Some Canadians refuse to timidly stand down while the conservative values this great nation was built on — the same values needed to hold it together — are trampled on.Churchill Manitoba’s Wally Daudrich is one of them. He’s fed up with this country being beaten up by leftists and the weakness of some Conservatives who’ve gone Liberal-lite to appease them. .SLOBODIAN: No more Liberal-lite for Manitoba conservatives, says Daudrich .Daudrich, a leadership candidate for the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party is campaigning to preserve those values — honouring family, independence, hard work — instilled in him by his father Johann who immigrated to Canada nearly a century ago, and his mother Lila who arrived a few years later.Like countless others who courageously gravitated from across the world seeking freedom and opportunity, the toil and tears of Daudrich’s grandparents and parents helped build Canada strong.“It breaks my heart when you see the sacrifices of that generation and where we’re at today,” said Daudrich.The family, labouring together as a unit to beat poverty, was once revered.The family is now under fierce attack by forces aiming to destroy it — like the thieving, murderous Marxists, communists, and dictators did in the places immigrants fled. And still flee from.Canada’s also under attack as people who contribute nothing while they enjoy this country's benefits, clog streets with hate-fuelled protests. They rage and burn the Canadian flag, a symbol of welcoming refuge others pledge loyalty to.“I have every high regard for new immigrants because they’re going through what my parents did to some degree, perhaps not with the refugee status that my folks had,” said Daudrich.But Canada, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Liberals, flanked by an NDP desperate for relevance, is being led down the wrong path.Daudrich lamented the Manitoba PC party is “moving from our Conservative roots trying to become the de facto Liberal party.”The majority of the party — rank-and-file membership — are hardworking, good people. But the party has been misled by a few willing to compromise, he said.An “internal cleansing” is needed to “throw the garbage out.” Daudrich aims to fight for the party’s “heart and soul” damaged by an “insurgency of progressivism,” disunity, weakness, and compromise crushing conservative values and betraying loyal party members.The values “aren’t right-wing,” said Daudrich. They’re “bedrock” values Canadians and Manitobans built society on.“Why would we abandon them now as a party? So that we don’t have to appear too conservative to the mainstream media which frankly, they’re only there for one reason.”The April 26 leadership vote is between Daudrich and Fort Whyte PC MLA Obby Khan, former cabinet minister and pro football player. (Interim leader Lac du Bonnet MLA Wayne Ewasko is not running.)Daudrich owns Lazy Bear Lodge and Expeditions, a Churchill eco-tourism company. His $7-million artic cruise ship the Matonabee offers polar bear and beluga whale expeditions on the Hudson Bay.The father of five is a successful businessman. Success wasn’t handed to him. In 1995 he decided to build a restaurant in Churchill. He cut and hauled trees to build a log structure. His wife Dawn insulated floors when nine months pregnant. They later created lodgings, then ventured into excursions.“We struggled at first with the business. I learned from my parents how to save money but then how to reinvest it, and that’s the essence of capitalism.”His parents had struggled too.“You grow up in a home that by any standards today would have been a poor house, or a poor home. But we never knew it. We lived frugally. They saved every dollar, every dime that they could. They lived an honest and fruitful life giving to others when they could.”“My dad and mom taught me the values I have … Who we are is a summation of the decisions that we’ve made, but also all of the things we’ve been exposed to in the past.”It was the wrath of communist Russian leader Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks to which his grandfather Johann Daudrich was exposed, that made him set his sights on Canada.“He and his family snuck out of the Soviet Union in 1928 after seeing their community decimated by Bolshevik soldiers exacting tax in the form of livestock. Eventually everybody was broke, and they started shooting everybody.”In the early 20s, communists eliminated private enterprise — farms and businesses — to attain their total collectivism goal. Just like that, everything people worked for was seized.Those not executed were extradited to endure brutal conditions in Kazakhstan or forced labour camps in Siberia from where no one ever returned.German, Ukrainian, and Jewish minorities suffered the worst ethnic cleansing.(And here we are today in Canada, the haven so many ran to, tolerating rabid screams for the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Who’ll be next? Germans? Ukrainians? Who?)“German Russian Baptists, they weren’t allowing them out because Baptists would fight, meaning they could be drafted into the army, whereas Mennonites weren’t. They basically became Mennonites for a period of time so they could get a visa to get out of the country.”His grandparents left Mariupol, Ukraine (the area where fighting rages now between Ukrainian and Russian forces)) and headed to Moscow to file paperwork.Their gold jewelry was confiscated. They were left with no money, only personal belongings. They headed to the Polish border.A telegraph operator at a train station told them to head back to Moscow because their paperwork had been incorrectly completed.“My grandpa said, ‘Screw that.’ He actually led the 10 kids and his wife around the train, got on the other side and snuck out of the country at that point.”Arrest warrants was issued by The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police, later replaced by The Committee for State Security (KGB), for Daudrich’s grandpa, father and two uncles.But they arrived safely in Halifax and boarded a train for Overstone in southern Manitoba. They ran a little dairy operation, cleared the land and “lived a rough life for the first few years, making his kids work like dogs.”They accumulated enough wealth to buy a building in small town Minitonas and ran a little restaurant and hotel “kinda like the grandson is doing 60 years later.”Daudrich’s German mother lived near Kiev, Ukraine. During the Second World War, at 16 she was sent to the Polish Lodz Ghetto concentration camp from 1944-45. She survived that and diphtheria and eventually immigrated with her brother to Winnipeg. Her parents followed later.“I share these same stories with my kids now,” said Daudrich.Similar stories of resilience and hardship can be shared by millions of Canadians whose ancestors arrived penniless but endured and overcame — because of their conservative values.That’s a message lost on many today enjoying Canada’s perks while wanting to mould it into some version of leftist radical woke.Trudeau claimed Canada has no “core identity.” It does. He just doesn’t get it from the lofty, privileged perch handed to him.Conservatives who’ve forgotten their roots take a tepid stand against the attack on Canada.“What I’ve seen in the past few decades, maybe with a few exceptions, is that I would rather be ruled by the first 10 people in the phone book that some of the leadership we’ve had. In my business, I always listen to my clients,” he told the Winnipeg Sun.Daudrich’s confidence lies in the belief that the majority of Conservative Manitobans who share his values “will form the next government.”“I’m going to be their figurehead. I’ll be as much of a leader as God allows me to be. But it’s the miners, it’s the farmers, the small businesspeople, it’s the health care worker, it’s the infrastructure builder, it’s the First Nations guy who wants a road into his community — those are the people that are going to put somebody like Wally Daudrich in power. Those are the people that I’m going to be answering to.”
