By Guy Crittenden

It was 4:00 PM on Saturday, June 18, 2022 when I arrived at the HOW Convenience store on the south side of Highway 17 — the TransCanada Highway— about ten minutes drive west of North Bay, Ontario.

“Have you seen James Topp pass this way?” I asked the cashier.

“No,” she answered. “But I’ve heard about him.”

Back in the car with my wife and stepson, I consulted the website CanadaMarches.ca on my phone and the link to the Spot geolocation page whose orange dot updates the most recent position of Mr. Topp and his team along the highway. I’d hoped to intercept him and join his protest march before he turned in for the day. It appeared I’d missed him.

A few exchanges on a Facebook support page led me to discover this Saturday was a rest day for Topp, but I was happy to learn this included a meet-and-greet event at an open-air arena in the nearby Town of Callander that was set to begin in just a few hours. We grabbed a quick bite at a poutine festival in a North Bay park, then headed to the event.

Warrant Officer James Topp has served with the Canadian Armed Forces for 28 years. His current battle isn’t with a foreign army; instead, he’s fighting against dismissal for refusing the COVID-19 vaccination. He remains active in the reserve army, and hopes to raise awareness of the injustice of mandated experimental injections by marching from Vancouver to Ottawa, following the route Terry Fox famously traversed in 1980. His long journey began way back in BC on February 20 and will terminate in Ottawa at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on July 1, Canada Day. Topp met with politicians about a week before his arrival in Ottawa, but from what I saw, his passion is connecting with ordinary Canadians who come out to greet him along the way, and often join in the march for a stretch.

The vehicles in the Callander venue parking lot were festooned with Canadian flags — I teared up at the sea of red and white. Topp was in the arena giving an A/V presentation to an audience of several hundred people. Vendors sold buttons and T-shirts, and the energized crowd applauded often, especially when someone asked Topp if he’d consider running for political office.

After a pregnant pause, Topp replied, “No.”

Topp later said he’d consider it if there was a real need. He admitted he’s a private person who’d prefer retiring to a cabin in the woods than the limelight of his protest march. Serving others takes priority for men like James Topp.

My wife and I hand-distributed a whole bundle of Druthers newspapers to people in attendance and caught up with old friends. Topp’s volunteer team (that coordinates support vehicles and scouts out rest stops, among other things) told me I could join the march the following morning at the aforementioned HOW Convenience store.

At 8:00 AM on Sunday, June 19, I arrived at the rendezvous location and joined Topp, his crew, and about a half-dozen people who’d joined to walk that day.

“I’m the journalist you’ve been waiting for,” I said to Topp with a grin. “You know, the one who gets what’s going on.”

My cheeky introduction fell flat as Topp asked if I had a card (which I gave him) and crossed the highway. I realized my faux pas; I should have introduced myself as an activist first, and a freelance writer second.

“I’ve written articles covering every aspect of the attempted globalist takeover,” I said, to underscore that I’m not hostile media.

“I don’t really discuss those things,” Topp replied. I turned this over and over in my mind as I fell in at the back of the line and we marched west through North Bay and then many kilometres past it before I said goodbye at a rest stop and headed home.

Topp’s taciturnity could have turned me off, but I actually appreciated his caution as I had yet to earn his trust. Most editors in legacy institutions like the CBC are hostile to Topp’s message, having slavishly promoted government edicts and medical tyranny for over two years — offering no alternative perspective on useless mask-wearing, destructive lockdowns, and the jabs that we now know cause injury and death. (Only the day before I’d watched a podcast in which feminist intellectual and former Clinton advisor Naomi Wolf stated we’re living through a global genocide, and that she’s turned to the Bible for inspiration. And I’d also just learned the only safety study supporting claims the vaccines are ‘safe and effective” for pregnant women was of 44 pregnant rats in France, two thirds of which suffered miscarriages.)

During my time marching with Topp, I witnessed a real drill sergeant who at times gave quick tutorials to his followers about single-and double-file formations (the latter being useful for quick intersection crossings). And I witnessed another, kinder side of the man whose eyes light up around children and who’s exceedingly gracious with strangers who stop their cars and run up to shake his hand on the highway shoulder.

think we have the makings of a hero here: a man of grit and integrity who cares for down-to-earth people (and doesn’t cater to media showboats like myself).

“Five minutes for rest and water,” Topp would shout out, as we exited the highway for a parking lot or grassy area. People had to keep up or drop out. I periodically bummed a ride back to my car, which I then drove ahead to a future rest stop, playing leapfrog.

The most interesting dimension of my day was speaking with the various people who’d joined to support the protest action, who reminded me vaguely of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Each had their own reasons for marching, and it was a distinctive bunch.

One “pilgrim” was a female friend who I hadn’t seen in two years. She lives on a farm where she offers therapeutic encounters with animals to people, including autistic children. She disclosed to me that, though uninjected herself, tests showed something was transfecting to her from vaccinated clients. She showed me a lab photo of her red blood cells clumped together in a pattern resembling rolls of quarters.

“It really is a bioweapon,” I said.

Another marcher was a 70-year-old man who trained extensively before joining the march, and kept up impressively. I was most impressed with a blind man who fell in with us for a while in North Bay. It was touching to see people helping him navigate the highway. A tattooed woman was friendly with me, but warned me not to pet her dog.

I had a fascinating conversation with a young bearded man, who chuckled when I remarked that most of my friends in the resistance movement are former hippies (not military folk). He’s a practitioner of Wim Hoff-style cold plunges and (like myself) a student of various arcane spiritual modalities. He told me he owes his participation in the resistance to the spirit of his departed grandmother, who was a spy for Norway during World War Two.

“You get off this streetcar right now and join those protesters!” she’d told him from her perch in some Astral realm when he was in the city. We discussed prepper topics and I enjoyed the sticks of pickled rhubarb he offered me at one rest stop. I’m old enough to remember Terry Fox and his run across Canada in 1980. I was 20 years old at the time, majoring in English at the University of Toronto. I was preparing for a different world than the one that’s unfolding at the moment. Neither he nor I could have imagined then that a sociopathic oligarchy would attempt to establish a New World Order in the early 21st century — a one-world government ushered in with gene-editing vaccinations and an emerging global famine. We find ourselves at the end of a “fourth turning” and imminent currency collapse that will see the US greenback lose its status as the world reserve currency, and the end of the United States empire.

Unless Canadians (and people everywhere) rise up, we’ll soon find ourselves living in a scientific dictatorship (or “technocracy”) governed by AI algorithms, vaccine passports, programmable central bank digital currency, and digital IDs all of which will track and trace our every move and thought, as we inhabit shared pod apartments and are subjected to endless climate change lockdowns.

I’m with you, James Topp. Whether or not you like to discuss global politics, I’m with you.

Every step of the way.

Guy Crittenden is a Canadian freelance writer and journalist and winner of an unprecedented 14 Kenneth R. Wilson Awards for excellence in business journalism. His book The Year of Drinking Magic: Twelve Ceremonies with the Vine of Souls won the 2018 Silver Medal at the Independent Book Publishers Awards. Contact Guy at gcrit@rogers.com