Victim ID’d in excavator mishap

New Brunswick race car driver killed on job site north of Fort McMurray

A 21-year-old New Brunswick man killed at a work site north of Fort McMurray Friday was a race car driver who planned to move home in two weeks.

Jordan Gahan was working his last rotation as an excavator operator when the track hoe he was operating in a borrow pit north of Fort McMurray broke through some ice.

Gahan planned to move home to Fredericton, N.B., in two weeks, his brother Joshua Paul said Sunday, and was excited to return to the local race track, where he was a driver in the pro stock division — the highest class at the track.

“That was his passion,” Paul said.

“He was happiest at the race track and spent countless hours there.”

Gahan was working along the East Athabasca Highway, a privately owned road two hours north of Fort McMurray that provides access to Suncor’s Firebag in situ site, when he was killed around 4 p.m. on Friday.

“The machine was driving around at the bottom of the (borrow) pit on the ice and it broke through,” Occupational Health and Safety spokesperson Charles Strachey said Sunday.

In construction and engineering, a borrow pit is created when an excavator removes earth for use elsewhere. Strachey said water had collected at the bottom of the pit and subsequently frozen.

Occupational Health and Safety has put a stop-work order at the site while it investigates.

Brayford Trucking president Kevin Brayford confirmed Sunday one of his employees was dead, but would not give any further details about the accident. The trucking company is based in Leduc County.

Paul said Gahan and his girlfriend moved to Edmonton in August 2013 for work.

He said his brother looked up to their father, who is also a race car driver and excavator operator.

“He wanted to be just like him,” Paul said.

Gahan and his three brothers grew up watching their father at Speedway 660, the local race track. After many hours spent helping on his dad’s pit crew, Gahan started racing when he was 17.

“He loved it. He loved his fans and signing autographs. He lived and breathed racing,” Paul said.

Gahan attended a racing school in North Carolina and had dreams of racing in the United States.

In one of the last posts of the Jordan Gahan Racing Facebook page, from August 2013, Gahan wrote that an “incredible job opportunity” had come up in Alberta.

“This has been a very tough decision but the 2013 season is over for the 16 car and myself,” it reads.

“I’m looking to be back on track a little earlier than usual for the 2014 season, and much more prepared and ready to win races that never before.”

“He was heading places. He had lots of potential,” Paul said. “It still hasn’t sunk in that he’s not coming home.”