Cormier Village tragedy leaves a legacy
Published Thursday October 8th, 2009
It was one of the most horrific traffic accidents in New Brunswick and Canadian history.
Twenty years ago today, two families were enjoying a Thanksgiving Day hayride in eastern New Brunswick when disaster struck.
As the hayride made its way up a small hill along a slight curve in Cormier Village, a tractor-trailer hauling a six-tonne load of 20-foot lengths of hardwood logs came barrelling down the long, curving road.
As the tractor-trailer approached the hayride, the trailer load of logs flipped over, smashing into the farm tractor and the hayride. The final toll was 13 dead and 45 injured.
RCMP Cpl. Marty LeClair was one of the first police officers on the scene.
"When I got there, bodies were just strewn on all sides of the road and in the ditches while a couple of half-ton trucks sat damaged and a logger was on its side," he said. "People were screaming, moaning, pleading for help.
"It was horrific, just horrific."
LeClair said the response was swift and that police, firefighters and paramedics did everything they could to support the two families, forever devastated by the tragedy.
"But I never went back," LeClair said. "You can never prepare yourself for this kind of thing."
At the time of the Cormier Village tragedy, New Brunswick was able to send counsellors to speak to family and community members, but there was no assistance for the emergency responders.
"There was nothing in the province at the time," said Juanita Mureika, a psychologist with the province. "There was no 'how can we help them so they can continue doing their job and handle the stress.'
"It was beginning to come, but this incident drilled it home for us that we needed to do something."
Mureika, then president-elect of the College of Psychologists of New Brunswick, was urged to dedicate the group's annual meeting to the subject of critical incident stress.
During the summer of 1990, the college and the Mental Health Commission of New Brunswick formulated a proposal for government.
The Critical Incident Stress Management Team was formed shortly after. It is much the same today as it was 19 years ago.
The team now responds to 100 incidents a year through 13 regional teams based out of mental health clinics.
That team still includes original members such as Mureika and now numbers 180 people made up of mental health professionals and representatives of all the emergency response organizations in the province.
The New Brunswick management team was born out of a disaster, but since its inception, it has eased the pain of many others who have suffered traumatic stress, Mureika said.
"They say that out of everything evil comes something positive, something good," LeClair said. "If there is one good thing that came out of that it was the creation of the team."
Laurie McGraw, the councillor for Ward 6 of Beaubassin East Rural Community which is Cormier Village, said the Leger-McGraw families will hold a private ceremony to remember the horrific tragedy this weekend.
McGraw's two daughters and wife were on the hayride and survived. He was in the first car behind the wagon and witnessed the entire accident.
"Everyone has to move on with their lives, but you never forget these kinds of tragedies," he said. "We will remember together."
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