A little girl’s hand-written letter following an accident that killed two members of a Squamish family has led the transportation minister to call for a safety review.
The Vancouver Sun reports that B.C. Transportation Minister Todd Stone sent a handwritten reply to the letter from the little girl, whose aunt and seven-year-old cousin died in the tragic crash near Lillooet.
Patricia Gayle Donohue 46, and McCaul Harrison Arthur Sage, 7, of Squamish were on their way back from Bridge Lake with the rest of their family when the accident occurred. On Jan. 2, a snowy day, the family’s vehicle hit an oncoming car and careened down a steep embankment.
Rob Sage and his children Lyle, 11, and Roan, 4, survived the accident.
In the letter to the minister, seven-year-old Riley Donohue asked Stone to “please, please, please put berryrs” on Highway 99 near Lillooet.
“Please put berryrers near Lillywat beacase there has been a car acadint with my famaley,” she wrote.
Stone said he felt compelled to respond personally.
“I read it and was very moved,” Stone told The Vancouver Sun. “She is a very articulate seven-year-old. I’ve got three little girls myself, (ages) 10, eight and five, so I was very impressed with how eloquent she was in getting her points across in the letter.”
“I thought it would be more appropriate to hand-write something to her than to send more of a traditional somewhat cold letter from the ministry.”
In his reply, Stone said he wanted to assure her that he’d ordered an immediate analysis of that stretch of road to determine whether the government could install concrete barriers along the roadside drop-off.
An electronic petition with more than 2,200 signatures was sent to the minister following the accident.
