Why Peter's Son Didn't Make it to Ottawa

'Dad, I'd give my right arm to be standing there with you.'

Part 1: Almost Born in the Cab of a Truck

Photo by me, February 2022. Ottawa.

Looking back at his three weeks in the nation’s capital, Peter expresses gratitude toward a friend of the family, a retired farmer, who drove in "every few days in a pickup with a big tank on the back, bringing us fuel."

He also speaks warmly of another saviour. "My daughter from out west had a friend in Ottawa she went to nursing school with. She called her up," after he’d caught a bug mid-way through the protest.

Less than an hour later, the friend was at Peter's side. "That lady brought a whole grocery bag full of meds. Cough syrup, even Ivermectin," he remembers.

(Considered an 'essential medicine' by the World Health Organization for decades, Ivermectin - for which its discoverers won a 2015 Nobel Prize - became near impossible to access in Canada during the pandemic. Doctors who successfully treated thousands of COVID cases say its anti-viral properties are impressive.)

It was after dark when Peter's angel of mercy appeared. She couldn't stay, "I was trying to thank her but she says, 'I gotta go because my husband's at work and I had to leave the kids.'" Peter shared the medication with "the whole block." He remembers one trucker borrowing some Ivermectin. "Eventually, he called somebody from the Sarnia area to cross the border, and then somebody made a special delivery to Ottawa. Before he left, he handed it back, another package" of the same tablets.

While Peter was shivering on Wellington Street, he was also talking to his son, a third generation trucker, over the phone. "More than once he says, 'Dad, I'd give my right arm to be standing there with you.'" Employed in northern British Columbia, Shawn works five days in a row, followed by five days off. Due to the distances involved, that wasn't enough time to drive there and back.          

Peter knew flights were available "in and out of Prince George. He could have had his backpack loaded up, finish a shift, go to the airport, fly out to Ottawa. Could have spent three days on the Hill, and then fifth day home." But as an unvaxxed person, Shawn was prohibited from boarding a plane. Not only could he not leave the country, he couldn't travel domestically.

Click image for source. See also: videos here, here, here, and here.

Canada's Prime Minister insisted this crushing discrimination was necessary to protect Canada's highly vaccinated majority from a small minority. If you "want to get on a plane or a train," he said, "you're gonna have to be fully vaccinated, so families with their kids don't have to worry that someone is going to put them in danger." The government had decreed - without ever meeting him - that Shawn was a threat to other people's children. With the stroke of a pen, his mobility rights - which are supposed to be inherent and inviolable - had vanished.   

As lawyer Barry Bussey has opined, "Since when do we want to know the personal medical history of those next to us on an airplane?" Until COVID came along, such information was highly private, no one else's business. Stigmatizing an individual based on their health status was morally repugnant. But then Canada's Prime Minister advised every official and every neighbourhood busybody that certain Canadians deserved no sympathy.

Rather than challenging this startling message, mainstream media applauded and amplified it. Canada - which is supposedly oh-so-concerned-about-the-rights-of-every-conceivable-minority - had embraced intolerance. Describing the mean-spirited tenor of those times, lawyer Bussey paraphrased that those who "chose not to get the shot out of ignorant selfishness" would just have to "live with the consequences, even if that meant being unable to fly to a loved one’s deathbed or attend a child’s wedding."

According to a public opinion poll released a few days before the truckers arrived in Ottawa, two-thirds of Canadians supported "further restrictions for unvaccinated people." Half said "government should enact a tax on unvaccinated people." And one in five agreed with the statement: "I would end a friendship with someone who does not share my views on vaccination." For Peter, our country was becoming unrecognizable.

Like many Canadians, he has familial connections to other parts of the world. His wife spent her childhood in the Belgian Congo, as the daughter of Christian missionaries who believed that every human being is equal before God. Later, their daughter - from whom the wagon was borrowed - volunteered at an AIDS orphanage in South Africa. It was there she met her future husband, a black assistant pastor (later a full pastor) who came regularly to take some of the older children to soccer/football practice.

Three of Peter's grandchildren are, therefore, half black. He adores them, along with their father. The couple had intended to raise their family in Johannesburg, but later fled its violence for Canada. The former pastor "works in the factory now," says Peter.

"The church loved him so much, they put him through university. He's such a good guy. I say that to everybody, and I mean it. So it pissed me off when Trudeau was calling us racist. I said, 'Yeah, racist. Three of my grandkids are black, a girl and two boys.'"

next installment: Peter’s Final Day in Ottawa