The Milk Jug Boys
How 600 litres of diesel fuel was smuggled into Ottawa after dark.
For most of the three weeks she protested in Ottawa, Stephanie Pituley slept in a nearby hotel room, rather than in the sleeper compartment of the truck she’d driven from Manitoba.
Early in the morning, she’d go down to the truck while daughter Kyra frequently remained behind to complete schoolwork. One day, a sea of diesel-filled milk jugs awaited. In her words:
Someone had come throughout the night and dropped off an astronomical amount of diesel. We took those jugs and filled the Jerry cans. I’ll never forget it…all these milk jugs underneath this trailer. They were covered in a black tarp.
Kyle Norbury - a 35-year-old electrician from Alberta who caught up with the Freedom Convoy in Saskatchewan and travelled with it across the country - says he was helping refuel trucks the previous night when a young man approached, saying he had some diesel to donate.
In total, there were three vehicles and five guys in their early twenties. In Kyle’s words, these were farm boys with “big strapping muscles” who’d driven into the city from rural Ontario. They had 600 litres of diesel for the truckers, they said (worth approximately $900 retail at that time). In milk jugs, they said.
Fuel must be transferred to trucks in approved containers. “The cops were already trying to arrest us,” recalls Kyle:
So we make a little game plan. I get a spot for them to park, tell them where to put their trucks. And then I get a bunch of Jerry cans lined up and ready, and a couple extra boys to help me.
They bring the first truck in. We unload it out of the back. It’s a cardboard box, packing tape, sealed right up. We open the box…and these containers are all sealed, too. They actually bottled them, like properly, as if you were doing milk.
…We unloaded the first one, we got them all into Jerry cans, hauled the Jerry cans away. Second truck pulls in. We do the same thing, only we don’t get it all into Jerry cans ’cause there’s so much fuel…
After hiding the remaining jugs under the tarp, Kyle invited the young men to come along on a delivery. “We’re gonna run those Jerry cans up to the truckers,” he told them, “and you guys are gonna look like heroes for bringing all this fuel.”
He describes what happened next:
we made some good connections with the truckers, and I told the truckers the story of how the milk jug boys brought all this diesel in, and how they joined me on my little fuel team that night.
…It was late, it was probably one or two in the morning by the time we were done. It was cold, probably minus 30 out there…The boys had a little bit of a drive ahead of them.
They were super, super stoked that they could, you know, complete their mission [of] delivering fuel to the truckers.
read more about Stephanie and Kyra:
