Charlie Angus In Orillia Tonight
By John Swartz
Charlie Angus is coming. He’s been touring across Canada for almost a year, talking to audiences and galvanizing an opposition he calls The Resistance Tour, with the aim of creating a contingent of more politically aware people, and he’ll be in Orillia speaking at St. Paul’s Centre Saturday, September 19 at 6 p.m.
He’s no stranger to opposing government, having been an NDP MP from the Timmins/James Bay riding for 21 years until his retirement just before the April 2025 election.
While he carries a message of, pay attention, you need to pay attention, he’s finding many Canadians are on the same page as he is.
“It was really positive. It’s what I’m hearing across the country. People are engaged. People are not sitting on the fence anymore,’ Angus said.
Recent polls show a majority of Canadians aren’t just approving of the job Mark Carney is doing, they are glad they voted the way they did because he is doing what they want most.
“I think a couple of things happened. Certainly the threats against us are unprecedented, we were pretty shocked and surprised and frightened, and then we got angry. We thought – this isn’t going to come down to a fundamental question of whether we are a sovereign nation or not, we know where we stand. I think that Prime Minister Carney is showing extraordinary leadership on the international stage and what we are seeing is unprecedented. But, I think when the history is written it has to be remembered it was the Canadian people who stepped up first; it was the Canadian boycott, it was the resilience that you saw from coast, to coast to coast that set the stage for where our political leaders should be.”
A good explanation for how popular Angus has become and how popular his message is spreading is because, while he had a Youtube channel, his message was being received by many Americans, and some of those were the people at the Meidas Touch Network who were amplifying what Angus has to say. Meidas Touch, with millions of subscribers, helped increase Angus’s subscriber base from a couple thousand to well over 200,000.
“The day after the Trump election I thought, ‘we are in a very dark place.’ The media pundits were saying Trump is just huffing and puffing and it will go back to normal. I said, ‘we are not going back to normal; we are going to a new level of gangster fascism.’ I can see it in the language of the people that are around him, so it was probably just out of panic saying, ‘people, wake up, something’s coming.’ I had just a few months left in parliament and I thought, ‘I’ve got to use every second I’ve got here,’ to speak up. People started to reach out from all over the country, which surprised me because who watches the parliamentary station, right? And then my speeches were being reposted on Meidas Touch. I think one of the things that’s really extraordinary, as we were becoming much more nationalistic, we were getting some our best news about standing up to Trump and some of the best news on what Canadians were doing from Meidas Touch; the CBC was not interested in the story. They got the story wrong; they’re still getting the story wrong.”
“So, I went on Medias Touch and they said, ‘you’ve got to start doing this in a bigger avenue; you’ve got to start a daily show,’ I thought I’m not doing that, that’s crazy. That was the genesis of speaking up, getting amplified by Meidas Touch and realizing how many Canadians were really paying attention.”
“I was doing my parliamentary thing, I started to do a few posts. I didn’t want to do a nightly response to what was going on in the gong show of parliament, I’m done with that; I wanted to use a platform that talks about how do we restore democracy? How do we protect our values? How do we stand up to negate fascism? Rather than say, oh, these polling numbers of Poilievre… and this is where we stand on, nobody cares about that. They want to know what we are going to do to stand up for our country. This is what I’m hearing from Canadians.”
So what is the general message Angus has for his audiences?
“For the longest time it was to tell people they aren’t alone and they weren’t crazy. They aren’t hearing on the news the incredible resistance Canadians have been showing since day one. I talked about how the boycott has had a massive impact. The Canadian boycott is the largest and most effective, non-violent political demonstration in memory because nobody organized it, people just did it,”
“(I’m) Talking about examples of democracy and how people are doing it. I feel Canadians understand the mission, they understand the nature of the threat and they also need to know people across the country are as rock solid on these issues as they are. Everywhere I go I see the same determination. That’s the story. We need to be reassured if everyone does their part we are going to get through this.”
Angus is also active on Bluesky and Substack, and he gets feedback on those platforms too.
“I’m feeling very hopeful right now about Canada. I think we could be in for some very rough patches ahead. I’ve been speaking about how dangerous the times are from the beginning to get people psychologically prepared. I think we are a much tougher people than we were a year and a half ago because we saw what we are going to do for our sovereignty. I think as long as we are solid and hold the line and support each other and refuse to give into the hate, the other guy is not going to beat us. I was very worried we were going to sign that trade deal and everybody I knew was worried we were going to sign the trade deal because everybody knew there was nothing in it except for our capitulation because they’d come back for more. Now we are in really uncharted territory, but this is the kind of territory I’d much rather be in, than under their thumb.”
All those platforms are international in reach and he has been hearing from people all over the world.
“The Canadian determination is shocking the world. We’ve become a symbol to people because they are amazed at how determined we are, that’s how Canadians are. I always say we are a nation of likeable slackers; we don’t sing a patriotic anthem all that loud, we go to the beer tent, but boy you push us around and you see what Canadians are made of, and you push a fellow Canadian around and you see what we are made of.”
