on the east side of Toronto, a group of 14- and 15-year-old boys allegedly stabbed a 20-something-year-old man last Saturday night after he scolded them for setting off unsanctioned fireworks in a Riverdale park. 

Police found the man lying on the ground, bleeding and alone. They could not find the teenagers, who had already escaped back to their blue-light caves. 

There, they will wait and plot their plans for the next public holiday, when they will emerge like freshly hatched spiders itching to terrorize the public again. 

Hundreds of Canadians flocked to Parliament Hill on July 1 to celebrate our nation's 158th birthday. 

With that many citizens in one place, can we extrapolate any data about our nation’s current political and cultural zeitgeist? 

Probably not, but I can tell you the general “vibes” of the event from a single observer's perspective. 

Wellington Street was closed to traffic for the day, and the road quickly filled with a red and white Mob waving flags and uttering chants of questionable intent. 

Members of the Baby Boom generation showed out in force, sporting “Elbows Up” t-shirts. 

A low, uneasy Hum rose from the streets as the Mob walked and talked and chanted, for that was essentially all there was to do: walk, talk, chant, and look at 200-year-old buildings. 

The only attractions on Parliament Hill were a handful of inflatable beavers and a screen playing a livestream of the government's Canada Day celebration, which was being held elsewhere in the city. 

Another notable Sound of the day rose from scattered groups of evangelicals singing praise-and-worship songs. They stood in small groups along the sidewalk, beating their breasts and belting out “10,000 Reasons” and “Hard Fought Hallelujah.”

Some seemed to be part of the same church or organization because they were handing out free copies of “The Great Controversy” by Seventh Day Adventist Ellen White. 

The Adventists are a prominent group in downtown Ottawa. They have a church within walking distance of Parliament Hill where they hold passionate services that are audible from my apartment. 

Another notable Noise rose from the most entertaining part of the day: the roaring jets of the RCAF Snowbirds. 

This was the only moment when it felt like the city was celebrating together. When the planes ripped overhead, the red and white Mob stopped and watched the sky in reverent silence. 

All in all, Canada Day was a muted affair in downtown Ottawa, although I would say it was patriotic. 

I got a paper flag in front of the National War Memorial, which was given proper respect by all visitors. The Prime Minister’s office even swapped out the Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride Flag for a Canadian flag (although I’m not sure if that was because it was Canada Day or the end of “Pride” month). 

It seemed like the government wanted to be patriotic, but didn't know how to throw a party. There were no real events or even the option for vendors to put on events like they do at Winterlude. 

Perhaps this is more so a symptom of Ottawa’s sickness than our country’s. There’s a reason Ottawa is called “The City that Fun Forgot”.