Marathon road closure causes man to miss grandfather’s funeral
A Calgary man who spent weeks preparing the eulogy for his grandfather’s funeral missed the service on Sunday after he and dozens of other drivers got stuck at a standstill downtown for more than an hour as Scotiabank Calgary Marathon runners raced by.
Jordan Tettensor left his home in Lower Mount Royal around 11 a.m. Sunday with a plan to pick up his sister, Erin Tettensor, in Ramsay — a drive that would typically take under 15 minutes — then head about 60 kilometres to High River, leaving plenty of time to spare before the service began at 1 p.m.
But after modifying his planned route due to backups and lane closures, Tettensor said he quickly found himself in one of four lanes of traffic stuck at a standstill on Macleod Trail, near the rail underpass shortly before 9th Avenue, as racers ran down a closed 9th Avenue.
“I was increasingly getting worried,” said Jordan, who texted Erin he was trapped by the marathon and would be late picking her up.
“I would have never guessed we would be 100 per cent stopped for over an hour and 15 minutes.”
Erin, who had flown from New York for the funeral, sat at her home feeling helpless and pitching solutions to her frustrated brother, including abandoning his vehicle or having her come and wait in it so he could make the funeral.
“I said, ‘You can pull over and park the car.... He said, ‘You don’t understand ... there are cars to my left, to my right and cars in front and behind,” Erin recalled.
As the clock continued to tick, Jordan let his father know he may have to read the eulogy on Jordan’s behalf, and Erin eventually headed to High River on her own.
While family members tried to delay the funeral start time, musical performers who had other scheduled gigs on Sunday afternoon meant there was little leeway.
Traffic finally started to move around 12:50 p.m. By the time Jordan and Erin got to High River, both had missed most of the service for their grandfather, a Second World War veteran, including the eulogy, which Jordan’s father read.
“We can never get that back,” Erin said. “You’re missing that closure and you really feel like you let the family down.”
Jordan, who had interviewed family members for the eulogy and crafted a highly emotional and personal speech in the wake of his grandfather’s death last fall, said he wept on the drive to High River.
“I was very upset,” he said. “It was so important to me.”
Kirsten Fleming, executive director of the Scotiabank Calgary Marathon, said her heart dropped when she heard about what happened to the Tettensors.
“I do feel terrible for anyone that’s negatively impacted (by the race), in particular in this situation, and we’ve invited them to contact our office,” Flemming said.
Flemming said the race’s 10-kilometre route was altered this year because the Calgary Zoo bridge has been removed, and the 10-kilometre start time was shifted to 11 a.m. — changes that may have caused the traffic jam Jordan was stuck in.
“We’re still doing a full audit but I think any additional issues that we’ve had that we haven’t seen in the past are probably a circumstance of that,” she said.
But, Chris McGeachy, a spokesman with the city’s roads department, said between social media, message boards, info on the city’s website and traditional media channels, the city did plenty of communication warning motorists about the road closures.
“There was a lot of advance warning,” he said.