How You Doing, Peter?
The cops 'used to come at night and talk to me...got to know my name.'
Part 1: Almost Born in the Cab of a Truck
During Peter's three weeks in Ottawa, some of the protesters parked nearby affectionately referred to him as 'dad' or 'grandpa.' Police officers treated him with respect. "I found the Ottawa police kind, considerate, thoughtful," he says,
They used to come at night and talk to me. 'How you doing, Peter?' Oh yeah, they got to know my name. There was one night there, maybe two o'clock in the morning, I seen some commotion going on. On the north side of Wellington Street right by the intersection of Bank Street. There was a bunch of people. So I get out, and I go walk up there.
There's a young man having a meltdown. Suicidal. Crying. He was saying his life is screwed. He says, 'I smashed up my pickup on the way to work this morning.' And the two cops - the one cop just kept us, a few truckers, away - and let this other cop kneel down in a snowbank with this guy, talking to him. Â Â Â Â Â
And I didn't get a chance, when it was all over, to shake his hand or anything, but I really felt that he was showing compassion and caring for that young man. They called an ambulance, the ambulance took him away, you know. This was the first week. I was impressed with that.
For Peter, this was "just one example of what people have suffered" due to aggressive and extended pandemic measures. Had that young man not "gone through all this crap over those last so many months," he believes, "he might not have been melting down that night. He would have been able to handle it." Spinning out on a slippery road, hitting the guardrail, and totalling a truck is never a good experience. But it can be especially challenging if you're also experiencing employment discrimination, or if you've been harshly condemned (and/or shunned) by friends and family due to pandemic differences of opinion.
"How many people have done themselves in," Peter asks, "because of the state that the government put them into?"
The incident reminds him of a difficult time in his own life. "I couldn't get a job for six months. I was suicidal. I felt I was a burden to my family. I figured I was taking food off the table, I was a drag to the family because I wasn't providing. I felt hopeless." Now, with the passage of time, he says, "I learned from that, though. I wouldn't change it. These are all experiences that have made me knowledgeable."
One of Peter's daughters, along with her husband and child, visited him in Ottawa two weekends in a row. The first time, Peter shared their hotel room. On the second occasion, they all spent the night in an Ottawa basement apartment that belonged, he says, to "an older lady, who had two boys in the Canadian navy. She put us up. She wouldn't take nothing. Just put us up, I had a shower."
That second Sunday morning, Peter's son-in-law drove past the Prime Minister's official residence. "All the cops were there, in their cars, in the driveway. There were gates," Peter remembers.
"Then we stopped off at Coventry," the baseball stadium supply depot. "We had breakfast there and in the corner of the big tent they had a place where people could make donations. So all the cash that people had given me, I took it out," and handed it over.
By then he'd received a couple thousand dollars from members of the public eager to assist him. Rather than spending those funds on himself, he passed it along.
Peter's daughter had borrowed a wagon from her sister and brought it to Ottawa. When they were leaving, "I asked if I could keep the wagon," he remembers. "So the guys then started using it for hauling fuel. I said, 'Take care of it, don't lose it, because it belongs to my grandkids.'"
Toward the end of the protest, he found it "folded up and left behind my vehicle."
next installment: Why Peter’s Son Didn’t Make it to Ottawa