Awake in the Parking Lot
It's cold, it's windy, and toilets are in short supply.
read Part 1: Fireworks & Applause previous installment: Onward to Ontario
AUTHOR NOTE: When I initially published this material about Jake & Lynnette, trucker & wife from Saskatoon, they were out-of-the-country. I wasn’t certain if the videos on which I was basing my research were backed up, and worried they might get censored by Facebook. I therefore assigned this couple the pseudonyms Ted & Sally. After they returned, they backed up their videos & consented to the use of their real names.
Ted and Sally rejoined the Freedom Convoy in Kenora, Ontario late Tuesday. First thing Wednesday morning, she recorded a video in the parking lot in which they’d spent the night. It’s full of big rigs, pickups, and cars - which ran all night so that their occupants didn’t freeze to death.
“This isn’t nearly all the trucks,” she says, walking between the rows. “I don’t know where the other ones are parked, cuz we have to split up. We’re too many for one parking lot.”
Sally tells us “the Hutterites have been amazing.” Evidently, their roast pig plans were stymied. Instead, they served the truckers delicious “homemade vegetable soup and Italian sausages last night.”
This morning, there’s an 8 am meeting on the schedule. Sally explains:
Right now we’re waiting for a meeting to try and make sure the four wheelers are gonna stay behind and let the trucks go first…Our meeting’s going to [be held] outside in the cold by that lit up bus.
Sadly, the parking lot has no amenities. When “you get up in the morning and you gotta go pee,” she says “there’s no bathroom around. So you gotta get on the radio” and find someone driving a smaller vehicle who’s heading to a service station. “So I just did that.”
You can tell from her voice that she’s shivering. “This is definitely not just a joyride,” she says to those watching her live video broadcast, “Keep praying for us.”
Photos are screen captures from the video shot by Sally (not her real name) in the Kenora parking lot prior to 8 am, 26 January 2022.
The sign in the first photo calls freedom “our God given right.” In the second photo, one of the flags says F-Trudeau. The Christian truckers - and, no doubt, the Hutterites - weren’t overjoyed by the profanity, but the Freedom Convoy is a fine demonstration of the ‘live and let live’ philosophy in action.
People tolerated each other. The focus was on unity, on pulling together - rather than division.
next installment: Pulling the World Together
The focus was on unity!