It’s pretty easy to dismiss jaywalkers who get hit by cars as stupid.
But for one Burnaby city councillor who has agonized through an unimaginable tragedy, he sees the situation differently.
Coun. Paul McDonell’s son Michael was 28 years old in August 1996 and had his entire life ahead of him.
A third-year plumbing apprentice with a fiancée, he’d gone out one night to a pub in Port Coquitlam with coworkers.
When one of the guys on the crew ran out of money, Michael joined him to look for a cash machine. Michael wasn’t familiar with the area, but they found themselves crossing busy Shaughnessy Street near Lougheed Highway. Michael made it across the street the first time, but as he tried to get back, his foot got caught in a meridian. He fell forward and was hit by a car.
He died instantly.
“It’s just one of those things that happens; it’s an accident,” McDonell told the NOW. “It’s an unfortunate accident and I lost my son who I thought got through that age.”
The councillor has gained some perspective about that night after 20 years.
“People make comments: ‘People are stupid when they do that.’ Well it’s not necessarily stupid; sometimes it’s an error in judgment,” he said. “My son wasn’t stupid; he just made an error in judgment when he shouldn’t have. It happens.”
The family heartbreak also helps guide McDonell in his current role as the chair of the city’s transportation safety committee. And he’s happy to support anything to make the streets safe, for both pedestrians and drivers.
Before Christmas, council approved spending $25,000 for the installation of a fence on the median along Willingdon Avenue between Kingsway and Kingsborough Street in an effort to discourage people from crossing mid-block.
The move to install a 1.2-metre high median fence was prompted by a pedestrian fatality that occurred in late 2015. Mid-block crossing was a contributing factor, according to a staff report.
During a recent weekday count between noon and 1 p.m., city staff recorded a total of 15 pedestrians crossing Willingdon in the vicinity of Kemp Street. Of these, 13 were mid-block crossings between Crystal Mall and the bus stop on the west side of Willingdon, and the remaining two were crossing at the T-intersection of Willingdon and Kemp, the report noted. In many instances, pedestrians had to cross Willingdon in two phases because they had to wait within the center median for a gap in traffic. The city said the existing center median on Willingdon is narrow and not intended to serve as a pedestrian refuge island.
Mayor Derek Corrigan suggested it was difficult to spend that kind of money to discourage people from doing something that should be obvious to not to do, but added the city is doing what it can to stop accidents from happening.
“I want the message from this to be, don’t cross mid-block, because it is looking for a tragedy to happen,” he said. “Not only do you ruin your life, but potentially, you also ruin the life of the person that’s hit you.”
That last part is something McDonell knows all too well. After Michael’s death, he took the time to call the driver who hit his son to let him know it wasn’t his fault. He said there was nothing the driver could do in this case.
McDonell also took a portion of Michael’s life insurance policy to start up a labour education fund that hands out scholarships every year. The fund started at $10,000 and grown to $400,000.
But never has a day gone by without the councillor thinking about his son.
“It’s how often I think of him, little things will trigger it. I don’t say I do it every day, but I bet you it’s 80 per cent of the time sometimes during the day,” McDonell said. “I wish it never happened but there’s things we have no control over.”
