Doctor ‘looked like a butcher, all covered in blood’

“Two years later, I was in a bad car accident. A couple of buddies and me had spent several hours frequenting bars. The Ottawa House, the British, the Standish, the Chaudiere. We ended up at the Chamberlain Hotel in Aylmer, and we were there for quite a while.

“It was dark when we came out, and we were driving back on the lower Aylmer Road in my buddy’s new 1968 Super Bee. There were three of us. We were doing at least 120 mph. And there was a car in front of us, a Volkswagen, I think, with only one tail light. So Mike went to pull in and pass it on the inside, but he lost control in the loose gravel, and the ditches there are quite deep. We flew through the air and sheared off a telephone pole about eight feet up — cleaned it right off with the side of the car.

“The car spun around and then flipped end-for-end seven times before stopping on its roof in the ditch. I went through the windshield, but my knees got stuck under the dash, and so I came back inside the car and was knocked out and thrown into the back seat. All three of us were, which was a good thing, because the roof was flattened down to the front seat. The only place you could have survived was in the back. I was cut on the side of my face and my neck. We had to climb out the pie-shaped window in the back, which wasn’t very big.

“An ambulance came, and it was taking us to the hospital when I heard the driver yell, and we got T-boned by this big old Buick or Oldsmobile. Another ambulance came and took us to the hospital. And there had been another big car accident previously that night — some people actually died — and so when the doctor came in to see me, he looked like a butcher, all covered in blood. So that was something.”