The Kindness of Strangers

Visitors from Montreal offered Dan a bedroom in their Airbnb rental.

Part 1: Hero to Zero: Dan’s Story

Aircraft mechanic Dan describes the three weeks he spent in Ottawa with the Freedom Convoy as utterly unforgettable. “I’ve done a lot of things in this crazy world, been a lot of places,” he says,

and it was truly memorable. A lot of goodhearted people constantly asking us if we needed something. It was incredible. Absolutely incredible. Just the generosity. It was overwhelming. The love that was pouring out from everybody.

Didn’t know them from a hole in the ground, but they were just giving you the shirt off their backs.

Dan and Rich were sleeping in Rich’s van, in the depths of a Canadian winter. Around the midway point, there were a few days of respite. Dan explains:

there’s this lovely lady that was walking through, and she was from Montreal. She stopped and talked to us in the van. And she says, ‘Is there anything that we can do for you?’

I’m like, ‘No, we’ve got so much generosity here.’

The woman and her boyfriend had rented a 2-bedroom Airbnb for four nights, a 20-minute walk from Parliament Hill. Dan says she drove him there, showed him where to find the key, and offered him the second bedroom.

Being able to prepare porridge on indoor cooking facilities was a welcome change, he says. The rental was warm, the showers were hot, and the Internet was free and unlimited:

They gave me like a little care package, simple things like tuna and beans, lentil soup. I tell you, it was so heart warming that I was crying. And they knew I appreciated it very much.

Part 3: Helping Hands