An Experience I'll Never Forget

Ben, a Hutterite who drove to the next province to feed the truckers, says the unexpected change of venue was a blessing.

Part 1: Hutterite Hospitality

Ben Hofer. Screen capture from a 70-minute interview recorded by Eagle Vision Video Productions. Available here with the purchase of the documentary film, Unacceptable?

Ben Hofer had already been feeding truckers protesting the cross-border vaccine mandate when the western arm of the Freedom Convoy rolled through Manitoba along the Trans-Canada highway. “We needed a lot of food,” he says. “There was a ton of them coming. So I put out a letter to our [Hutterite] communities, the secretaries of our communities.”

Soon, he says, people were donating pails of soup, potato salad, sandwiches, sausages, hamburgers, and barbequed pork. In his words, “We had a ton of pulled pork there. Coolers full of it. Hot, steaming.”

He and his team set up tables at a service station west of Winnipeg. The plan was to “have the truckers roll through the Flying J, make a loop, and we’d give them a hot bowl of soup” as well as some salad and a sandwich:

So we were set up waiting there, and they were coming and coming. And all of a sudden, nope they can’t come in. The RCMP blocked the entrance. They said it was unsafe in there…I took some soup out. Tried to distribute it in a bread tray...my fingers almost froze…it had to be minus 32, 35. It was cold.

Soon Ben’s team learned that the Convoy had decided to push on to Kenora, Ontario - more than 200 kilometres down the highway. A discussion ensued. “Are we going to go to Kenora? Yes, we’ll go to Kenora, we’ll feed ‘em. We’ll take the food there. So that’s what we did, packed up.”

In six or seven of their own vehicles, pulling a trio of 25-foot trailers stuffed with food, equipment, and supplies, Ben thinks they reached their destination four hours later, around 10 pm:

That was an experience that I’ll never forget. Seeing all those people on the bridges, alongside the highway. The signs, the support. It was like a sense of belonging, again…For miles, there was people.

…If we would’ve stayed at the Flying J we would’ve never experienced that. And as we were driving to Kenora, we knew that God had pointed us to be a part of that, to witness that…we actually had a chance to then interact with the truckers…we met some amazing people.

En route, everything was ad hoc. “We didn’t know where we were going,” Ben remembers. Later, not all the truckers were aware that the Hutterites had set up an outdoor banquet in the parking lot of Kenora’s recreation centre. But many did.

That evening, one Convoy participant told Ben’s brother that their actions were resonating deeply. “This Convoy,” he says, “is a different Convoy after today.” The drivers of those big rigs no longer had the slightest doubt: Canadians of all descriptions were behind them. In some pockets of the country, the support was astounding.

Driving to a different province in order to complete their mission “just felt like the right thing to do,” says Ben. “And a lot of people took a lot of heart out of that.”

next: We’re Trying to Make a Living, Leave Us Alone