Fond memories of Easter before tragic car crash
Children recall generosity and love of parents who died in collision
They first met in 1987, at the Perley hospital. Dora Pucci was 18 and training to become a nurse, while Brian Aspelund, five years her senior, was an orderly working in the hospital’s laundry.
They dated and danced, and decided to spend the rest of their lives together. On June 29, 1991, the pair exchanged wedding vows.
Last Monday, Dora, 49, and Brian, 54, were killed in an automobile collision on Merivale Road. Police have charged Sishun Liang, 19, of Ottawa with two counts of criminal negligence causing death. He is also charged with careless driving and stunt driving under the Highway Traffic Act.
Dora and Brian’s son, Matt, 19, and a second-year economics student at the University of Ottawa, recalls the Easter supper that he and his sister, Katelyn, and their parents spent at his aunt’s house last Sunday — the day before his parents’ deaths. There was lamb and frittatas, and, most importantly, lots of family time together.
“That will be my last good memory of them,” Matt said Friday. “We were just talking and everyone having a good time, for hours on end.
“Everyone was happy. It was a good memory for everyone to have. It was a good night.”
Family was central to Brian and Dora’s lives. Sunday dinners were reserved for Dora’s mother’s home, while, since the death of his father two years ago, Brian visited his mother almost every single day as her dementia worsened.
Similarly, Dora was tireless in caring for her mother.
“There was nothing they wouldn’t do for their kids and nothing they wouldn’t do for their parents,” recalled Matt.
Not that they didn’t have time for others. They always had time for others. Brian, said Matt, “could make a friend out of anybody.”
Katelyn, now 17 and in her final year at St. Pius High School, recalled a visit to New York City when her father befriended a homeless man, then bought him a pizza. In Chicago, he talked to an Uber driver for about 20 minutes. In Ottawa, he regularly tipped the servers at Tim Hortons and thumbed his nose at online banking in favour of person-to-person contact.
“He was so generous and friendly, and never looked down on anybody. He treated everyone equally.”
He cut neighbours’ lawns and shovelled their driveways when they were away. He attended church regularly and enjoyed scifi and action movies.
He was also an avid sports fan, cheering on the Senators and Redblacks, as well as baseball games and old-school boxing. He was that dad who loved taking his kids to 6 a.m. practices.
“When I stopped playing competitive hockey two years ago,” said Katelyn, “I think he was more devastated than I was. He was going to miss it more than me.”
Brian was typically up at that hour anyway, a political junkie who read the newspaper with his morning coffee. His music preference leaned to the classic rock of CHEZ-106, while Dora favoured the newer pop on HOT 89.9. Brian liked to make people laugh (although, Katelyn admits, he was also that dad who told dad jokes, Don Rickles style, often to his or his children’s embarrassment).
For a while Brian was a video editor at CJOH-TV on Merivale Road before getting a job at Passport Canada’s Gatineau office. Dora continued nursing, most recently in the intensive care unit at The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus, where her caring personality shone through.
“It really takes a special person to do that job,” Matt said.
Brian loved the outdoors, whether it was taking Matt and Katelyn skiing at Camp Fortune or teaching them other sports, or tinkering around the house and garden, pressure-washing and sealing brickwork, caulking the roof, raking leaves and annually painting the deck. “He wanted the house to look like, ‘Wow!’ ” Matt said.
Dora enjoyed taking her children shopping. And as recently as a year ago, when he was 18, would insist that Matt come out of clothing stores’ dressing rooms to show her how he looked in his new clothes.
Like Brian, Dora loved to socialize, and would often join her sister or work colleagues in such activities as painting classes or martini parties. Another preferred pastime was feeding the slot machines at Rideau-Carleton, after which she would typically announce her losses by declaring that she “broke even.”
“But she would do anything to make us happy,” Katelyn said. “They both would.”
Brian and Dora Aspelund’s visitation is at Kelly Funeral Home, 585 Somerset St. W., on Sunday and Monday from 2 to 5 and 7 to 9 p.m. The funeral mass will be held at St. Anthony Church, 427 Booth St., on Tuesday 10 at 10 a.m.
There was nothing they wouldn’t do for their kids and nothing they wouldn’t do for their parents.