Lorna Ross didn’t want to leave her family behind after spending five days with them in The Pas.
But as they said goodbye, she told her parents she felt she wasn’t coming back home again.
Just hours later, Ross died after being injured in a head-on highway collision.
The 42-year-old was travelling home to Winnipeg in a minivan Monday afternoon on Highway 6, her wheelchair strapped to the front part of the vehicle.
RCMP believe an SUV going in the opposite direction crossed the centre line into the minivan’s path. The vehicles crashed head-on near the northwestern shore of Lake Winnipeg.
Ross was rushed to a nursing station in Grand Rapids, but she later died.
She leaves behind twin sisters, a brother and her parents.
“She’s gone, you’re not gonna see her again,” her father, Lorne Ross, said. “It’s very difficult to think about that.”
“We have to live on with the memories that she was a very, very happy person … she always had a big laugh.”
Lorne Ross said her daughter lived with spastic cerebral palsy after being born with an oxygen deficiency. She was the third of four quadruplets and the family’s youngest living daughter.
Lorna Ross was from Mosakahiken Cree Nation. After living in The Pas with her family she moved to Winnipeg, her father said, looking for a more accessible city to live as a wheelchair user, especially during the winter months.
She had an apartment, cared for two cats and worked for St. Amant. The non-profit organization supports Manitobans with developmental disabilities, autism and acquired brain injuries.
“She made it for herself, living on her own,” Lorne Ross said. “Even though she was confined to the wheelchair, that never stopped her.”
Last family vacation
Every August, Lorna Ross travelled more than 500 kilometres north from Winnipeg to visit her family. It was her annual vacation, her father said, and this time, it was planned months in advance. She paid out of pocket to rent a van, and along with a driver and her nurse, they drove up to Lorne Ross’ family home last Thursday.
“When she came home, she bought everybody a gift,” Lorne Ross said. “She said this was a Christmas in July for everybody.”
Lorna Ross spent the next five days with family, strolling through Devon’s park with her cousins blasting music, watching her nieces and nephews take a crack at a piñata at a backyard party and being by her mother’s side eating fruit on a picnic.
“My heart is filled with happiness and great memories to get me through the year,” Lorna Ross wrote in a Facebook post, talking about the vacation. “I had so much fun with everybody.”
“Just the thought of leaving my mom … that’s what breaks my heart,” the post reads. “I know she’ll be fine. I wish I could be in two places simultaneously, but I can’t.”
On Monday, before starting her trip back to Winnipeg, Lorna Ross went for breakfast with her family. She had invited everybody, and her father said she was “extremely happy” for all those who joined her.
At around 12:30 p.m., Lorna Ross was on the way out of The Pas.
“She was just crying, she didn’t want to go,” Lorne Ross said.
“She also mentioned she was going to go on a trip, but we didn’t understand what kind of trip she was going to be on,” he said. “I guess that she was talking about this accident that happened to her.”
After the crash the RCMP got a hold of Lorne Ross at around 11 p.m. Monday. Lorna Ross’ mother was at the hospital so he said he drove there and delivered the bad news.
“It’s pretty hard. It’s pretty hard on us right now, especially my wife,” he said.
“She told us that she wasn’t coming back home again,” Lorne Ross said. “But she said she would be making a visit one more time.”
Lawanda Patchinose, Lorna Ross’ cousin, told CBC News she will remember her as “one of the kindest, most genuine people,” and a “one-of-a-kind person” that didn’t let anything hold her back or stop her from achieving what she wanted.
“She was not afraid to stand up for what she felt was right and what she believed in,” Patchinose said.
Other fatalities on Highway 6
Lorna Ross was one of three people who died in separate collisions on Highway 6 on Monday.
A 23-year-old-woman who was in the passenger seat of the SUV that crashed with the minivan, died at the scene. She’s been identified by the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation as Marybelle Yetman, described by leaders in the community as a “beautiful and bright spirit.”
A 33-year-old man was killed in a second crash that happened on the same stretch of road later on Monday.
RCMP said an SUV that had been waiting for the road to reopen after the first collision would not start because its battery had drained. A pickup truck turned around to help, pulling up behind the SUV.
Everyone in both vehicles had exited, and they were standing at the roadside when a van crashed into the back of the pickup, police said.
The pickup was pushed into the SUV, which then hit two of the people standing nearby, among them the 33-year-old man who died.
RCMP continues to investigate the crashes. No charges have been laid.