Plywood and 2x4s

'Here's all these guys walking down from the hotel where their truck was. No one got caught. Okay, bring the rest in.'

Part 1: Jay, the Trucker Who Brought the Shed

Sam, standing on the platform on the roof of the shed around 7:30 pm, Saturday February 12th, 2022. Photo supplied by him.

Jay, who brought The Shed to Ottawa and parked it in front of Parliament, says Salvatore (Sam) Tignanelli spearheaded the construction of the platform on top. Jay is from deep southern Ontario, 30 minutes from the US border. Sam resides in the northeast, in the community of North Bay. One of the reasons they connected is that Sam noticed some Bible verses pinned to The Shed. “It was clear that this guy was a Bible-believing guy that believed and trusted in God,” he remembers, “that was what drew me there.”

Prior to the Freedom Convoy, Sam - who’s father immigrated to Canada from Italy in 1968 - says he suffered from a bit of an identity crisis. He didn’t really “know what it meant to be a Canadian.” But while travelling to Ottawa on that first weekend of the protest, seeing people applauding the truckers from the side of the road, he felt a powerful surge of patriotism.

At one point they passed a private residence, whose yard “was loaded with Canadian flags. ‘Pull over, turn around, I’ve gotta go talk to this person,’” Sam urged his friend, who was doing the driving. He laughs, “I went and knocked on the door. I said, ‘Can I buy some of your flags off you?’ So we got a Canadian flag, and some window flags.” All of a sudden, he says, he began to feel like he was part of something momentous.

His first weekend in Ottawa “was unbelievable. Just this coalescence of Canadians that had so much in common.” Back home afterward, he found it difficult to concentrate. “I'm feeling uncomfortable being in North Bay,” he told his travelling companion. “I just have this huge tug on my heart, I have to get back to Ottawa.”

His friend advised him to be patient, the end of the week would soon be upon them. “He’s like, ‘Sam, we’re going down Friday.’ So I packed my rucksack and I said, ‘I’m not coming back until this is over. I don’t know where I’m going to stay, I don’t know what it’s going to look like.’”

Toward the end of that second weekend, Jay invited him into his truck to warm up, and then offered him overnight accommodation in The Shed. They talked for hours, getting to know each other. By the next morning, Sam was telling Jay that the eyes of the world were on Canada:

I said we've got to build a deck on the roof of the shed. We have all these Canadians here. We have to interview people and get their stories of what they’ve been suffering, are still suffering.

We have this threat of [the authorities] shutting down the phone lines. I said, we should get a Starlink, so we're linked up to satellite, so we can still have communication. I said, I want a blinky board [electronic sign] so we can have it on the front of the shed, flashing messages.

With impressive speed, all of the above began to happen. Sam spoke to a carpenter over the phone, sent photos of the shed, and described his vision. He was told a crew would arrive the following evening. “They got a hotel downtown, probably like three blocks away from The Shed,” he explains. Someone proposed sneaking in the building materials at 2:30 in the morning when everything was quiet, but Sam had a different opinion:

I said, let's do it at 8:30, when there’s people around and we’re insulated by those people. And if we get caught, that's fine. Everyone's got Jerry cans now [due to the police seizure of diesel fuel]. Everyone's going to find out about it, and bring down a Jerry can and a 2x4.

So we had all these communications going on. And boom, they come in at 8:30. They're going to do three or four trips, and try the first one as a trial. They came in at 8:30. No one got caught. Perfect. Okay, bring the rest in.

So here's all these guys walking down from the hotel where their truck was, with all the materials in it, carrying sheets of plywood and 2x4s down the streets, right to The Shed.

next installment: The Shed, Starlink & Elon Musk