The Shed, Starlink & Elon Musk
Satellite Internet equipment donated by a friendly stranger made livestreaming possible.
Part 1: Jay, the Trucker Who Brought the Shed
Sam, from North Bay, had a wish list for Jay’s Shed. He envisioned a platform on the roof, an electronic sign to display custom messages, and a satellite Internet connection.
The platform was swiftly built. Jay’s brother showed up with an electronic sign - brand new, still in the box. But Internet remained a problem. A friend of Sam’s was scouring online marketplaces for secondhand equipment, but was coming up empty. As a joke, the team programmed their message board, now secured to the platform, to read: “Elon Musk, we need Starlink.”
Sam thinks it was Friday night, February 11th. Jay’s truck was parked where it had been from Day 1: just west of the stage. A large, festive crowd filled the intersection. By then, a volunteer security detail was keeping an eye on The Shed’s exterior and ensuring safety on the rooftop platform.
“We're in The Shed,” remembers Sam, “and all of a sudden one of our security guys comes in. He says, ‘there's some French guy out there, I can barely understand him. He says he's got a Starlink.’” The friendly stranger was from Quebec. In Sam’s words, here’s what happened next:
He's an engineer that designs, of all things, maple syrup systems. You don't get more Canadian than this. He says, ‘I noticed up there you've got a sign that says you're looking for a Starlink. I think I have the solution to your problems. I got one in my car. Brand new. You guys want to use it, it's yours. Whatever happens, if I can get it back, that's good. If I don't, I understand. But there's one problem.’
I said, ‘Well, we're into solving problems, what's the problem?’
‘My car is two kilometers away. The box is big and heavy, about a hundred pounds, and I can't carry it by myself.’
I said, ‘Okay, hang on.’ My son was there, and my friend’s son was there. Sixteen and 17 years old at the time. I said, ‘Kids, your service to this country right now is to follow that guy and carry back that box.’ They come back about an hour later. Poor kids, man. They’re just beat. It's an awkward, long box with a satellite dish in it.
Because it's all satellite, no one can shut it off. My friend John is there, he's a computer networker. And there’s a few other guys, carpenters and stuff. So all of a sudden this box comes in, and it's just like kids that are tearing apart their Christmas gift. Tearing apart the box, pulling everything out.
So then some guys are running up to the top. And all of a sudden you hear drills, and you have sawdust falling inside. And there's wires that are flying in, hitting you in the head. These guys know how all this stuff works. They're putting this together right away. They're up there, fastening the Starlink down. And then the computer's out and they're wiring this thing to the computer. And John's sitting there, banging the keys away. And all of a sudden he’s like, ‘We're on.’
Sam thinks half an hour expired between the time the box arrived and the Internet connection was established. “In Ottawa, it was like a miracle,” he remembers,
I mean, everyone was nameless and faceless. It had nothing to do with the name on the back of the jersey, it was all the front of the jersey. All these resources came together. It's like people knew what they had to do. Everyone had a role, and it was just a patriotic symmetry of perfection.
Sam, an educator who was in his mid-40s when the Convoy took place, says he thanks Justin Trudeau every day. “Absolutely. Had he not done this, the connections I've made in this movement” wouldn’t have occurred, he says. “The relationships I've built in the past two years have been priceless. What Justin Trudeau meant for evil, God meant for good.”
In Sam’s view, bodily autonomy is a line in the sand. “We have every right to be involved in politics as citizens,” he says, “but the government has got no business in our churches, our families, and our bodies.” Part of the reason the Convoy happened, he believes, is because “Canadians recognized that something’s really broken here.”
The same day Jay and the Niagara arm of the Freedom Convoy left home, Elon Musk helped publicize what was happening in normally sleepy Canada:
next installment: Dave Goes to Ottawa
I am brimming ear to ear. This is such a beautiful part of the story!
Another amazing part of the story!