As the 45th anniversary of Saskatchewan's deadliest bus crash approaches, southwest residents and families across the country remember and pay homage to those who were affected by the tragedy.
During the midafternoon of May 28, 1980, 30 CPR workers known as the "Prairie Steel gang" were travelling back to their accommodations when a three-vehicle collision claimed the lives of 22 of the young rail workers.
Derald Flamand, one of only eight surviving crew members, revealed that he was 18 when he lost not only two cousins in the CPR collision, Walter and Kevin, but also countless friends.
"We had three crew buses, and my cousins were on one of the buses, and I wanted to get on their bus to ride together back to camp," he said. "So I chose that bus, but that ended up being the bus that got hit."
The fatal collision occurred when a car carrying two occupants sideswiped the bus carrying the CPR workers. The bus was flipped onto its side before being hit by a tanker truck carrying 7,500 gallons of liquid asphalt.
The impact of the tanker sealed the fate of the majority of the men on the bus, setting off a series of explosions and igniting a cataclysmic blaze.
"The last thing I remember on the bus was the bus driver yelling; Hey, there's a car coming at us," Flamand said. "Then I woke up in the hospital, I had a cracked neck, cracked back, facial lacerations, and a few other little injuries."
Due to the influx of bodies, Fairview Arena in Swift Current was used as a temporary morgue. Initially, 23 fatalities were reported as a result of the crash, that number was later reduced to 22.
This brush with death was not unfamiliar to the recently retired iron worker, who nearly drowned on two separate occasions during his childhood and once drank himself into a coma.
The first drowning incident occurred when Flamand was only three years old and fell through thin ice. Flamand's cousin Walter, who was only three years his senior, saved his life that day.
"[These experiences have] affected me all my life, the grief was bad," he shared. "After that bus crash, I ended up becoming a drinker, I worked all the time and drank to kill the pain, or the feeling, I don't know what it was.
"I continued just shutting things out and working all my life, now I'm 64 this August, and I finally stopped drinking permanently almost seven years ago."
Some folks might say that Flamand has a guardian angel, some may say he's got the nine lives of a cat, but for Flamand, it was a tragedy that impacted his entire world, forcing him to start over in a new world, more than once.
A plaque memorializing the crash was erected in 2007 on the north side of the Trans Canada Highway, a few kilometres west of Webb. Flamand's name was initially spelled wrong on the plaque, which was later corrected after a request that came from Flamand's sister, Marcie.
For the 45th anniversary on Wednesday, he plans to make the trip from New Westminster, B.C., to visit the memorial site.
Survivors of the 1980 CPR bus crash included;
Gerald Synard,
Angus Moores,
Michael Lake,
Richard Norman,
Augustus Hickey,
Brain J. Walsh,
Steven Papetti, and
Derald Flamand.
Those lost in the collision included;
Michael Beach,
Mark Berard,
Leslie Ducharme,
Berne Gosselin,
William Lemon,
Peter May,
Robert Reimer,
Kevin Tanner,
Walter Tanner,
Rob Hall,
Edmund Brushett,
Michael Cheeseman,
Garfield Clark,
Adrian Drake,
Clifford Hawse,
Calvin Lake,
James Lake,
Reuben Lavhey,
Lewis Seward,
Weldon Seward,
Richard Slaney, and
Michael Whiffen.