TORONTO — There’s a two-and-a-half-year-old girl running around the Northwest Territories who wouldn’t be alive today if it hadn’t been for the courage and fast action of ECL driver Robert O’Brien, of Cape Broyle, Nfld.

Quick rewind: Valentine’s Day 2008 and it’s snowing.

O’Brien was pulling a pair of Super-B’s full of aviation fuel up Highway 1 when he noticed some debris in the road, and tire tracks in the snow leading off into the ditch. Off to his right, O’Brien saw a pickup truck flipped over in the snow, off in the ditch.

Beside it stood a woman, holding a baby in her arms.

Leaping down out of his cab, he learned that the woman was so cold that she could no longer move her hands; but she also said the nine-month-old boy she was holding was a twin; and his twin sister was trapped, in the truck cab, under the snow.

O’Brien hustled the mom and baby into his truck and went back to rescue the little girl.

“She was buried under the snow, but you could see her trying to escape.”

O’Brien broke through the back window of the pickup, pulled the tyke out and delivered her to her mom, who was warming up in the sleeper berth.

“There was no access to 9-1-1 there so I used the VHF to call for help. They let somebody from the DOT know.”

O’Brien’s actions were officially recognized this week at the Ontario Trucking Association’s (OTA) when he was presented with the annual Bridgestone Canadian Truck Hero Award by Jim West, the district manager of commercial products for Eastern Canada with Bridgestone-Firestone Canada.

O’Brien’s wife Maria flew in from Cape Broyle for the ceremony. O’Brien has been driving for 35 years, the past three in the Northwest Territories. He and Marie have four sons.

The last he heard, Mom and babies were fine.
 

Bridgestone-Firestone’s Jim West presents
Robert O’Brien with his trucker hero trophy.