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Volume 10, Issue 36, Week of September 9, 2013
Saskatoonʼs REAL Community Newspaper
Stu Wilson, formerly of Saskatoon, says Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service (STARS) helped save his life (Photos Supplied)
Crash survivor to attend STARS gala in Saskatoon
T
Cam Hutchinson Saskatoon Express
he sound of two vehicles colliding head-on at highway speeds is one Stu Wilson will never forget. Wilson was returning to Calgary from Saskatoon on Aug. 4, 1997. It was 1 p.m. in the afternoon. It was a beautiful, clear day. As Wilson was winding his truck through the S-turns near Hanna, Alberta, his eyes widened. “Boom, there is this car right in front of me in my lane,” he recalled last week from his office in Calgary. “It is an event your brain almost can’t comprehend what you are seeing. It happens to somebody else always. And here’s this car. Time really does stand still for something like that. “So many thoughts went through my
head in a millisecond. I knew I couldn’t take the ditch to the right because it is too steep there — I would have been killed for sure. My next thought is I better go around this person. I thought it is going to be a hairy ride if I go through the ditch (on the other side of the road). “I remember stomping on the brakes and then the impact. The sound of that impact is something that truly will always stay with me. We all know the sound of a fender bender is like, but when you hit head-on at highway speed the magnitude of that sound is so greatly amplified. It’s scary.” The driver of the vehicle travelling behind Wilson’s was the first on the scene. “I sometimes thought it was better for me than him because he had to experience seeing this horrific accident. He said I was talking in my truck the whole time. I certainly don’t remember any of that. All
Stu Wilson’s truck after the head-on crash I remember is coming to in my truck and the firefighters were there and the EMS were there.” Wilson’s first thought was of paralysis. “I remember wriggling the toes on my one foot, but I couldn’t see the foot because of the angle I was at. I looked at my other ankle, which I broke as bad as you can. It was sitting at 90 degrees to my leg. Believe it or not, I could wiggle my toes on that foot. “It took them a while to get me extract-
ed, and I remember saying to somebody that maybe we should call STARS (Shock Trauma Air Rescue Service), and they said, ‘already done; STARS is en route.’” Wilson, a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Engineering, credits the first responders, the staff at the hospital in Hanna and STARS for saving his life that day. He thanks his lucky STARS every single day. (Continued on page 4)