Parents’ group helps console families of avalanche victims
Posted January 3, 2012 4:07 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WEST VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Three people have been killed and three others injured in BC since the avalanche season began.
It’s around this time of year that Beth Stewart’s phone starts to ring.
Her son, Trevor Petersen was a talented skier who was killed in an avalanche in the French Alps in 1996.
“He would be up somewhere in Europe with the helicopters and a team of people and he would get up before everyone else to watch the sun come up,” Stewart said. “He loved the outdoors and he loved nature.”
After her son’s death, Stewart started Parents of Lost Skiers.
She talks to people who are going through what she did 16 years ago and helps them deal with their grief.
“The biggest value is I can understand where they are in that particular niche in life,” Stewart said. “Email is an excellent way to support them because they can sit there in their dressing gown and cry and write about their tragedy and not be judged by anyone.”
She also speaks with people on the phone and meets with them face to face.
A few months ago a family from Texas came to visit her at her home in West Vancouver.
Their son died at Mount Seymour a few years ago.
“Those people have been back and forth they asked if they could spend an afternoon with me,” Stewart said.
“We parted company and the father called out to me. He told me his wife had plans to commit suicide because she couldn’t live without our son. He thanked me for writing an email where I explained to her how I had felt and how I got through. He said, ‘She came and told me at a quarter of one that she wasn’t going to kill herself because she finally found someone who understood.’ That was rewarding.”
She says the holidays are hard on a lot of families and the month after Christmas is her busiest time of year.
