The family, including a baby, were traveling in a three-car trailer on back roads after the highway was closed
When a shivering and incoherent woman knocked on her door just before dinnertime on December 23, during a roar Snow storm without any visibility outside, Denny Vervaet of Blenheim, Ontario, did not hesitate. He opened his door and let the woman in.
“I heard knocks on the window, a bit like a branch hitting it. I open the door and there is a six foot drift. She’s standing there excited and scared. And I didn’t know what she was saying,” Vervaet, a 38-year-old married man with three daughters, told The Epoch Times.
The woman, Madeline, who immigrated to Canada in 2014 from West Africa, finally told him her family, including a baby, was back in the car on the road.
Vervaet and his wife Sandy, owners of the Red Barn Brewing Company, said there was no doubt they would help stranded strangers. “I don’t know how anyone could push them away. We have to help each other,” Vervaet said.
Vervaet had randomly decided to make a chilli of venison earlier that afternoon, after his cousin had fed him meat from a deer hunted in the 100 acres out back. “It was kind of coincidence or fate that I made a huge pot of chili so we had enough food for everyone,” he said.
The group had traveled from Toronto in a three-car trailer to spend the family vacation at an Airbnb in Windsor. The blizzard and dangerous roads interrupted the trip. The massive storm caused power outages, flight cancellations and dangerous roads across Ontario and Quebec.
Highway 401 had been closed and the group was turning off the main freeway to try to reach their destination, having already spent four or five hours in the car for a three-hour drive, Vervaet said.
“They take the back roads, and for someone who hasn’t had experience with that, that’s the worst thing you can do,” he said. “All the secondary roads that are not cleared, drifts happen. And it was just a scary experience for them.
Madeline told Vervaet the family couldn’t drive any further – it was dark, they couldn’t see in the blowing snow and two of the vehicles were stuck in a ditch.
Vervaet attempted to drive off with Madeline’s adult son, Charles, to rescue the rest of the family, but his truck got stuck in deep snow on the driveway.
It turns out that shortly after, a Good Samaritan picked up the other family members stranded on the side of the road and brought them to the Vervaets.
Vervaet said it was the worst storm he had ever seen. On that day, winds of 100 km/h caused the temperature to drop from -18 degrees to -35 with the wind chill.
“I was going outside to shovel to try to get my truck out and I had to go back, because the cold was just hurting my face. It was so scary. I have never seen anything like it. If you went outside without any protection, you would get instant frostbite,” Vervaet said.
The family invited the ten strangers to spend the night and wait out the storm. The group included Madeline, her sister, the children’s grandmother, Charles, and five children, one of whom was a baby.
Vervaet and Sandy served chili for dinner, then the kids played card games like Uno. The adults talked and Vervaet took Charles to visit the couple’s brewery next door.
They learned that two of the women were French teachers and that Charles is a budding French hip-hop artist named TJ Mix.
The family set up air mattresses, a futon and sofas in the basement of their ranch-style three-bedroom home for their guests. One of Vervaet’s daughters slept with a sister, so Madeline’s children had a bed. Vervaet said both bathrooms had a queue.
“Our stress was that we wanted to put them at ease because they were great people, just awesome, and they had such a bad trip,” he said.
In the morning, Sandy made peanut butter sandwiches and served the family cereal and fruit, while Vervaet tried to pull the vehicles out of the snow. Eventually her stepfather, who lived down the street, used his tractor to physically free the cars. Around 11 a.m. the next morning, December 24, Madeline and her family set off for their destination.
“By the time they left, the wind had dropped, visibility had returned,” Vervaet said.
He said the two families had spoken to each other every day since and had gone from strangers to friends, overnight. Madeline’s family even sent a special Christmas video message after they arrived safely in Windsor.
Marnie Cathcart is an Edmonton-based journalist.
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