Funeral held for student killed in Ottawa bus-train crash
Posted September 23, 2013 4:09 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
More than 500 people packed an Ottawa-area church Monday morning to remember a 21-year-old Carleton University student killed when a Via Rail train and an Ottawa city bus collided on Wednesday morning.
Connor Boyd was one of six people killed in the crash.
During the funeral Boyd’s friends read entries from his journal as a touching tribute to the young man with the contagious laugh.
From one short essay that was an ode to cold pizza and the merits of its various toppings, to another which listed off his different dream careers, his journals painted the picture of a witty young writer who loved to laugh.
“He often talked about his belly laugh; it was contagious,” Ian Lockhart, who went to high school with Boyd said. “It was unbelievable.”
Boyd’s father shared how both he and his sister Eliza hated Fruit-To-Go bars and would hide them in each other’s things and said a few weeks ago, she found one of the offending bars in her glasses case in her bedroom.
At the end of his speech, Boyd’s father said, “Connor, it came back to you; it’s in your pocket.”
Transportation Safety Board investigators say they have recovered data recorders from the bus and Via Rail locomotive.
The board has said it may take months to unravel why the crowded bus drove through a lowered safety barrier and ran into the train just outside a Via station in the western suburbs shortly before 9 a.m. on Wednesday.
OC Transpo general manager John Manconi would not say whether driver Dave Woodard, 45, who was also killed in the crash, may have had a medical emergency behind the wheel, but insisted the double-decker buses were safe.
Rail crews worked overnight to get the passenger train back on the rails.
The crash, which ripped the front off the bus, took place at a level crossing on a transitway dedicated to bus traffic.
Witnesses said the bus didn’t stop as lights flashed, bells rang and safety barriers dropped across the road at the approach of the train, which was slowing for a station stop.
Passengers on the bus frantically shouted “Stop! Stop!” seconds before the impact.
Funerals for Michael Bleakney, 57; Karen Krzyzewski, 53; Kyle Nash, 21 and Rob More, 35 will take place later this week.
Woodard’s funeral will take place Oct. 2.
With files from 1310News and The Canadian Press
