Half My Convoy Just Got Taken Out (Part 2 of 6)

Organizer says police closed highway exits & sent drivers down blind alleys to prevent trucks from reaching Ottawa.

Part 1: The Government Went Insane

Good view of the tents erected at Coventry. Screen capture from a video recorded 7 Feb. 2022, by 4K Guy. Click image to see full video on YouTube.

On Thursday, January 27th, Karl arrived in London, Ontario equipped with a public address system borrowed from a friend. The plan was to meet up with another Freedom Convoy volunteer and her husband, who had a generator for him.

En route, a telephone call forewarned him. Already there was a large crowd and a huge amount of donated food at the designated service station, where truckers from the London area would be joining those who’d left Windsor and Sarnia that morning. “It was just full on panic,” remembers Karl, “good panic.”

Behind the wheel of his pickup truck, he could barely get off the highway, “It took me almost half an hour from the highway exit to get to a spot where I said, "F**k it. I drove across the centre median, across a parking lot, over the curb, over the grass, and into the parking lot.”

While assembling the PA system, he says,

I look over my shoulder, there's a mountain of food. About three feet tall and about 100 yards long. And trailers and cars are still pulling up, offloading food. Sandwiches, salads, baked stuff. God, it was beautiful. It was more than I expected, it definitely was.

What are we gonna do with all this food? It was so cold outside, it was all gonna freeze. I see a truck with a monstrous cab. I'm like, "Can I put some perishables in your truck?’ So we just packed his truck solid. ‘Meet me at Coventry, here's the address. It was a pleasure meeting you, thank you so much, sir.’

There in London, another transport truck got loaded with donated food.

One of several trucks that transported donated food to Ottawa. Photo supplied by Karl. (Click image for large, high resolution photo.)

The bottled water and cases of Gatorade went on the bottom, the more fragile donations on top. “We didn’t want those sandwiches to get squished.” Soon, that truck was also full. Karl called a friend, whose brother was heading to Ottawa with an empty refrigerated trailer. “He eventually pulls in. I shake his hand, thank you. We load up his transport truck. I’m way behind the Convoy at this point,” remembers Karl. “I had all these volunteers helping me. It was so Canadian. No matter your ethnicity, your paycheque, your religious beliefs, everyone was there to help.”

Flying down the highway, he says, “I’m seeing all these beautiful overpasses.” But as he hit Toronto, he realized donated food at the other scheduled Convoy gathering spots might also pose a challenge. In Port Hope, he remembers a group of Sikhs handing out skids of diesel exhaust fluid to truckers from the back of a pickup. Karl approached a 28-foot cube truck adorned with Canadian flags. “Can you bring all this food to Ottawa, meet me at Coventry?” he asked the more-than-willing driver, whom he thinks “was a Mexican fella.”

In Napanee, Karl advised volunteers to “find a transport truck with flags on it. ‘Get this taken care of.’ People just did it. It was amazing. I get to Kingston, same freaking problem. But Harold Jonker’s trucks were there.” Karl remembers fireworks being set off while the donations were being loaded. “It was joyful, everything was just great.”

By the time he reached Ottawa, “it was probably three in the morning.” Two police cars were at the baseball stadium when he arrived. The truck with all the rented gear was waiting for him, the driver asleep in his bunk. “I just parked by a snowbank, and then I was out cold. Got woken up at six or seven” by someone plowing the parking lot.

That morning, “We pull the truck up, and we’re just opening the door, trying to figure out where we’re gonna set up,” Karl remembers, when the police tell them, “You’re not allowed to do this here anymore.” A lengthy conversation followed. The liaison officer who’d given them the green light wasn’t answering her phone. By then some other people had arrived. “What do we do? Should we just do it?”

The stadium is owned by the city of Ottawa, which means it’s public property, Karl explains. “We knew we were legally allowed to protest, to hold our ground on that property.” What were their other options? The hockey stadium? But a scout soon reported that the entire parking lot there had been sealed off with concrete barriers.

“I’m like, f**k it,” says Karl. “Let’s go right on Parliament. I didn’t tell the cops. We get right on Wellington Street, get the trucker to back the doors right up there.” Karl thinks it was around ten in the morning when they started piling tent poles on the front lawn. That’s when they met a liaison officer with the police force responsible for Parliament and the surrounding grounds. She tried to stop them in their tracks.

Eventually the officer who’d sent the text turned up. “You give me back my parking lot,” Karl told her. “You shake my hand, promise me I can set up at Coventry, and I’ll gladly pull this apart.” Finally, that’s what happened. “She shook my hand. So we loaded all the tent poles, the binders, the tarps back onto the transport truck, closed the doors, and went back to Coventry. That’s when Coventry was born.”

 Conditions were less than ideal, with “three or four inches of ice everywhere. It was so cold. It was rough,” says Karl. “Any other time, I wouldn’t have done it.” He started with a mess hall. “I got all the tables inside there, with the cooking in another tent. Kind of how you would do a big sugar shack festival.” But things kept evolving, “it changed four or five different ways. Everyone just took their own ideas and made it work.” Melanie, a professional chef from Montreal, soon assumed responsibility for the kitchen.

That first day, he says, “we looked over and there’s an army of cops coming out of the hotel next door, going into a bus. Two full buses. Oh my God, they’re coming to take us down.” But the buses headed in a different direction. Over the following weeks, nearly every morning and every evening, someone new at Coventry would see the buses and likewise become alarmed. Karl laughs, long and heartily, “No, no, guys. It’s just shift change.”

He believes an overwhelming number of people set out for Ottawa that first weekend. “My brother was coming in with a Convoy from St-Georges de Beauce,” in eastern Quebec, he says. “The cops sent them on dead ends, down roads where it was almost impossible to turn around. It took them hours to get the trucks out, to get back on track. A lot of people left, cuz you couldn’t get into Ottawa. It was insane how many vehicles there were, tens of thousands. Way more than the government ever admitted.”

Over the phone, road captains were telling him, “Half my Convoy just got taken out. They just blocked the road, we had to take the exit.” Karl shakes his head, “Even though we were working with the cops and it’s all peaceful. Even though we were just voicing our opinions. Not once did we ever talk about harming anything. We said from the start, we’re gonna keep it peaceful, respectful, and lawful.”

next installment: How Coventry Got Its Generator