Community reacts to the deaths of three farm girls
A community reaches out to help a family deal with a terrible tragedy
“Beautiful girls.”
When asked about Catie, Jana and Dara Bott, Pastor Brian Allan needs just two words to sum up the daughters of his friends Bonita and Roger Bott.
On Tuesday evening, Allan was sitting down to dinner when their father called with the most shocking of news.
“He told me, ‘There’s been an accident,’” Allan says Wednesday afternoon as a steady stream of parishioners files into Withrow Gospel Mission church, their arms laden with covered casseroles and vegetable trays.
A few minutes after the earthshattering call, Allan was at his friend’s rural home, just in time to see paramedics working on Catie, 13, and 11-year-old twins Jana and Dara, after the three sisters were smothered by canola seeds while playing in a transport truck.
The girls became trapped and suffocated in the dense pile of tiny seeds that experts say would have swallowed them like quicksand.
Their parents and neighbours worked furiously to free them from the truck and performed CPR, but two of the girls could not be revived. The third was taken by air ambulance to hospital in Edmonton, but she died overnight.
“Our kids died living life on the farm,” the parents said in a statement released Wednesday by RCMP. “It is a family farm. We do not regret raising and involving our kids ... on our farm. It was our life.”
Less than 24 hours after the accident, Allan admits that for him, as well as his fellow citizens in this rural community, it is all too unreal. “There is a sense of disbelief, but then there is a coming together,” he says, adding that a trust fund has already been set up for the family at the Eckville Credit Union.
Shock. Disbelief. Then, a quick and decisive demonstration of the power of community. That is what is most evident Wednesday afternoon in this rural patch of paradise about 150 kilometres northwest of Calgary, as people grapple with the unimaginable tragedy that has struck one of their own.
It is a family farm. We do not regret raising and involving our kids ... on our farm. It was our life. PARENTS BONITA AND ROGER BOTT SAIDINA STATEMENT RELEASED BY THE RCMP
In the early hours of this sad day, it is clear the community is shaken to the core. As he speaks to journalists outside the Rocky Mountain House RCMP detachment, Sgt. Mike Numan admits “this is all hitting us all very hard. Frontline responders are frequently called out to sad situations — but things are always harder when there are children involved.”
Upon reading a statement from the family, the officer nearly breaks down. “Give me a moment, please,” he tells the crowd before proceeding to read out the family’s thanks for support. Afterward, he exhales. “Ooh, that’s a tough one, guys.”
Over at The Mountaineer, The Rocky Mountain House newspaper that has served the area for the better part of a century, editor Laura Button is reeling. “We just toured their farm for a story on the West Country Ag Tour,” Button says of the well-known farming family. “Roger wasn’t shy, he had over 100 people in his yard — they were a happy farming family.”
At the family home, which they call Providence Acres, all is quiet where the sound of children’s voices once filled the air. In one corner of their spread, a treehouse sits empty; beside the garage, several bicycles lie in a jumble of wheels and handle bars.
“We are all devastated,” Danny Bott, who says his mom is a cousin of Roger Bott, says as he wipes his tear-filled eyes. “We’re having a heck of a time trying to wrap our heads around the fact this has actually happened.”
The young man, almost apologetically, cuts the conversation short. “We’re got some combines going on their land, lots of people helping. You can follow if you like.”
At a nearby plot of land, nine combines harvest the crops for Roger and Bonita Bott, parents now to just one son. A cluster of trucks surrounds the land, with scores of people out of their vehicles. Some take videos of the scene, while others watch silently, wiping the tears from their eyes as they hold on to one another.
A young woman, a relative who doesn’t want to be named, says the annual Bott family reunion in July brought more than 200 of her relatives together. “It is always such a happy time,” she says of the extended clan that has farmed in these parts for more than a century. “We cannot believe that our girls are gone.”
Still, she is in awe of those who have come to help with the bereaved family’s fall harvest. “Farmers are coming from all over,” she says. “This is just awesome. But it doesn’t surprise me. We’re farm people — and in times of trouble, this is what farm people do: help one another get through a terrible time.
“It’s beautiful.”