Grave Financial Peril (Part 1 of 7)

Racism wasn't the problem, vaccine mandates were.

O’Jay in Ottawa. Photo from Instagram, photographer unknown.

"Racism?" says O'Jay Laidley, a Jamaican immigrant whose dreadlocks fall below his shoulders and whose Peterbilt was parked on Wellington Street for three weeks. "Ottawa was about unity and love and nothing else. I had persons coming up to me, hugging me, offering me whatever they had - even their last five dollars."

By the time he and his wife Ivana joined other Freedom Convoy truckers on the trek to Ottawa, they were in grave financial peril. Racism wasn't the problem, vaccine mandates were. "I was running to the States," he explains, "hauling steel coils and aluminum sheets, then I'd haul lumber back from Michigan or Ohio to Toronto. Normally my trips would be two days. I'd do two trips per week. Get out, come back, take a couple hours off and then go back out again."

Some pandemic protocols had made life easier. He used to hand US border guards a sheaf of paperwork that would be examined on the spot, while he sat waiting. "Now they have it pre-cleared," the company sends the documentation ahead of time, electronically. "So we have no reason to have any contact. When we're coming back we give them one sheet, they just stamp it, give it back to us, and that's it."

Early on he'd worn a face mask onsite, while picking up loads. But after experiencing a dizzy spell, he says, "I didn't wear it anymore. I explained to the supervisors, who told me to wear a shield. So I had a helmet, with a shield."

While he was "inside his own truck," Ivana points out, "with the windows closed. As a health care worker, I just wanted to scream day and night. Do you understand why?" Too many things made zero sense.

Mid-pandemic, the couple purchased a home in Brantford, an hour southwest of their previous address in Mississauga. They were in a new community, with a new mortgage. Then she was out of a job. She plays a video on her phone showing brightly lit, wholly deserted hospital hallways. "In the break room, on the news that morning, they're saying we're over capacity. But we had twenty empty beds in my unit."    

Whenever she sought explanations from co-workers the answers were disturbing. Discussion itself was discouraged,

Every question that I asked was [answered with] 'I'm retiring next year. I know it's wrong, but we have to do it.' If I went further, it was, 'I don't want to talk about this.' That's what bothered me the most. I've seen a lot of wrongs, a lot. I never wanna work in health care again, unless I'm doing it for free, helping whoever needs help. Plus, I mean, I still can't.

In the summer of 2024, she points out, hospitals still require new hires to be vaccinated against COVID. Three years earlier, pressure to take the shots was intense. Religious exemptions were being rejected; don't even bother, colleagues told her. With every passing week, it seemed increasingly likely that those fired would be denied unemployment benefits. Which is why, in April of 2021, after working at the hospital for eleven years as a personal support worker, she quit her job.

"We decided we're not gonna do it. And God help us, whatever happens happens. If we have to go live in a field somewhere, let it be. Because it just doesn't feel right."

One of her friends from the hospital called her on the last day, the deadline to get vaxxed or else,

She's crying. She's mentioning suicide. She's like, 'I don't know what else to do. How am I going to pay rent?' She has two daughters, she's a single mother, no family in Canada. And she went and she took it, and actually ended up in Emergency. Something went wrong.

Now, I don't know if it's because if you truly didn't want to take it, and then you were forced, but there's been issues ever since. I know so many cases like that. And I just feel sorry.

next installment: It Was So Cold