OTTAWA — It was a spring day in Winnipeg and the No. 78 bus had just turned onto Waverley St. when the gate arms at the railway crossing dropped across the road.
Driver Gerard Beernaerts saw the barriers fall and slowed his bus as something caught his eye.
“I looked at the tracks and saw something but I couldn’t tell what it was, and then, as soon as I pulled up to the tracks, I saw an arm sticking up,” Beernaerts recalled of the day in April 2007.
Moments earlier 89-year-old Winifred Lindsay was trying to cross the tracks on her scooter when it toppled, pinning her to the tracks. She lay there helpless, the train speeding towards her, when Beernaerts and another onlooker, Deborah Ann Chiborak, rushed to her rescue.
“The thing that went through my mind was: ‘This isn’t going to happen while I’m here,’ ” Beernaerts said.
Lindsay was pulled to safety with seconds to spare and three years later Beernaerts was asked to join the group of 46 Canadians who accepted Medals of Bravery from Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean at Rideau Hall Thursday. Chiborak also received the honour but did not attend the ceremony.
The heroes were civilians, police and firemen who put their own lives at risk to save someone, often a complete stranger, from a burning building, mangled car or icy waters.
Among the brave was 11-year-old Kelsey Roy from Carleton Place, Ont. She was decorated for saving her mother Karen from drowning in 2007, when Kelsey was only eight, after Karen fell through the ice near their home.
“I got on my stomach because I knew I needed to get her out,” Kelsey said. “If you go on your stomach on thin ice you’re lying prone so you are balancing out your weight.”
Using that trick, which she learned on TV, Kelsey has become a hero to her classmates and mother alike. “I don’t know what would have happened if I had been alone,” Karen said.
On top of the 46 Medals of Bravery, Jean also awarded the Star of Courage to Petty Officer Drew Dazzo of the U.S. Coast Guard for putting his life at risk to save three men, one from Ottawa.
The three were forced to abandon their sailboat in a storm off the North Carolina coast in May 2007. Rudy Snel, from Ottawa, thought the three would perish when Dazzo slung his arm over the side of their life raft and issued a cordial “How you all doin’?”
The three were winched to safety by helicopter in a daring rescue that caused back injuries to Dazzo.
peter.zimonjic@sunmedia.ca
