Harricana ends in disaster for Kuujjuaq team

ODILE NELSON

Disaster hit a Nunavik snowmobiling team Feb.26 when its mechanical support crew was involved in a high-speed, head-on collision during Raid Harricana in southern Quebec.

The crash, which occurred near Newport, Quebec, killed the driver of the oncoming car and sent all four members of the Maribeau Kuujjuaq team’s support crew to hospital.

The team manager, Mark T. Gordon, suffered a broken ankle and cracked vertebrae. The other three members, including Mark’s brother Willie Gordon, all walked away with minor injuries.

The crash effectively forced the racing team to withdraw from Harricana – the world’s premier snowmobiling race – because it prevented them from repairing a skidoo that had broken down earlier in the day.

Willie Gordon said the three-man racing team of Johnny May Jr., Jimmy Gordon and Steven Kleist, and their support crew, pulled out after learning of the severity of Mark T. Gordon’s injuries.

“My brother Mark was trying to say I’m okay to continue… [but] later that night Junior May and the others decided it was just a race. They were more worried about us. They didn’t know how bad his back was, but [when they learned] that’s when the racing spirit was completely demolished,” Willie said.

To say it was a hard loss for the team is an understatement. The team had entered the 1,800-kilometre, nine-day race with a fourth-place ranking.

But bad luck seemed to find the racing team just as it tasted victory in the fifth stage of Harricana. As the team neared the end of the Percé to Chandler, Que., segment of the fifth stage, one of their skidoos broke down. Kuujjuaq Maribeau won the stage but only by using the team’s two other snowmobiles to drag the broken snowmobile over the finish line, Gordon said.

The support crew’s RV rushed down a local highway toward the town of Chandler with spare parts to repair the skidoo. But just before 6 p.m. bad luck struck again — this time veering straight into the driver’s side of Kuujjuaq Maribeau’s RV.

“My brother was driving. I was on the passenger side and we were saying how nice the driving was because there was not much traffic on the road,” Gordon said. “Then we were about to pass a car when this other car coming from the front suddenly turned directly towards us.”

Both vehicles were driving roughly 90 km/h, Gordon said.

“We almost turned over. The driver’s side from front to back was gone. Luckily, it didn’t catch fire because we had some gas and a propane stove in the back,” he said.

Since the accident, rumours have spread around Nunavik that the man in the other vehicle was trying to commit suicide by crashing his car into the RV.

Willie Gordon said a paramedic at the Chandler hospital told him police were looking for the driver after he had been involved in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend.

But Agent Claude Ross, a police spokesperson in Rimouski, said though an investigation was continuing, there was no evidence the man tried to kill himself.

“At this point what we know is, yes, the person went on the other side of the road and, yes, a head-on collision did occur with the RV. But we don’t know the reason why the driver came the wrong way,” Ross said this week.

Ross stressed police were not pursuing the man at the time of the accident and there was no warrant out for his arrest. However, he confirmed the man was involved in a family dispute earlier in the day.

Ross also said there was no indication that alcohol, excessive speed, or poor road conditions contributed to the accident, but that this could not be confirmed until the investigation was complete.

Doctors operated on Mark Gordon’s ankle last Friday. Willie Gordon, who stayed with his brother at a hospital in Chandler, said his brother will be in a back brace for several months but is expected to fully recover.

The Quebec City team of Winn’s Stryker Berthec went on to win the race. L’équipe du Nord team from Kuujjuaq, Escoumins and Fermont finished third.