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All corridor communities reel from deadly accident

Seven Squamish residents killed in head-on collision Jasdeep Sandhu was a bellman at the Coast Whistler Hotel. Dilbagh Goraya was the night janitor at the Delta Whistler Village Suites.

Seven Squamish residents killed in head-on collision

Jasdeep Sandhu was a bellman at the Coast Whistler Hotel.

Dilbagh Goraya was the night janitor at the Delta Whistler Village Suites.

Balwinder Gill was a member of the stewarding team at the Westin Resort & Spa.

Karmjit Dhillon was a houseman at the Delta Whistler Resort.

That was the same job that Balwinder Dhanoa was doing at the Pan Pacific on last Friday’s graveyard shift.

Though they worked at different Whistler hotels, they all shared a ride in the same car that was involved in a head on collision early Saturday morning in Squamish, less than an hour after their night shifts ended.

The accident claimed the lives of all five hotel workers, along with Al Barbour and his 16-year-old son Ian.

Barbour also had work contracts in Whistler, cleaning municipal buildings for roughly the past decade, but he wasn’t travelling home from Whistler on the morning of the accident. Instead the father and son had just finished breakfast with Ian’s hockey team and were on their way to Brackendale to pick up a friend before heading to Sechelt for Ian’s hockey game.

Mayor Hugh O’Reilly called Barbour a friend at Monday’s council meeting, and expressed Whistler’s deepest sorrows to the families of all the victims.

Though six of the seven victims worked in Whistler, their lives and homes were in Squamish. That community is still struggling to come to terms with its loss.

"The whole town is (in) silence now," said Makhan Sanghera, president of the Gurdwara Baba Nanak Sikh Temple in Squamish.

"(When) you go down the road, you see people keeping their heads down.

"And the people who work in Whistler, they don’t even want to talk. When they talk just tears come out, nothing else. It is just heartache for everybody."

Sanghera said the close-knit Squamish Sikh community is praying all the time but he added that this is a tragedy that has reverberated through a number of communities. Its sadness has spread throughout Squamish to Whistler and as far away as India. In addition, the Whistler hotel community is reeling along with the students at Ian Barbour’s Squamish high school and his fellow hockey players.

"(The sadness) is not only for my community," said Sanghera.

"It’s other communities too."

Early this week the general managers of the hotels in Whistler who lost employees met to discuss how they can help the families and also help their staff mourn the loss of their fellow employees.

"As much as Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton are tight communities, so are hotels and we’re very much like family," said Monica Hayes, director of communications at the Westin where 29-year-old Balwinder Gill was a steward.

Grief councillors were called in to a number of the hotels to help employees. Now there are tentative plans to hold a memorial service in Whistler. The hotels have also extended offers of help to the families.

"There was employees lost from a number of properties and it’s... a very tight-knit working community so we’re all feeling a real deep sense of sadness," said Ken Cretney, general manager of the Delta Whistler Resort, where 21-year-old Karmjit Dhillon had been working for about two years.

Dhillon got married in India just three months ago. His wife was still in India when she learned of his death.

"She is from Punjab," said Sanghera.

"We just pray she will be allowed to be here and whoever else’s family’s members want to come (too)."

Local MP John Reynolds said immigration is doing what they can right now to make sure the Dhillon’s wife, Sukhbeep Gill, can make it to Canada for her husband’s funeral.

"I talked to the minister (this week) and we were just waiting for birth dates and they can’t go ahead without that," said Reynolds.

"So the last I heard was that as soon as they got the birth dates they were going to be in touch overseas and I think they will be able to work things out. I have had no negatives coming from the government, that is for sure."

Four of the five Sikh men who were killed were from India originally. The youngest in their car was the 19-year-old driver Jasdeep Sandhu who was born and raised in Squamish.

The on scene investigation from the Squamish RCMP shows that there was an initial sideswipe collision between the car with the hotel workers going south and a northbound Volkswagen.

The southbound car then collided with the SUV carrying Al Barbour and his son in the northbound lane. The three people in the Volkswagen were unscathed in the accident.

The collision happened north of Garibaldi Way in Squamish and shut down Highway 99 for more than seven hours. The weather was clear and the roads bare and dry at the time of the accident.

As the communities still struggle with grief, people are calling for steps to be taken to ensure an accident like this doesn’t happen again.

Raj Kahlon, a Squamish councillor and the chair of the Infrastructure and Transportation Select Committee, said a public bus service between Whistler and Squamish is one of his top priorities.

The two communities need to work together on that goal he said. Funding for the service is the major hurdle.

As much as Squamish workers need jobs, Whistler businesses also need workers.

"The Whistler municipality should chip into the bus service somewhat, subsidize or help us start the bus service," he said.

"Businesses make money out of workers, that’s why they hire them. They should chip in to their transportation and welfare."

Kahlon said Squamish is also discussing the speed limit issue with the Ministry of Transportation. Some local politicians are calling for a decrease in the speed limit, from 80 to 60 kilometres/hour within Squamish’s boundaries.

"Safety is more important to me than anything else," said Kahlon.

"I don’t want to see any more... lives being wasted like this. There’s no need for it."

Squamish RCMP Corporal Dave Ritchie who attended Saturday’s devastating scene said police don’t often see an accident so severe.

"I’ve been doing it for 28 years and I was specialized in accidents for 23 years and (have) only seen one of this nature, in the Salmon Arm area," he said.

Reduced speed limits on the highway may not have prevented this tragedy he said. This was a head on collision at an as yet undetermined speed.

"At a lower speed limit you can still have collisions," he said.

"The only way to stop intermixing of opposing traffic is to put a barricade down the middle of the road. That’s not feasible to have barricades throughout the province on every highway.

"If you get that direct of a head on you’re going to have severe consequences at any of those speeds."

The investigation continues with police interviewing more witnesses and waiting for autopsy and toxicology reports. Ritchie said there is no indication that drugs or alcohol were a factor. The reports will rule this out conclusively.

"It’s one of these where we may not determine a cause," said Ritchie.

For the time being only time will heal the wounds, said Kahlon.

"This is a tragedy for a small community."

Funerals have now been set on Friday, Feb. 6 for Al and Ian Barbour. On Feb, 7, 8 and 9 funerals will be held for 19-year-old Jasdeep Sandhu, 64-year-old Dilbagh Goraya and 30-year-old Balwinder Dhanoa respectively.

Twenty-one-year-old Karmjit Dhillon’s funeral will be held on Feb. 14 and 29-year-old Balwinder Gill’s will be held the following day.

With files from Clare Ogilvie