OXFORD, N.S. (Mar. 14, 2005) — In the dark hours of a stormy night, as vicious winds tore across Nova Scotia and covered the province in thick, impassable snow, Nina Hoffman exercised her womanly right to change her mind. About truckers, that is.

It all started early one afternoon this past January, as a massive snowstorm — the third in a week – descended on the Maritimes. Hoffman, a ski instructor from Oxford, N.S., phoned the provincial Emergency Measures Organization (EMO), offering her home as a shelter to any motorists stranded on the Cobequid Pass, a snowy, remote section of the Trans-Canada near the New Brunswick border.

The EMO had received word that there were a handful of stranded cars and trucks strewn along the pass. Unsure of just how many people were stranded, Cumberland County EMO officials planned for the worst. Quickly, EMO officials assembled an impressive convoy of rescue vehicles.

Don Roberts drove a 72-passenger bus from his home to the highway, where he met up with his team of trailblazers: two snow plows, a large four-wheel drive, and a Suburban driven by an RCMP officer.

The rescue convoy drove for two hours through the blinding snow. Roberts says visibility was so bad he could barely see the lights of the police car in front of him. Eventually, they found the stranded vehicles: five abandoned cars — all empty — and four tractor-trailers with five occupants. “They were happy to see us,” Roberts says.

Most of the trucks were almost out of fuel. Some were broken down, and a couple had gone off the road. Satisfied that they’d found everybody, the convoy headed back for the Hoffmans’ house, picking up another two truckers stranded at a local service station.

When Hoffman and her husband, David, opened the door to the seven stranded truckers, they had no idea what to expect. “I was one of those people who used to complain about truckers,” she says.

But the drivers made quick work of her stereotypes. “We all had supper and they told us stories about trucking and their families — it was great,” she says. It was educational, too. Among other things, Hoffman learned that the term “reefer” has more than one meaning, and that there are truckers out there who’ll take a hot cup of green tea over a cold beer.

Joost Suerink, one of the stranded truckers, says he learned an important lesson about the hospitality of Nova Scotians. “It wasn’t the kind of hospitality we were expecting,” he says. “About the only place you would get it is here in Nova Scotia.”

The next morning, the drivers helped the Hoffmans shovel out their driveway, and by mid-afternoon, they were back in their trucks. Hoffman — who no longer complains about truckers — says it was an “amazing” experience. “I have a whole new respect for truckers and what they go through on the road,” she says. “I’d definitely do this again.”

— by Eleanor Beaton