Longtime friends from Elmira die in car crash
ELMIRA — A volunteer effort to help clean a provincial park has ended in tragedy — two young men from Elmira were killed in a car crash Friday evening.
The pair, Bryan Maher of Elmira and Peter Surey of Maple, were both 27. They were longtime friends who had attended Elmira District Secondary School and had a lifelong love of camping and scouting.
They were in the Killarney area Friday with many other Elmira scouting members, taking part in the annual spring park cleanup.
The two friends died in a single-car crash on Highway 637 near Killarney.
Elmira-area scouts have taken part in the volunteer cleanup weekend at Killarney Provincial Park for years.
Maher’s father, Skip, who has been involved with scouting in Elmira for decades, was also on the trip to Killarney, along with a number of adults and young people from the First Elmira Scouting Group.
Ontario Provincial Police were called to the single-vehicle crash at about 6:30 p.m. Friday and found the two occupants already dead.
OPP technical collision investigators have been called in to help with the investigation, which is continuing.
“We don’t know what hap-
pened. It was just a tragic, freak accident,” said Monika Goddard, another scouting volunteer along on the cleanup.
The two young men had gone to town in Surey’s vehicle, which left the roadway and crashed into the trees.
“It was still daylight,” Goddard said. “I know there was a lot of wildlife on the road. We had a bear come right in front of our car.”
The volunteers decided to carry on with the weekend cleanup, despite their shock and grief, because that’s what the men would have wanted, she said.
Surey was also a graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University, according to his Facebook page. Little other information about him was available at press time.
Maher was one of four founders of Block Three Brewing Co. , a St. Jacobs microbrewery.
Maher, along with Graham Spence, Derek Lebert and Phil Hipkiss, founded the microbrewery in 2013.
Maher first worked with Block Three as the company’s brewer, and was still an active partner in the company, though he was no longer involved in day-to-day operations, Spence said Sunday. “It’s a huge loss for Block Three.”
Although he had moved on to another job as a mechanic at C-Max Fire Solutions, a St. Jacobs company that repairs and services fire and emergency vehicles, Maher “still had an integral part in the decision-making and the direction the (brewery) business was going,” Spence said.
He was a generous, community-person, Spence added. “He was hard-working, genuine, loyal — just the nicest guy you could ever meet.
“He built the brewery mostly by himself, with help from us.”
Maher was handy, resourceful and always willing to help, he said. “You’d go to do something, I had no idea what to do, and he’d be able to fix it. You had something wrong at your house, and he’d come over and tell you how to fix it.”
He loved his work as a volunteer firefighter, joining the Woolwich Fire Department in August 2015.
“He was very well-liked and a valuable team player,” said fire Chief Dale Martin, who said he gathered the firefighters together to tell them the news of Maher’s death. “Things are pretty sombre around the whole station.”
The microbrewery’s Facebook and Twitter accounts posted a tribute to Maher on Sunday morning that reads: “Block Three was founded by four friends with a passion for community and flavourful beer. On Friday night, we lost not only a great member of the community, we lost one of our own. Bryan Maher, we are honoured to call you a partner and a friend. You have touched the lives of so many, and have been taken away too soon. We are at a loss for words. We love you and we miss you.”