Love You Can Feel (Part 4 of 4)
Since when is standing up for freedom of choice criminal?
Part 1: Boom Truck Ben
After he left the scene to deal with his pepper-sprayed eyes, Ben's truck was seized and impounded. But first it had to be packed up, and he'd taken the key with him.
"They would have had to have the truck running to collapse everything," he explains." I was fully set up, the boom was in the air, my outriggers were out. It would have had to be running for all that to come in. But there wasn't any sign of damage to any wiring. Even looking at all the hoses, the connections." More than two years later, the details of how the authorities accomplished those tasks remain a mystery.
Ben and his brother-in-law returned to Ottawa a week later. At the impound lot on Monday morning, they discovered the truck windows had been left open the entire time. "There was a pile of snow on the inside of the cab. It was a mess. And the batteries were dead." Worse, his cable hadn't been rolled in. "It was just a rat's nest, all kinked. It was useless." His flag was also missing. "We just assume they threw it in the trash or something."
Hours later, when Ben turned off Highway 401 to head south, he glimpsed a couple of familiar faces. That was his first indication that "something was in the works." In fact, a full-blown welcome home party had been arranged. "When I got rolling into town there's all these cars parked on both sides of the road. People everywhere," cheering and waving flags as Ben honked his horn with enthusiasm.
"Thinking back now," he says, "I would have gone through that a lot slower. Just to kind of take it all in. That was very precious."
Despite the prominent role Ben's truck played in the protest, he wasn't arrested, and therefore hasn't been burdened by legal troubles. Nor were his bank accounts frozen. "I don't know why," he says. "You'd think they'd pick on the most obvious of us. There's no rhyme or reason to a bunch of this stuff."
Anonymous donors connected to a military veterans' group paid his impound fees. They also covered the cost of a new cable, which he thinks was in the neighbourhood of $1,000. "I've heard churches talk about the glory of God being tangible," he says. "Or a love that you can feel." In his view, his overall Ottawa experience can be described that way.
As for the cops, "I have a very hard time respecting our police," he says now,
I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's like a nasty taste in your mouth. You just can't get rid of it.
The measures that they took to evacuate us out of Ottawa. They came in there with army-like vehicles, with machine gun turrets on the top of their trucks and stuff. And you're thinking, there hasn't been as much as a fist fight out here.
In a video interview three weeks after the Convoy was shut down, Ben was invited to address critics of the Freedom Convoy. He said he had questions for them:
Since when has the Canadian flag, and it being flown or waved around, been offensive? I just can’t wrap my head around that. When is standing up for freedom and your freedom of choice, when is that criminal? I don’t understand.
Always feel heartened to hear of the huge enthusiastic response of those who understand our freedoms are threatened - in this case Ben arriving home .