Red Deer commemorates National Day of Mourning

Brad Vonkemann, Chair of the Parkland Regional Safety Committee says last year alone, over 160 Albertans were killed in workplace fatalities.

“When we see those numbers, that’s just fatalities,” he exclaims. “That doesn’t even count the workers that have had life-altering injuries on the job site. So we think there’s still a lot of work to do and we want to prevent these from happening.”

Vonkemann says when incidents happen, they can affect many lives in a traumatic way.

“If we actually look at the numbers in Alberta, they go up and they go down a little bit but they seem to be somewhat stagnant in a lot of ways,” he explains. “Sometimes it’s just having workers understand that the safety protocols that we put in place are really for their benefit and not for the benefit of the people that are administrating programs.”

Vonkemann says the most important thing to note is that Albertans are still getting killed on the job.

“We don’t want them to be forgotten,” says Vonkemann. “How do we change it so that everybody else comes home safely, that we don’t have any more of these bad phone calls or visits that the police or other people have to make on behalf of families? We want to get that message out that we want these numbers to go down and be eliminated.”

Rebecca Orr of Olds lost her husband to a workplace fatality in May of 2009 and says the National Day of Mourning Ceremony is important to help raise awareness of the ongoing issue that workplace deaths or injuries continue to be in Alberta.

“Unless you go through it yourself, you never fully grasp the comprehension of what a loss does to a family,” explains Orr. “It’s incredibly important to have people realize that this doesn’t just affect a person for a couple days or a year, but something that will forever change a family. My daughter doesn’t get to know her dad and that’s a humongous grief for her.”

“There’s a huge loss of he doesn’t get to watch her grow up,” continues Orr. “He doesn’t get to be the dad that he was really excited about being and just to raise awareness of the importance of workplace safety. It needs to change, I mean we’ve lost another 162 people in 2018 alone.”

Orr says those numbers are more than just statistics.

“These are real families who are dealing with real loss and whose lives are forever affected and changed because of an unsafe workplace or people not thinking clearly,” laments Orr. “Threads for Life is a non-profit organization who help families like mine who’ve been affected by a workplace tragedy and or illness and injury on the job. It has been the huge one that has really helped our family and allowed me to be able to get up and share my story.”

Other National Day of Mourning events throughout central Alberta this week include a Steps for Life Walk at Bower Ponds in Red Deer.

It takes place on the Main Stage from 11:00 – 11:30 a.m. on May 4 and is a fundraiser for the Threads for Life organization that provides supports and resources for families impacted by workplace tragedies.

Finally, an Elementary School Mock Incident will take place at St. Marguerite Burgeoys Catholic School in Innisfail from 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. on May 6.

The Canadian Labour Congress first declared April 28 as Canada’s Day of Mourning in 1984.

by Sheldon Spackman

Red Deer commemorates National Day of Mourning

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