The Decline of the World Wide Rally in Canada
The WWR is without its head, and an offshoot is no replacement
Neet Newz last entry was about the World Wide Rally in Canada, just before the seventh World Wide Rally day. Since then the World Wide Rally organizing has changed significantly, leading to its further decline in Canada.
Typically the World Wide Rally has at least twenty Canadian cities participate with “official” approval and more without. This was more or less the case for the seventh World Wide Rally on March 25th.
By the eighth World Wide Rally on May 21st, only one city had a rally with official approval, and a small handful of unofficial rallies in other cities.
To understand why, we need to go back to the seventh WWR.
Leadership Resignation
Before the seventh WWR, lead Canadian coordinator Bettina Engler was involved in a few disputes. My last entry made note of the Vancouver one, where Chris Sky announced he would be doing a “World Wide Rally” at the same time and place as Freedom Rally World’s, the group that usually organizes the Vancouver WWRs. Bettina Engler used official channels to give Chris Sky a “Notice of Liability” demanding he stop using the WWR name and that he was not allowed to speak at any World Wide Rallies.
But Chris Sky was not deterred, and quickly gathered an alliance of Vancouver-area groups and figures that had been sidelined or otherwise had issues with the Freedom Rally World organizers. Both factions ended up doing their own separate rallies at the same time on opposite sides of Jack Poole Plaza. At one point, he had his supporters march over to the rally on the opposite side to demand “unity” from them. The request was denied. They returned back without much incident afterwards. According to some participants and observers Chris Sky’s side was larger.
The second dispute was less of an amusing spectacle but more significant. Bettina Engler refused to approve the Toronto rally for the seventh WWR. While not explicitly stated, circumstantial evidence suggests it was because Toronto organizers had previously allowed Vlad Sobolev as a speaker, who was on Bettina’s blacklist along with Chris Sky.
This move caused Toronto supporters to complain to the global organizers behind World Wide Demonstration (as it is called outside of Anglosphere countries). It turns out there was another team of eight people from different countries in charge. Allegedly these organizers, or at least an apparent Canadian member named “Joelle” sided against Bettina Engler, which caused her to “step back” from the World Wide Rally.
However, Bettina did not surrender or hand over control of the channels and pages that she ran. No alternatives were made in place, leaving Canadians who wanted to organize their own World Wide Rally events without their familiar rubber stamp. The “international” World Wide Demonstration pages and channels likewise remained neglected and sparsely updated if not abandoned completely.
The seventh World Wide Rally, while smaller than past ones, was at least a small success given the weak state the COVID-19 conspiracy movement has been in since most restrictions were lifted. CAHN did an article overviewing some of the rallies for the seventh WWR, but neglected Victoria’s, which was one of the bigger demonstrations that day with hundreds of participants, and Kelowna’s regular rallies did not get a mention.
Eighth World Wide Rally and Ocean 2 Ocean split
The lack of a national coordinator does not mean that people will not try to organize World Wide Rally events, whether officially verified or not. In some cities the COVID-19 conspiracy movement is now accustomed to having larger World Wide Rallies every other month. Some have been trying to continue this even if they do not know or care where to get endorsed as an official WWR event. This may not necessarily matter however, as few participants followed these matters (my interest in this status was more due to the intra-movement tensions it resulted in, not to dismiss those who were not considered official).
Before the eighth rally, the World Wide Canada Telegram channel Bettina Engler ran as well as the “Canada For Freedom” website that was used to coordinate Canada’s World Wide Rallies was altered to promote a new “Ocean 2 Ocean” series of rallies that are supposed to happen June 4th. Unlike WWR, Ocean 2 Ocean is presented as being specific to Canada.
At present Ocean 2 Ocean is a poor replacement for the World Wide Rally. It had eight rallies planned, and now that Ottawa’s has been cancelled there are only seven, none are in Ontario or Quebec. Bettina Engler’s past success with the WWR will not necessarily translate into success for Ocean 2 Ocean. She is not very well-known even to local World Wide Rally organizers, and her own attempts at organizing things independent of the WWR brand were not very successful. A “Canada-wide” rally she coordinated for May 1st, 2021 went by with little notice. A big Montreal rally organized on the same day was not part of it, and took up most of the interest for that weekend. Her success with the World Wide Rally in Canada was more due to her having the right connections to manage a popular brand at the right time than anything unique to her.
Canada’s eighth World Wide Rally on May 21st meanwhile, was the weakest one yet. Toronto was the only Canadian city listed on the official international pages, which was supposed to include convoys from Whitby and London. But even with that it only managed to be a couple hundred at best. The derecho which rendered many Ontarians without power that day can only give a partial explanation for the poor turnout, as COVID-19 conspiracy rallies have been at a low point in general lately in addition to the other issues with the World Wide Rally.
Other cities which I saw doing “unofficial” World Wide Rallies include Halifax, Calgary, Montreal, Edmonton and Vancouver. Of these Calgary appeared to be the biggest, but even it was nothing spectacular compared to what they normally get, although some of that is over forced location change. Edmonton was just another Chris Sky speech and march with around 50 people. The Halifax video I saw only focused on the speakers and not the crowds. The only photos I saw of Vancouver’s turnout looked poor. Montreal I did not see anything for at all (one graphic suggests Montreal’s rally may have been official, but it was not listed on any of the WWD pages).
It’s also noteworthy who did not partake in the eight World Wide Rally day. Freedom Rally World has done every World Wide Rally in Vancouver since the second (only missing the first one because they instead went to Kelowna’s), but they did not do anything for the eighth one. Instead, the unofficial rally in Vancouver was organized by the same coalition of groups and figures that sided with Chris Sky at the seventh one. Note that the email address is Make Canada Free Again, one of Vlad Sobolev’s projects (who was also slated to speak for the Toronto WWR, further showing that efforts to isolate him from the WWR have floundered).
And while Kelowna did have a “freedom rally” that day it was not promoted as a World Wide Rally, despite it being one of the cities with the most active and largest WWRs (and important to note, former coordinator Bettina Engler’s city), and C.L.E.A.R. being one of the main groups that had been involved in organizing them.
The central international channels for the World Wide Demonstration also appear to show decline. For the eighth World Wide Rally last weekend, the interntional pages only showed 21 rallies around the globe (with “all cities” as the location for Portugal’s graphic), although it claimed to have over 100 cities participating (Even if they did have over 100, that would still be a step down from >150 and >200 cities they gave for past events). UK and Australia only had one city listed each for the eighth WWR (London and Melbourne), while Germany, another key country, did not have any. Five of the 21 locations listed were in Japan, and four in Sweden.
The decline of Canada’s WWR shows what an oversized influence a single person in charge of online promotion can have.
Last but not least, I’d be amiss if I did not find space to mention that Bettina Engler promoted an antisemitic white nationalist conspiracy theory on her little-watched channel.