I Saw Them Hitting People (5 of 7)
'I didn't know why they were using tear gas. I didn't understand it.'
Part 1: Grave Financial Peril
With respect to the honking of horns during the Freedom Convoy protest, Ontario trucker O’Jay says "there's an important point that I don't think anybody has addressed. We got there on Friday. Friday night we let it rain with horns, one hundred percent. Saturday, we let it rain. Because we had the support, and the support was there till late."
Wife Ivana interjects, "a lot of kids wanted to come in the truck and honk, you know. Everybody that came by wanted to go inside and honk."
But by Sunday night, O’Jay continues, “we agreed, within ourselves, that people are going to work Monday morning, so we're not going to be honking our horns." Occasionally, someone would do so, but "guys would come on the CB. 'Hey, that person didn't get that message. Find out who that is, let us know which truck they're in.'"
The claim that "we were honking the entire time, that's a complete lie," says O’Jay. "On the weekends, we went up to 11 pm. You'd have random guys at twelve, but 11 pm, the majority of the horns stopped. During the week, my last, final honk would be that long one at 8 pm. This was like maybe Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It was only probably three weekdays," he thinks, before the cutoff was dialed back to six in the evening. "And we adhered to the six."
On February 7th, nine days after they arrived in Ottawa, a judge ordered the truckers to cease honking for ten days. Otherwise, he said, they were free to continue to engage in "peaceful, lawful and safe protest." The vast majority of the truckers abided by that court order. In this and other ways they demonstrated good faith, along with respect for the rule of law. Yet they received no credit for doing so. Politicians and journalists continued to portray them as hateful, unruly, and dangerous.
Toward the end of the protest, Ivana returned home with a family friend. With their two sons, she drove back to Ottawa in a pickup truck so they could experience the event firsthand, rather than through the distorted lens of the media. "But they only slept in Ottawa for one night and the next morning we had to leave," she says.
The Emergencies Act had been invoked Monday evening. A lot of trucks left Wellington "between the Wednesday and the Thursday," O'Jay remembers. At that point, he moved his own rig forward, across the intersection into some empty space, "where it stayed until I drove out."
He remembers one conversation with a police officer near the beginning. "He came up on the truck, just checking on us, quietly giving us a thumbs up." The cops that were later shipped in from out-of-town had little contact with the protesters," he says. "Their demeanor was completely different, they'd been fed lies."
On Friday and Saturday, O'Jay was amongst those who peacefully confronted a line of police on the street by forming a parallel line of their own. Some officers, he says, "looked like they were there for vengeance,"
You could see it in their eyes. I felt I needed to document it. So I was recording it, asking them 'Why are you bringing that out?' Cuz we saw them with that armoured vehicle.
And they were doing that, 'Ho! Ho!' trying to intimidate you. When that didn't work that's when they started using the tear gas. They shot that Rebel News journalist, she was right beside me, actually. The tear gas kind of exploded in my face. I heard a guy saying, 'Are you OK?' My eyes were running, burning. It goes into your throat and your lungs.
I've been tear gassed before, in cadets, so I remember that feeling. But this one, I didn't expect it. I didn't know why they were using tear gas. I didn't understand it.
I saw how they were hitting people. One trucker, they told him to move, and he turned around, walking slowly. And they were hitting him in his back. He braced on the tent, and they kept doing it. Then I think he got arrested.
next installment: Debit Cards Not Working
Thanks for putting their stories out there. I followed this closely on youtube livestreams and various other channels when it was happening. But I see now there was a lot more police beatings than I knew about.