Almost Born in the Cab of a Truck
'What happened in Ottawa was one of the nicest things. The hugs, the love, the respect.'
"I was almost born in the cab of a truck," says Peter Terranova, now aged eighty. When his mother went into labour in early 1944, Toronto was being walloped by a historic snowstorm. "My dad and uncles, six boys, they were all in the trucking business. So my dad walked out to the yard, picked the truck with the heaviest load, and started it up. Apparently they got stuck more than once before reaching the hospital in the nick of time."
Peter was ten or so when the family trucking company acquired their first big rigs equipped with signal lights. Prior to that, drivers stuck their arms out the window.
At sixteen, his father bought him a truck. "Six ton. My dad said, 'Sometimes I need a smaller truck rather than a tractor trailer.' The deal was during the week, if I'm at school, he can use the truck." Snow was amongst the things Peter hauled as a teenager. "Toronto used to get the big snowstorms and would hire dump trucks. Well, my truck had a fourteen-foot box."
Peter wasn't acquainted with any Freedom Convoy organizers when he registered online as a participant, prior to discussing the matter with this wife. He doesn't make major decisions before consulting her, he hastens to explain. This was only supposed to be a weekend trip. With his seventy-eighth birthday fast approaching, he joined the big rigs gathering in London, Ontario. Behind the wheel of a ten-year-old Mazda 5, a small minivan, he made the trek solo.
His part of the Convoy arrived in Ottawa around noon Friday. "We had a police escort," he remembers. "Drove us right into town. I was lost down there, didn't know north from south." For the first few hours, "We were just driving all around." But as darkness fell, "I thought, Well enough of this. I wanna park and have a little nap." After asking a police officer, and affirming his intent to remain for the weekend, he was directed onto Wellington Street where he ended up nose-to-nose with another chap in a car.
"It worked out good," he says. "He watched my six [back end], and I watched his. In case somebody was doing something they shouldn't be doing. Because you had these shit disturbers, Antifa guys. So you'd have to keep an eye on them."
During his working life, Peter was sometimes reluctant to talk about what he did for a living. "People have always looked down on truckers," he says. Impatient motorists have shaken their fist at him or given him the finger, especially after he'd laboured up a steep hill slower than the posted speed limit. "What happened in Ottawa was one of the nicest things. The hugs, the love, the respect."
He slept in his vehicle in that subzero weather for all but three nights out of twenty-two. At the beginning, he says,
my daughters and my wife were trying to get me to come home. Because they were afraid I was going to freeze to death. When it was time to settle down, I'd fire it up, let it run for about fifteen minutes with the heater on, warm it all up. I had my insulated coveralls and my heavy work mitts. Cuz I used to work up north with the big cranes.
I'd pull my toque down over my ears, put the armrest down, the seat back a bit, and pull up the blanket. Then I'd shut the engine off. I'd go to sleep late, and because I'd be tired I'd pass out, wake up at seven o'clock in the morning.
next installment: Family Man
Great story and photo too!