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Hundreds attend memorial for fallen Ornge crew
June 19, 2013 By The Toronto Star
June 19, 2013, Toronto - More than 200 mourners, paramedics, police and ORNGE representatives gathered at a memorial service on Tuesday for two pilots and two paramedics killed late last month in an air ambulance crash.
Capt. Don Filliter, First Officer Jacques Dupuy, and flight paramedics Dustin Dagenais and Chris Snowball died when an ORNGE helicopter crashed shortly after takeoff from Moosonee, Ont.
The memorial service
was attended by Premier Kathleen Wynne and Ontario Health Minister Deb
Matthews at the Toronto Police College, where the helmets of the four
victims were placed in front of their portraits as a tribute.
Wynne said that the victims did not consider their work with ORNGE just as jobs, but as “an extension of who they were.”
“Their friends and
families, I know, and communities have suffered a great loss and I want
you to know that Ontario has suffered that loss with you,” she said.
George
Duncan, the grandfather of Snowball, spoke outside of the memorial and
said that being a paramedic was something his grandson had “always
wanted to do.”
“He was actually
filling in for somebody else,” Duncan said, adding that he was having an
especially hard time coming to terms with that fact. “He was supposed
to be back home.”
The
helicopter carrying the four men had just left its base at the Moosonee
airport to pick up a patient in the remote Attawapiskat First Nation
when it crashed early on May 31.
Transportation Safety Board officers investigating the crash have said mechanical failure did not appear to be the cause.
