Paramedics ride to raise funds for monument

Pelee Island air ambulance crash victim among those honoured

Local paramedics cycling to raise money for a national monument honouring paramedics who’ve died in the line of duty took a poignant ferry ride to Pelee Island this week.

It was just off the island in 1989 that one of their own, Windsor Provincial Ambulance Service’s Russ Ransome, 28, died in an air ambulance crash shortly after takeoff.

He was treating a woman who’d broken her leg and needed to get to a hospital.

The pilot and the woman’s husband were also killed.

This week, paramedics brought the Memorial Bell for fallen paramedics — Ransome’s is one of the names inscribed on it — to the island.

They stopped at the runway where the air ambulance took off 31 years ago before crashing into Lake Erie. Then they cycled for about 20 kilometres around the island.

“It was very touching to be able to do that,” paramedic and organizer Vickie Laframboise said Wednesday.

The group, called Helping Honour the Heroes of Ontario, or H3O, is raising money to build a monument in Ottawa.

A total of 13 cyclists including EMS chief Bruce Krauter as well as two support drivers, spent Wednesday and Thursday cycling to the various ambulance bases throughout Windsor and Essex County.

Including the ride Tuesday on Pelee Island, they will have covered about 200 kilometres.

Paramedics across the country are involved in the campaign to get the monument built. Last year, Ontario paramedics including a group from Windsor-essex, did a 500-kilometre ride from Toronto to Ottawa.

But COVID-19 put this year’s big ride on hold. Instead, the bell is sent to regions throughout the province for local rides.

“We have the bell down here,” said Laframboise. “At the end of the week, we hope to do a closing ceremony where the bell will be handed off to Chatham-kent.”

In this way, the bell will make its way all the way to Timmins, she said.