The Good Samaritan & the $4k Truck Part (4 of 7)

Ordered, paid for & delivered by a complete stranger five hours away.

Part 1: Grave Financial Peril

Good Samaritan Neal (left), O’Jay, and Neal’s friend, Kyle. Photo supplied by O’Jay.

Toward the end of the first week, O’Jay’s truck problems became serious. "We were freezing," remembers wife Ivana. "We'd open the bunk, and everything inside was frozen."

O'Jay explains that the “ECM, the electronic control module," had failed. "Everything that goes on within the truck goes through that module." The cost of a new one was steep: $4,000. "And now we're stranded really, we can't even move," remembers Ivana.

Then a small miracle happened. A couple they'd met at the dog park after relocating to Brantford had come to Ottawa for the second weekend of the protest, found their truck, and learned about their difficulties. She continues, "The guy's like, 'Let me call my boss in Hamilton, who'd already donated fuel'" to the cause. Soon, a replacement ECM had been ordered from British Columbia, the other side of the country.

After it arrived in Hamilton three days later the owner of the company, Neal Fennema, drove five hours to Ottawa to deliver it to O’Jay and Ivana - people he’d never met before. In the back of his pickup truck he’d also brought along several Jerry cans of diesel.

"It was a very emotional meeting," Ivana remembers. "We did end up paying him back. Once we got back on our feet, we paid him back."

O'Jay spent no money on fuel during the entire time they were on Wellington. Every last drop was donated by ordinary people. Due to contamination concerns, he says he usually accepted deliveries from the same, small group of individuals. One was a woman with a baby stroller. Beneath the blankets, beneath the infant, a separate compartment held her Jerry can.

Random photo taken by Ivana in Ottawa.

Random photo taken by Ivana in Ottawa.

Random photo taken by Ivana in Ottawa.

During the twenty-two days in Ottawa, they spent maybe a week of nights in hotel rooms. They also witnessed events for which there's no satisfactory explanation. The Confederation Building, which houses offices assigned to Members of Parliament and civil servants, was to O’Jay’s left. At the time of the Freedom Convoy protest, its entrance was obscured by construction hoarding. A little ahead, also on O'Jay's left, was Parliament Road, a laneway with an always-guarded gate. This building, and the grounds behind the gate, are the responsibility of the Parliamentary Protective Service.

"There was one night that I got really scared," remembers Ivana,

I was up at three, four am. They were just like ants, coming out. Everybody had black bags and dressed in black. I was so scared, because I knew this is now government people, this is not nobody. The gate is right there. With my own eyes, I see the gate opening, and I see them running out. They're just spreading in between the trucks. I hear bang, bang, bang, bang. I'm trying to wake him up, something is happening.

Then I see other uniforms, police officers climbing and going on top of an abandoned building, or some construction. They're carrying guns, while these are banging. And then I hear on the radio, 'Nobody leave your truck. No matter what they're doing, do not leave your truck.'

They were trying to provoke truckers. And I thought, if anybody went outside and started some kind of fight, they would be shooting. But everybody stayed inside. Obviously, I called my family, so they knew what was going on. Within a few hours, my immediate family and friends sent us $1,600 that paid for a few days of rooms.

O'Jay says the masked, black-clad provocateurs were tagging the trucks with spray paint, "They were drawing things, penises and all these things, banging on the trucks, hoping you'd come out." Based on conversations with other drivers he knew low-level vandalism was an ongoing concern. "One trucker found two of his tires slashed."

When individuals who were nowhere near Ottawa during the extended protest insist it was a racist event, O'Jay tells them about the time he was pelted with eggs. He and Ivana were part of a group of protesters, some with Canada flags, on the sidewalk near a highrise. "We weren't anywhere near trucks, and we weren't honking," he says. Nevertheless, eggs were hurled at them from balconies.   

next installment: I Saw Them Hitting People