Rob Boyd and Clemy Srour were backyard neighbours in 2013. After the fatal bus-train collision scarred their Ottawa suburb, nothing for either man would be the same.
Rob Boyd hasn’t set foot on an OC Transpo bus in a decade.
Alongside Connor Boyd and fellow Carleton student Kyle Nash, also 21, four other people died: fellow passengers Karen Krzyzewski, 53; Rob More, 35; and Michael Bleakney, 57; and David Woodard, the 45-year-old bus driver.The fatal victims of the bus-train crash, clockwise from top left: Kyle Nash, Michael Bleakney, bus driver Dave Woodard, Rob More, Karen Krzyzewski and Connor Boyd.
Connor was “really at the cusp of it all,” Boyd says: a self-confident traveller and avid reader who recommended books to his mom and would have made a great dad. Connor’s 15-year-old sister moved into his room shortly after his death, “just so, I think, she could be surrounded by his memories,” Boyd says.
In the spring of 2014, after spending several months recovering in a wheelchair, Srour was walking outside when a double-decker bus suddenly came into view.“I [could] remember lying on the ground and the damaged bus lying right there in front of me,” he says of the day of the collision. The Jewish community rallied behind the family, preparing meals and offering homes near the hospital where they could stay. After Clemy Srour recovered, one of his colleagues drove him to work using a circuitous route to avoid coming face-to-face with double-deckers.
Work has helped keep Boyd centered. In his job in the harm reduction field, he hopes to “prevent other parents from having to go through the same grieving process that I was going through.Boyd and his wife have converted their farmhouse’s original dining room into a small library, with framed photos of Connor and his sister in the centre of the bookcase.
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