Samara Zavalkoff

By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

This could have been a “sentinel event,” potentially life-threatening or life-altering. As an intensive-care unit physician at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, Samara Zavalkoff knows all too well what that means, and is grateful that her son escaped with scrapes and bruises after being hit by a car at the intersection of Westminster and Ainslie in Montreal West.

Zavalkoff’s son Charlie, 14, is a student at Royal West Academy. He takes the train from NDG to Montreal West station, and then walks to school from there. He and two friends crossed at the south-east corner where, as the school always tells the students, the crosswalk is more clearly marked. Northbound traffic stopped to let Charlie and his friends cross. But then Charlie noticed just a second too late that a car traveling north was about to hit him.

He was hit on his left side, and knocked down onto the road on his right side. Police and first responders were called to the scene, and Charlie was transported to hospital.

“This was not an accident,” Zavalkoff said. “This was a completely preventable event.”

Morning rush hour traffic on Westminster through Montreal West is worse than it’s been in a long time due to several factors, including road closures on both Sherbrooke and Broughton, and the ongoing construction of the Easton apartment complex at St. Jacques. Zavalkoff says that might be the saving grace that prevented more serious injury to her son.

At the same time, however, the traffic may be at the heart of the kind of driver frustration that would lead to an incident.

Zavalkoff spoke to the Royal West Academy administration and governing board, and to town councillor Lauren Small-Pennefather, who is responsible for public security in Montreal West. She also filed a complaint with SPVM station 9.

The police department oversees the crossing guard program. Whether a school gets a crossing guard depends on a number of factors, including the flow of traffic through a crossing, The speed of traffic, the width of the street, and the age and number of school children. High schools, the SPVM says, are not eligible for the program.

Word of the incident reached Liberal MNA Désirée McGraw. McGraw told Zavalkoff that she spoke with the Transport Minister about the issue, and indicated that action would be taken to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future, although Zavalkoff wonders why a problem with an ostensibly simple solution needs to go up that high.

This was not a case of a distracted teen wearing earbuds staring at his phone, says Zavalkoff. Charlie diligently crossed at the crosswalk, with his phone in his pocket on the side where he got hit. His phone did not fare as well as he did.

Town Mayor Beny Masella is travelling and was not available for comment. But Small-Pennefather does want to convene a meeting with the mayor and his team, the school’s governing board, and the police to hash out a solution. “I think we have enough information as intelligent people,” says Zavalkoff, “that we can figure out what to do.”

The kids don’t need another lecture or assembly on safety, said Zavalkoff. “This is about us structurally changing the intersection so that it’s safe.” n