Michael’s film: Part 1 here. » Part 2 here.
During his 80-minute film love letter to the truckers, Ottawa resident Michael Grandlouis recounts numerous firsthand experiences while the Freedom Convoy was in town. Among them is a brief anecdote that’s highly emblematic.
On the first Saturday afternoon, after a tidal wave of trucks had washed into the nation’s capital, Michael spent hours greeting drivers. These vehicles were all at a standstill on the John A. Macdonald Parkway, which runs along the shore of the Ottawa River.
They were driven by ordinary folk who’d spent days traveling to the nation’s capital in the dreadful Canadian winter. Decent people. The salt-of-the-earth. And that is precisely how they behaved.
After eating a hamburger supplied by a trucker, it was time for Michael to return to his condo near Parliament Hill. It was cold, and darkness had fallen. An apt metaphor for the state of Canada itself in the early weeks of 2022.
In his words:
I start walking back and I mean it’s pitch black…So every eight or ten trucks…they would just turn on, turn on their lights for me while I walked.
And when I would get out of sight, another truck would turn on its lights. Just to illuminate my path.
And they did that the whole way.
Love Letter to the Truckers - Ottawa resident celebrates the Freedom Convoy in an 80-minute film