Screengrab from Rachel Notley/Facebook

By Chris Brown

Medicine Hat woman says Coutts blockade kept family from their dying mother’s bedside

Feb 10, 2022 | 2:06 PM

A Medicine Hat woman says the truckers’ blockade at the Coutts border crossing cost her family members the chance to say goodbye to their dying mother.

“They didn’t have the opportunity to be with their mom because of the protest and the blockade,” said Megan Allan today. “They would have made it if they could have got through. I understand that the truckers’ message is to be about freedom. But the protest affected my family’s freedom and my aunts will never get the chance to say goodbye.”

Allan said her aunts were on vacation in Arizona when their mother Alice Kanewischer took a turn for the worse. When they found out she didn’t have much left, says Allan, they booked the first flights to Great Falls that they could to pick up their vehicle and drive to Medicine Hat.

“My aunties landed at 9 o’clock on Monday evening in Great Falls. They were unable to get through the 24-hour border crossing at Coutts due to the blockade. The next closest border to us is the Wild Horse border that opened at 8 o’clock on Tuesday morning. My grandma passed away at 5:30 on Tuesday morning with my dad by her side. My aunts were unable to make it.”

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The NDP’s transportation critic called it a tragedy that never should have happened.

At a news conference today, Lorne Dach said it’s appalling that the government has refused to take any action to disperse the blockade, which is now in its 13th day.

Dach said Allen is representative of other families that have been in similar situations caused by the blockade that are just as tragic.

He and the NDP offered a solution to the United Conservative government.

“Through the Traffic Safety Act, the minister of transportation has the legal authority to suspend commercial operator licenses if they fail to follow the use of highway and rules of the road regulation. I think we can all see very clearly that the rules of the road are not being followed at Coutts.”

Dach says the act specifies that a person “shall not drive a vehicle at such a low speed as to impede or block the normal and reasonable movement of traffic then existing on a highway.”

Asked if she had a message for the truckers responsible for the blockade, Allan said she didn’t feel like she wanted to comment on that right now.

“I just would hate for another family to have to go through what my family did,” she said.

The Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters organization has estimated that about $44 million in trade goes in both directions across the Coutts border every day.

Dach said the border is of critical importance to everybody on both sides of it.

“The truckers that are there are a small group of folks that arereallyy impeding the lives of a whole lot of Albertans and causing great hardship to families and businesses way more than than they take credit for,” he said.