“The world is watching. I get messages every day from all over the United States, all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand and they are saying again and again, ‘we are watching Canada because Canadians are showing us what it means to stand up to the gangsters.”
Specifically he will also be speaking about recent events here in Orillia and how a local issue has become a candidate for incursion by un-Canadian ideologues.
“We do not give our history over to fascists. Our communities need to be free from people who come in to try and disrupt and make us hate each other. I think what’s happening in Orillia is an example of how they are trying to weasel their way in.”
“I’m going to try and learn from people. That’s part of what I do. I go and I talk, but every town I go to I try and learn from people so I can get a better picture and tell a better story of how Canadian resistance is happening. People are not going along with this kind of hate that tries to insinuate itself into communities.”
“They are using the tactics they used in the United States; they find a sculpture, a statue, they come to be provocation and our communities are not putting up with provocations, we are putting the run on them. We are in a war right now, a war against fascism. We didn’t put up with it in the Second World War, why would we put up with it now? It’s like, go, back under your rock.”
What is most amazing is how united Canadians are, given how spread out we are. Social media, if you’ve been on it recently, is awash with agents trying to divide us; some mainstream media is decidedly not giving an accurate picture of who we are and what we need to know, yet we have bonded over the meddling of the government of our American cousins.
“You are seeing a really strong sense of Canadian pride and identity. Canadians don’t wave the flag, Americans do that, they are boisterous. Boy, right now in every single part of this country I see a sense of pride and determination. I talk to people in Quebec every day, Francophone Quebecers they never really talked much about Canada, they were always Quebec, (now) you mess with me, I’m with Canada. In Alberta, where we are seeing all this disinformation. When I’m in Calgary and Edmonton the rallies are huge because they see the nature of the threat up close with what Danielle Smith is doing. There is a definite Canadian determination that really needs to be celebrated. It doesn’t make it special, it shows we understand we are in a war for our sovereignty and values and we are not going to give those up to anybody.”
Angus’s message isn’t all about foreign interference and the rise of fascism. There are more local issues being orchestrated behind the scene and in front of the lights by people who hold power in government that work against us. In particular the erosion of healthcare and education in some provinces is concerning.
“That came up last night in St. John’s. People said, ‘I’m a patriotic Canadian, my values are healthcare,’ and I said yeah, and you’ve got Doug Ford, Danielle Smith and premier Moe undermining it, but Canadians need to take control of our democracy again and say, – these are the values we are going to fight for and we expect our government to stand up with us, and that’s an exciting thing to see.”
There has also been an uptick lately by some sowing doubt about out election system. Canadians are smart, but some are falling victim to not understand our system is very different from the American system and mush more resistant to tampering, yet the message is consistent with accusations one side will cheat (which usually means the accusers are throwing shade to keep eyes off their attempts to cheat). Just this week whistleblowers in Alberta said the provincial government tampered with a petition to have a referendum question in the next election regarding coal mining in the Rockies.
“There was total shenanigans, they were anti-democratic. How do you pick a fight with Corb Lund (the instigator of the petition)? You’re going to support coal mining in the Rockies in the 21st Century? People were against it. Everywhere I went in Alberta they were against it and that petition got screwed over,” Angus said. He has been outing malicious behaviour by provincial governments in step with his message of national importance.
“I have done a lot, definitely in Alberta because she is basically running an open traitor campaign against the country and needs to be called out. I’ve talked about Doug Ford; he presents himself as Captain Canada and he’s gong to give us a-buck-a-beer and emergency wards are being closed on weekends. People need to know they can speak up and take some stuff on. I’m not there just to beat the soap box, but to say if we don’t defend democracy we lose it, and I think that’s what we learn from the United States; Big money, the oligarchs, the tech bros, they all played that role in taking down democracy and taking down the courts; we’ve seen this. Why would we let that happen here?”
An yet, he still finds time to strum a guitar. Angus used to be a punk rocker and then morphed into an alternative folk artist. His current band is Grievous Angels. He plays a few gigs a month and has one October 25th at Hugh’s Room in Toronto. The band just released their 10th album with a new video.
“We’re Canadiana, we’ve got a rock and roll sound, we’ve got an accordion, we sing about Canada, it’s got fiddles, it’s Skydiggers, Blue Rodeo. Punk, was DIY, do it yourself. You didn’t have to be the greatest singer, you had to have passion, you didn’t have to be the best musician, you had to have something you wanted to share. I’ve taken that DIY attitude of not being afraid to just get up a do it and to try. Getting out and playing with the band is what I need to do when I’m not doing politics. We put on a big show.”
The event starts at 6 p.m. with a meet and greet. Nixon Boyd will play some music and a land acknowledgement by Jeff Monague with the program starting at 7. Admission is $20 at the door.
