During their time in Ottawa, the truckers were treated like minor royalty by members of the public, who brought them gifts from the heart. Those gifts were sometimes extraordinarily generous.
It’s Stephanie Pituley’s understanding that an unknown individual walked into a Tim Horton’s coffee shop near the intersection at which her truck was parked and purchased the equivalent of a $10,000 gift card.
“I don’t remember the timing,” she says, since so much of what happened in Ottawa is a blur. But this person apparently declared something along the lines of:
‘Anybody that walks into this Tim Horton’s, they don’t pull out their wallet. I don’t care if they’re homeless, if they’re a [Member of Parliament], if they’re a trucker, if they’re a resident of Ottawa. I don’t care. You use this card until it’s gone.’
In addition to coffee and donuts, that fast food chain sells hot breakfast sandwiches, toasted bagels, wraps, and chili. Says Stephanie:
Nobody pulled out their wallet in that Tim Horton’s for three days. Incredible, you know. And that Tim Horton’s was packed, all the time.
The bathrooms were, to put it nicely, by the end of the day they were rather used…But once we kind of got our bearings and got ourselves together, truck drivers would go in there a few times a day and clean the bathrooms.
I don’t know who [these truckers] were, but I saw them. I know it happened.
read more about Stephanie and Kyra: