‘She was everything’ — family, community mourn loss of woman
GUELPH — Amy Stiles is being remembered by her family and friends as kind, quick-witted, passionate and positive — an excellent teacher and a beautiful soul.
The 38-year-old woman — a teacher, a nurse, a wife and a mother of three boys — died in a head-on collision on Thursday afternoon on County Road 21 near the 4th Line, just outside of Elora. Stiles’ car collided with a dump truck.
The family and those who knew Stiles are reeling from her loss.
“She was everything,” said Randy, her husband of nearly 14 years, reached by phone on Monday morning.
“She was smart, beautiful, selfless — she taught me how to be selfless. “She never backed down from anything.” The tragic crash “blindsided” the family, he said, his voice breaking off at times in bouts of emotion. He and his boys, aged eight, 10 and 12, have been dealing with the news in their own way. Sometimes they break down and sometimes they talk it out, but they’ve been making their way forward with the full support of the community.
On Friday, Patrick Stiles, Randy’s brother, launched a GoFundMe campaign in Amy’s name to help her family get through the initial trauma. By Monday afternoon, the campaign had raised more than $26,000.
“Everybody just loved her,” he said, adding all the money collected will be given to Randy and his kids to help them move forward from this tragedy.
The family is going through moments of “shock and denial,” but they’re supporting one another and generally coping well at this point, Patrick said.
He said he’s a little concerned for the three boys.
“But then at the same time, these kids had such a good mom that they’re so resilient,” he said, fighting back the sadness in his voice.
As a nursing faculty member at Conestoga, Stiles was the co-ordinator for the Personal Support Worker program at Riverside Glen in Guelph. She was on her way home from an OPSEU rally in Toronto in support of striking college workers when she crashed.
Picket lines organized by Local 237 came down Friday as a show of respect and flags at Ontario Public Service Employees Union head office in Toronto were lowered.
Pat Bower worked with Stiles at Riverside Glen for two and a half years, sitting directly across from her in a small office. She said Stiles was quite a character.
“Amy was absolutely delightful,” she said. Stiles was a caring, opinionated person who was fiercely dedicated to her family and to causes she believed in. She wasn’t afraid to stand up for people, or animals or any big issue that was the cause of injustice, Bower said. “She never backed down from anything.” Out on the picket line at Queen’s Park on Thursday, while some people were listening to music or audio books in their headphones, “she was listening to lectures on quantum physics,” Bower said. “That was Amy. She’s brilliant, that woman.”
A celebration of Stiles’ life will be held on Friday at Centre Wellington Sportsplex. Visitation will be between 1 and 3 p.m. with a funeral service held at 3 p.m.
Rob Giddy, a funeral director with Graham A. Giddy Funeral Homes, said funerals are hardly ever held at the Sportsplex, but the family is expecting more than 500 people to attend the service.
On Monday afternoon, Wellington County OPP said a mechanical inspection of the dump truck revealed there was nothing wrong with it. Investigators also ruled out cellphone usage by either driver as a factor in the collision.
Police said “for unknown reasons the Mazda sedan crossed over the centre line into the path of the dump truck.”
The OPP say they don’t expect to lay charges.
The driver of the truck was transported to hospital for treatment of serious, but nonlife-threatening injuries.