Windows Were Smashed, Guns Were Drawn

Nicholas Street truckers were the first arrested when the police crackdown began. (Final installment of Sheldon's story.)

Part 1: Time to Move On!  

Four days after Sheldon recorded the Valentine’s Day podcast, the police began their violent takedown of the Freedom Convoy. Nicholas Street was targeted first. In one of those strange twists of fate, Sheldon was absent and therefore didn't get arrested. But everyone sleeping on that block did - including Art, a driver who works for their Manitoba trucking company. Having dropped a load in Montreal, Art had stopped in on his way back home. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was in handcuffs.

Early Friday, Sheldon announced on Facebook: "Our street was raided this morning at 7 am roughly...Windows were smashed, guns were drawn...Apparently other parts of the city were left alone so far...The lawyers have been notified. Keep praying."

Since an influx of supporters usually occurred on weekends, Sheldon had felt increasingly safe from police action as Friday came into sight. On Thursday afternoon, he and another chap had departed the nation's capital in a rented vehicle. Their plan was to spend a day or so with family back home before returning.

"We were on a WhatsApp group chat, all of us guys on the street," he explains,

A friend of mine, who was an RCMP from Winnipeg, wasn't allowed to work because he wasn't vaccinated. So he was actually out there volunteering, helping with security. And he was driving by close to where we were parked on Nicholas Street, and he sends me a message.

He says, 'Hey, Sheldon, they're coming for you in full tactical gear.'

So I just started messaging everybody in our group. They got like a couple seconds heads up, before they started getting doors banged on, and windows smashed, and people getting pulled out of vehicles.

So yeah, I don't know if it's the grace of God, or what it is. But I wasn't there for that, when everybody got pulled out. And when I came back a few days later, by that time everybody had been released.

Sheldon says the police smashed the windows of a Subaru and dragged out a young man via the back hatch. "Art's window got smashed," as well, he says. There were "no blatant beatings, like what happened to other people. But the way they treated them by just kicking them out on the side of the street someplace. Some of them didn't even have their jackets on, lots of them didn't have time to get their clothes on." It was the Bikers' Church who came to the rescue by sending out cars to pick them up.

Sheldon says he felt "One hundred percent guilty. I didn't do anything wrong, but I felt bad because I wasn't there. People were sending me pictures of my truck getting towed away. That hurt, it felt pretty crappy."

After officials had spent three weeks telling the truckers to go home, "once they arrested everybody they wouldn't let us leave for seven more days," says Sheldon.

How stupid. And not only that, they peeled off the safety sticker on my semi truck, and the license plates off all the trucks and trailers. If you don't have a license plate you don't have insurance. They wouldn't let us leave the impound until we had proof of insurance again on our vehicles.

Basically, what they wanted us to do is get Ontario permits to be able to drive our vehicles back. And my boss wasn't gonna stand for that. He says, 'I'm not paying Ontario any more money, Ontario's the one that pulled the plates off.'

So he called our insurance provider in Manitoba. This is Friday afternoon. We're in crunch time here. We wanted to go back home on Saturday. Otherwise, we would have had to wait till Monday. So they reissued brand new insurance for all the vehicles that we had, and they also sent us pictures of the license plates. And we just printed that all off.

They were being a bunch of jerks. And on a semi truck you have to have proof that your vehicle is safety inspected every twelve months. You have a safety inspection certificate, and part of that is getting a sticker on the side of the truck. They couldn't just reissue another sticker. When I got home, I just ran the truck through another safety inspection. It was very childish.

Posted on Facebook by Sheldon.

A few days later, Sheldon uploaded a group photo taken in Winnipeg. Noting that about half the Nicholas Street crew were missing, he wrote: "This is where we all split up and went our separate ways. It’s like losing all your best friends in one shot. I’m gonna miss this bunch of Christian men that all answered the call. Love you all, God bless!"

Before leaving Ottawa, Sheldon got his second tattoo. His first is small, his wife's initial on his wedding ring finger. This one covers most of his upper right arm. Below a detailed rendition of the truck he drove there, it proclaims: "I held the line."

Sheldon’s tattoo. Screen capture from a video supplied by him.

He "loved every second" of his time in Ottawa, he says, and has "zero regrets." Moreover, he adds, there's "one little sidenote."

His daughter "had an amazing graduation. She was the valedictorian at the school, and they got to have a normal banquet, normal everything. To me, if that's all I got out of it - along with my son’s graduation the next year - it was a hundred percent worth it."