Getting Greasy for Freedom
'Rob the mechanic was there with Marcel, and they were able to suck the contaminated DEF fluid out.'
Part 1: Locked in My Shop, Going Crazy
Mechanic Sam's exposure to the back office of the Freedom Convoy was brief, but positive. He remembers a conversation with his wife. "I had put all these auto parts on my personal credit card," he laughs, "and the boss called me and she's like, 'What in the flying f**k is going on here?'"
When he showed up at the Arc Hotel seeking reimbursement, he says, he was promptly made whole. "I had $2,500 worth of receipts. They brought me right in, I signed the ledger, they gave me the cash. 'There you go.' And I said, 'Thank you very much.'"
It wasn't just trucks that required assistance. A number of protesters were sleeping in their cars. Called four-wheelers by the truckers, Sam says they "were a key component of the movement because they were watching what was going on. If a transport truck's on high idle, you can't hear somebody messing around with your fuel tank. But the guy sleeping in his Honda Civic right beside you is keeping an eye on it."
Sam continues,
There were probably a dozen cars that I got going for people. We'd take the battery out, lug it back to the trailer, put it on the chargers, and tell people 'We'll be back in a couple hours.' Write their name on the top of the battery so it went to the right car. Address, street, the kind of car, the colour.
It was just too cold. They'd have tea light candles on the dash, trying to keep themselves warm in these cars, which sometimes cracked the windshield. Some were full of stuff, as though the occupants had been evicted from their apartments.
The first day they encountered fuel contamination, Sam says a contact at the local Kenworth dealership "sent 48 locking fuel caps - 24 of each type. To give out to the truck drivers. For free. He's like, 'Give 'em to whoever you want. Whatever you don't use, bring back.'" The last stop Sam made, when leaving Ottawa on his return journey home, was that dealership. Returning half the caps, he told them, "I try to be a man of my word."
During those weeks, Sam battled different kinds of contamination. He recounts one incident:
Pete in the Peterbilt. Him and his wife were in the truck. They had just lost their farm in Manitoba. They took every last penny and bought this transport truck. And here it is sitting dead, right in front of the Supreme Court. And they don't know what to do. Somebody had put diesel fuel in the DEF fluid, it could have caused thousands of dollars worth of damage.
Once those trucks shut down, they've only got a couple hours to run the heaters and the bunks off the batteries. His batteries were completely flat. But because we were able to get to him right away, and through the graces of a generous third party who brought me racks of new batteries, I was able to just take the flat batteries out of Pete's truck and replace them with brand new, ready-to-gos.
And Rob the mechanic was there with Marcel, and they were able to suck the contaminated DEF fluid out and serviced the whole system.
It seemed like there was always a new challenge around the corner. A young Ottawa resident got into the habit of bashing the trucks and cursing out the occupants "every morning at seven o'clock, while walking to work,” says Sam. “He would just walk down the street, bang, bang, bang." One morning Sam and a military vet were waiting for him. Having grabbed hold of him, Sam says:
I dragged him up to the OPP in my underwear and rubber boots. 'This fellow here has been vandalizing these trucks every single morning.' And the cop rolled his window up.
I was like, 'OK.'
Buddy scurries away. I'm like, 'Are we gonna see you tomorrow? We'll be waiting for you.'
That was the last time it happened.
Late one night, Sam himself encountered some informal security. Low on cigarettes, he was near Rideau and Sussex, where Guy and Mike were parked. Guy had retired for the night in one of Mike's double bunks, so his vintage Mack was empty.
"They were given cartons of smokes," says Sam. The Mack "was full of them. I walked over and had just put my hand on the door" when a burly French Canadian in a biker style leather jacket demanded, "Who are you?" Making a joke of it, Sam pantomimes shaking in his boots while frantically explaining, "It's Sam, the mechanic. It's OK, I'm with the truck." He laughs, "I'm just nonchalant, and suddenly it's like, 'Don't touch that truck!'"
Jim Watson, Ottawa's mayor at the time of the protest, would later testify he'd heard there were criminal elements associated with "the biker gang community in Quebec" at this intersection. Asked about this, Sam says, "I can't even say that those guys were actually bikers. They weren't patch bearing. I think they were in the transportation industry, and were just individual protesters like us."
That said, they were an identifiable cluster. "I mean, if you've ever worn a leather jacket, they're not the best in minus 30. These guys weren't interested in putting on parkas or mittens. You know the guy," Sam laughs. "He's got to wear his tattoos on the outside. There was always a presence. They weren't allowing the police to have anything over us. They were making sure that nobody was out of line. "
next installment: I’ve Never Seen So Much Respect for Canada
Great stories from the day to day. Gives a fuller picture of what it was like on the street.