Memorial dedicated to young men
By Toby Gorman - Nanaimo News BulletinPublished: November 06, 2009 3:00 PM
Lee Brault, with his dog Zeke, looks out over Nanaimo Harbour from his favourite place on Westwood Ridges. Brault, who built a cabin at the site with four friends in 1995, was killed in 2003 in a head-on vehicle collision. Five years later, Wilf Smith died in a fire at the cabin.
A burned-out cabin on the lower slopes of Mount Benson once brought horror and grief to Marg Hunt.
On Wednesday (Nov. 11), the site where the cabin once stood will bring peace and reflection.
On the night of Aug. 24, 2008, Hunt’s son, Wilf Smith, 28, was camping with his girlfriend at the cabin, a place he loved and often visited. Sometime before midnight the cabin caught fire and Smith could not escape.
Hunt, alongside police in the early morning darkness, found her son dead beside the cabin’s woodstove.
Since then a string of events have led to a connection and a community effort to remember two men who will be forever linked in death.
In 1995, Lee Brault, along with four friends, built the cabin. In 2003 at the age of 24, Brault was killed in a car accident in Saskatchewan.
“Lee’s dad, Ken, called me when he saw Wilf’s obituary,” said Hunt. “He asked if he could go up to the site. Lee and Wilf never knew each other, but their deaths have brought people together.”
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