Vigil planned for victims of fatal Manitoba crash after RCMP publicly release names Thursday
CBC
Community leaders in Dauphin are planning a public memorial service to honour the 15 victims of a fatal crash last week as RCMP prepare to identify the victims publicly.
RCMP have scheduled a news conference for Thursday afternoon where they will provide the names of the 15 people who died after the bus they were on was hit by a semi just north of Carberry, Man., according to a Tuesday news release.
A vigil is set to take place in Dauphin on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Ukrainian Orthodox Auditorium (Eighth Avenue Hall) located at 304 Whitmore Ave. E. to give the community a chance to grieve together. Officials from the city's churches met Tuesday morning to plan it.
"It brings us all together. We all grieve in different ways. In a small community, everybody knows everybody," said Very Rev. Oleg Bodnarski of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Holy Resurrection, one of the church leaders who is helping plan the service.
"It's important for our community that we heal together, that we go through these difficult times and we pray to God and ask for blessings to come upon us."
Bodnarski's church is currently lined with 25 candles — one for each person who was killed or injured in the tragic crash. He said the scale of the loss has been hard to process but he's been trying to support the families impacted however he can.
"We all will be helping these families in different ways."
Ten people who were injured in the crash remained in hospital as of Tuesday morning, including five who are receiving critical care, according to a statement from Shared Health.
The RCMP's Thursday news conference is scheduled for 1 p.m. CT. Premier Heather Stefanson and Dauphin Mayor David Bosiak will attend.
Most of the victims of the crash were seniors from in and around the southwestern Manitoba city of Dauphin — which has a population of about 8,000 — on their way to the Sand Hills Casino near Carberry.
RCMP have not yet released the names of those killed, as they had not been identified individually due to the severity of the crash.
Because of this, Dauphin's city council has had to carefully weigh how to respond, said Bosiak. Councillors met Monday and decided it would be best to hold a memorial after the victims have been publicly identified by RCMP, the mayor said.
"We would rather go into this with the full knowledge and understanding the impacts to all of those people involved," he said.
"So there's a whole mix of things that we're trying to handle, following those three key fundamentals of consideration, compassion and respect."
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