People Can Break
When the pandemic hit, some Canadians were already at low ebb.
Part 1: Locked in My Shop, Going Crazy
It's Saturday night. There's a dense crowd around the makeshift stage in front of Parliament Hill. On stage with his guitar, Sam is accompanied on fiddle by Daniel, whom he's met there in Ottawa. Sam sings a lighthearted nineties hit about pickup truck culture. He also sings I'm From the Country, which talks about hard work, home cooked meals, and friendly neighbours.
"So many of us who were in Ottawa were representing plenty of people at home,” he explains. They “were holding down the fort in our absence. We were on an absolute mission." Lots of people spent enormous sums of their own money during the protest, he reports. One chap who supplied the truckers with fuel, “kept putting down his platinum card. He's like, 'If we don't make it out of this, this is worth nothing, anyway.'"
When Sam first began thinking about joining the Convoy, he told his wife the same thing, but in different words: "We've got to fix this fricking problem, because if we don't fix it, our ship's going down."
The word unsustainable is tossed around by those concerned about the planet. But that word also applies to communities, to families, to individuals. Spirits and people can break. When the pandemic hit, some percentage of Canadians were already at low ebb. Fate had already bruised and battered them. Sam was one of those people.
In 2018, he suffered a head injury at work. The Workers' Compensation battle that followed ended unjustly, in his view. Late that year, the stepfather with whom he was close died unexpectedly. "He just drops dead, for no apparent reason, in his early fifties.” Shortly afterward, Sam broke out in shingles. But an even worse blow fell in February of 2019.
During a snowstorm, Sam's beloved eight-year-old son died in an accident on the farm. After towing his younger sister around the yard on a sled, Walker was putting his miniature tractor away when he got caught in the tow rope and was dragged underneath. In Sam's words, "Because of the weather, the emergency services couldn't get to us. My first aid wasn't up to snuff, so we lost him."
Choking with emotion, he continues, "What do you do? You've just got to do the best you can.” Silence. “There's lots of people going through shitty times. It's part of life. You've got to hold on to the good, and embrace it.” Silence. “Anyways, that's how I'm trying to carry on. Just keep on keeping on."
In the normal course of events, Sam might have begun to regain his equilibrium. Healing might have begun seeping into small corners of his daily life. But all semblance of normal life was then obliterated. By governments invoking extreme, unprecedented public health measures. Not for the two weeks they'd initially discussed, but for months - and then for years.
"I can't lie to you," Sam says. "There was no way I would've carried on if I didn't go to Ottawa. It was compounding. I was incredibly irritable. And there was the media, doing their part to paint us as lunatics if we questioned things like face masks in schools."
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Sam arrived back home in Nova Scotia around midnight more than a month after departing. "We left Ottawa with a big checkered flag" on Guy's vintage Mack, he says. "We came home feeling like true heroes. The people in our town welcomed us on an overpass. They brought bouquets of flowers for us to take home to our wives. It was pretty huge."
Two years later the souvenirs, the gifts from a grateful public, linger. "There were 80 pairs of socks in my trailer, not including the ones I'd already worn,” says Sam. “I won't need to buy socks for many years."
After the scramble to pack up in Ottawa, "I think I came home with 20 shovels. Nor will I ever buy another Jerry can. There are some with signatures, some are painted, and I have one with a big 'thank you' from a family in Hamilton, Ontario."
Never again