On the one-year anniversary of his family’s death, Lou Van de Vorst will be hanging up glow sticks to honour his family and raise awareness of impaired driving. His son Jordan, who he lost in a drunk driving crash, was an avid photographer who often focused on light in his photos.
After the crash happened a social media page encouraged people to hang glow sticks to honour the family and spark a conversation about drinking and driving. On the anniversary of the crash families across the world have pledged to show their support by hanging glow sticks.
“It's terrific that complete strangers do that for us,” Van de Vorst told CTV News. “Hopefully to acknowledge the fact that impaired driving is such a big problem.”
In the early morning hours of January 3, 2016 Jordan and his wife Chanda were pronounced dead at the scene of a crash on Highway 11and Wanuskewin road after a drunk driver collided into their vehicle. Their two children, two-year-old Miguire and five-year-old Kamryn, died shortly after in hospital.
In June Catherine McKay pleaded guilty to four counts of impaired driving causing death. Her ten-year sentence was one of the stiffest handed out in Saskatchewan.
Van de Vorst says he spent time with family around Christmas time but the days after and closer to the anniversary became more difficult.
“You just get a kind of heaviness in your spirit,” he said.
He said he and his wife Linda cope by remembering special times shared with their family and looking at photos and videos.
Since the crash, Van de Vorst has been vocal about Saskatchewan’s poor drinking and driving record and says he thinks the new, tougher impaired driving legislation will help.
“I'm hoping that if it doesn't have enough of an effect, that it'll be looked at again,” he said, adding he hopes the new laws won’t create complacency over time.
In 2015, 54 people were killed and 580 others were injured in impaired driving crashes in Saskatchewan, according to SGI. The crown corporation says it’s focusing on impaired driving during the month of January through a campaign that will share information about drunk driving and its consequences.
“We want to bring those numbers down because we want to make our roads safer and we want everybody to make it home safely,” SGI spokesperson Marie Schutlz said. “We need to stop impaired driving to do this and so education and enforcement is key to that.”
Additionally, police services across the province will be keeping a close watch for impaired drivers this month and will be enforcing the new impaired driving legislation, which SGI said is now among the toughest impaired driving laws in the country.
While he understands drinking and driving may never be eradicated, Van de Vorst said he’ll never stop speaking out and sharing his story in hopes his family’s story doesn’t become someone else’s.
