Government Needs to be Taught a Lesson

'This is one battle that an 80-year-old can fight...I'm going to do my duty." (Final installment of retired trucker Peter's story.)

Part 1: Almost Born in the Cab of a Truck

On Peter’s final day in Ottawa, Luis went for a walk and didn't come back. Sometime afterward, Peter saw a wave of people heading in his direction,

They were walking real fast. Then this big tall guy comes over and starts talking to me. You could see the fear on his face. 'They've gone crazy up there,' he says. 'They trampled a woman with the horses. They're throwing old ladies to the pavement. And the other cops behind are picking them up and taking them to the ambulances for first aid.'

Alone in Luis' truck, Peter had been thinking about a young mother who'd driven in from Toronto a few times. She'd hugged him, "just crying her eyes out," and had exacted his solemn promise that he wouldn't leave Ottawa, wouldn't abandon the protest.

"But then I was thinking: If I get arrested and they seize my car, I may never get it back. And if they take my driver's license, my wife doesn't drive." How would they manage daily life, as two seniors in their late seventies?

So I tried calling that girl. She answered the phone, and I told her what was going on. She was calling me dad, and she says, 'Go. Leave now. Go, go, that's the best thing.'

I didn't leave until later. It was after dark when I left. I was the only one there, standing on that section of Wellington Street. I'd been trying to call Luis, but it just went to voicemail. He was already in the police van, handcuffed. They didn't let him go until dark. I don't know what time he made it back to his truck, I was already gone. I left it running, I had no choice. Because I knew if I shut her off, it wouldn't start for him.

Peter says he drove to the nation's capital in a harrowing snowstorm, and drove home in another one. The first place he stopped after leaving the city behind, "they had no food. All I did was get an extra large coffee, and back on the road. There were no plows, no police, no tow trucks. I shouldn't have been driving, I was in a real ugly mood because of what was going on up in Ottawa. And I felt like a traitor."

Example of a jack-knifed tractor trailer. Photo taken by Washington State Patrol, December 2022. Click image to read news story.

Journeying through the night, he had a couple of close calls. No doubt his decades of experience as a professional driver saved his life. "I was driving as fast as I thought was safe," he says,

I dozed off twice. I was tired. The one time, I woke up on a curb and I was only inches away from the guardrail. The other time there's an abandoned, jack-knifed truck. A white tractor, with a white grain trailer. We were in the westbound lanes and he had done a one-eighty. He's facing east, in the middle of both lanes. Nobody there. No four-ways flashing. No parking lights on. They didn't even get a couple of those big reflective barrels, with those orange and black stripes - nothing.

I couldn't stop. By the time I seen it, the white rig in the dark, with heavy snow, I couldn't stop in time. I had to decide: Which shoulder am I taking?

My daughter had a prayer chain going, because she knew I was coming. One of the girls said she had a vision, that she could feel the wind. When my daughter asked me about that, I said, 'I was driving with the windows down, trying to keep awake.'

Earlier that day, Peter's wife Nancy had learned their bank accounts were frozen. Attempting to make an online purchase, her Canadian Tire Mastercard was declined. After the daughter with whom she was staying drove her to the bank to inquire, "they wouldn't let me near any of it," she remembers. "It's closed," she was told. "You can't touch anything or see anything."

The Toronto Dominion bank teller asked if Peter had made any donations to the Freedom Convoy. As far as Nancy knew, the answer was No. But it didn't matter, they still wouldn't let her withdraw even a small amount to tide her over.

A few days later Peter received a phone call, "It was a lady RCMP. She says, 'We're just working on getting your account cleared up and re-opened.' I said, 'Well that's nice of you. Why didn't you have the decency to call me before you froze my account? She didn't say anything.'"

On Tuesday, after the long weekend was over, their banking access was restored. But that wasn't the end of the matter. Peter and his wife have joined the same lawsuit as O'Jay and Rich. This group of nineteen private citizens, along with Jonker Trucking, is attempting to wrest accountability from the banks, police officers, and government ministers who took the unprecedented step of freezing funds before any charges were laid, any trial was held, or any verdict pronounced. It's the principle of the matter, says Peter. "It's my money, and I have rights."

In his view, the Prime Minister targeted non-compliant Canadians. Then he refused to listen after they drove to Ottawa and protested in the cold for three weeks. Finally, he turned authoritarian. "By invoking the Emergencies Act unjustifiably," says Peter, "Trudeau rolled right over everyone's civil rights."

When invited to join the lawsuit, he says "There was no question. I didn't have a choice. This is one battle that an eighty-year-old can fight. Even my wife, who can barely climb stairs, she can man this battle station."

The lawsuit is "Really, really important to me," he stresses. "If I chickened out because I didn't want to lose my house and home, and the shirt off my back. But I was brought into this world without a stitch and without a dime, and I'm willing to leave the same way."

For a moment, Peter goes quiet. "It's going to cost a lot of money. And it's just getting started. We could lose everything. But the government needs to be taught a lesson. We're fighting for the future of all of Canada, for 40 million people. And I'm gonna do my duty."