A Lonely Time

'Things seemed to be getting worse and worse until the Convoy started.'

Part 1: Ottawa Resident Donates Rare Flag to Truckers

Photo supplied by Leon.

Leon describes himself as a senior civil servant. "I'm very much a white collar, I dress in a suit and a tie to go to the office. Not a trucker at all." He is also, he says, "one of the unfortunate folks who had some complications at work" due to the COVID vaccine mandate imposed on the entire federal workforce from November 2021 onward.

"I chose not to even attest," he explains. "They're telling us that we must complete this attestation. My attestation was that I will not attest. I think conscientious objection was my official wording. Three days later I received a letter saying if you don't get your first dose and provide proof by this day, you will be placed on leave without pay."

The thought of conforming "never crossed my mind," he continues. But he did begin examining his options. "No one knew how long this was going to last, if this was going to be indefinite." Someone he spoke to recently mentioned "thinking about leaving the country. Those thoughts crossed my mind, too. I said, 'This is crazy. My parents were from Poland. I have citizenship there. Maybe I had to go back to Europe. Everything was on the table at that point."

The second half of 2021 and early 2022 were, he says, "a lonely time. Less than five percent of the people" in his life shared his perspective,

It was very discouraging and I'm going to say quite scary. Not knowing where things were going to end up. Some people think there was an off-ramp that was already planned. That wasn't the case. As a federal public servant, there was no end date in sight at that point. It wasn't until the end of June [2022] that they made the announcement that we can come back to work after eight months.

And it wasn't just civil servants. The travel restrictions, not being able to board a plane or a train - or leave the country. There were so many things on the federal level that were a problem. Things seemed to be getting worse and worse until the Convoy started.

On January 7th, for example - three weeks before the first trucks arrived - a headline in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper said the federal health minister had begun talking about mandatory COVID vaccinations - even though Canada already had one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

Raising the flag. Photo supplied by Leon.

Due to all of the above, Leon says he was "very much a proponent of people standing up and saying, 'Enough is enough.'" Watching the behaviour of the authorities during the pandemic has undermined his trust. In his words, that has "absolutely been shattered. We can't trust the government, can't trust the medical establishment, our institutions. Everything, it seems, has to be looked at in a different light."

In the course of his employment, Leon has met Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a number of times. At the beginning, in 2015, his incoming Liberal government had seemed like "a breath of fresh air. And then seeing how he treated people afterwards was just shocking."

On the final Saturday of the Freedom Convoy protest, Leon says he witnessed police behaving atrociously. "It was painful to watch. I saw women, I saw men being pepper sprayed. They had a front line of police officers who would shove people forward and then others standing behind them would spray whoever's in the way. People were just covered in it."

Photo supplied by Leon. This is Sparks Street, Ottawa’s famous pedestrian thoroughfare.

Amidst everything that was going on, he lost track of the boom truck. "I wondered what had happened," he says, when contacted more than two years later.

Ben considered it a high honour to receive "a flag that was taken down from the Peace Tower. For somebody to give that up, and give it to me. It was very precious to me." Both men mourn its loss. (When Ben retrieved his truck from the impound lot, the flag was missing.) "It's unfortunate," says Leon, "but I'm glad it was there."

He continues,

I'm proud of how I acted then. A lot of people wish they had done similar things, put up more resistance. At the time, people were attacking you, but afterwards I think they've come to their senses. We were being bombarded by media and governments. When there's a break from that, people start thinking for themselves. They said, 'Wait a second, this was craziness.'

So now I get a lot of accolades after the fact. For doing what I did - standing up and not participating.