Like a Grenade
Shards of steel everywhere. (The darker side of the event.)
In a typical month, many things happen - large and small, significant and insignificant. Add in two years of COVID craziness, normal interpersonal friction, extended time away from home, emotion-laden accolades from the public, deliberate misrepresentation by the media, and you’ve got a hot mess to process.
A year-and-a-half later, there are days when Jeff is happy to talk about his Freedom Convoy experience, and days when he’d rather not. In his words, there’s a “darker side of the event.”
Exhibit A: The misunderstanding between him and his wife hours before he left Nova Scotia. They’re happily married now, he says, but harsh words were exchanged at the time, which is why he left home with only the clothes on his back.
Exhibit B: Diagnosed with celiac disease six months before, his health had stabilized and his spare frame had gained back 15 pounds:
But I still hadn’t figured it all out. Then I took off to Ottawa. At that point I didn’t realize how bad it was. So somebody would give me a sandwich, and I’d just eat the meat and cheese. But they’d touched the bread and I got really, really sick two or three times up there. And with no bathroom, it wasn’t good.
Exhibit C: The snipers on the rooftops. “Right where I was sitting, I only saw one,” he says. But “I saw more when I was walking up on Wellington. I knew they were there.”
Exhibit D: The cold-blooded stranger - Jeff calls him an anti-protester - who tried to injure them. One evening Jeff and a couple of others were keeping warm near a 45-gallon drum with a fire inside.
We were standing there talking, and the guy come walking along. He seemed a little odd, younger guy. But he stopped. How are things going, whatever. We talked to him for a second or two, and he walked away.
We only had the fire going for a night or two. After that, we didn't do it again because we heard a clunk. And I just happened to glance over and look inside. It was a can. I can't remember if it was vegetable soup or beans he threw in the fire. And if we hadn’t stepped away. It was like a grenade going off. The can, the shards of steel that blew everywhere.
Exhibit E: Jeff says he drank too much during the pandemic. Since Ottawa, that’s gotten worse rather than better. He still has trouble sleeping. And he’s not the only one, he says.
Jeff and his fellow truckers did something truly historic. That leaves bruises, wounds, and scars.
"That leaves bruises, wounds, and scars." Wise words.