Chatelaine: December 1982
In December of 1982, Chatelaine Magazine requested an interview with me about the foundation of Pride Ontario (People to Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere). This excellent article clearly defines the beginnings of Pride/Madd. Below are some quotes that I hope will explain about us. Page 61: Three years ago, Karen and John Mitchell, a typical young Calgary couple, were celebrating the purchase of their first home. Their only child, Jennifer, 9, had helped choose the house and had contributed the contents of her tin coin band to the down payment. Two days later, Jennifer while riding her bicycle to Brownies on a sunny Sunday afternoon, was killed by a drunk driver. The man driving the car had been convicted of drunk driving once before. For killing Jennifer Mitchell, he served six months in jail and then was free to drink and drive again. The Mitchells, on the other hand, suffered three years of intense grief, anger and depression, which led to the loss of their jobs and every vestige of financial security, before they moved from Calgary and their memories back to Toronto to, where they began to recover. Jennifer was a victim of the major cause of death among Canadians 5 to 30 years of age; motor vehicles accidents. In 1980, more than 3,000 Canadians under 30 were killed on the road. Alcohol was a factor over half of these deaths. Last May (1982), Karen Mitchell organized Pride Ontario (People to Rid Impaired Driving Everywhere). Now that the Mitchell's lives have more or less returned to normal-John 33, is once more working as a systems analyst, and Karen 34, has borne another child- Ryan Mitchell-they are telling their painful story over and over again to help humanize the statistics and put teeth into our laws against drunk driving. Page 168: Last May 27 (1982), on the third anniversary of Jennifer's death, Karen Mitchell found a way of fulfilling the vow made over Jennifer's deathbed: to find some way to combat drunk driving. By chance, Karen had seen a TV interview with Margaret Taylor of Winnipeg, (November 1981) whose 16-year-old daughter, Sara, and two friends were crushed to death by a drunken driver as they drove home from a movie in September 1980. As a memorial to her daughter, Taylor was publicizing her recently founded Citizens Against Impaired Driving (CAID), the first of the Canadian lobby groups. Its aims are similar to those of the U.S. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), itself organized about two and a half years ago. Karen barely gave Margaret Taylor time to get home from the TV studio before phoning her long distance. They talked an hour. Then with Taylor's encouragement Karen organized, Pride (and later) Pride/Madd Ontario, deliberately aligning it with the Metro Toronto Police RIDE program (Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere) driver surveillance program. Her first move was to contact the coordinator, Don Colbourne of RIDE, who paid Karen a visit, and talked with her for a couple of hours and helped her arrange to be interviewed with The Toronto Star. (The Toronto Star Article). Within a year of this interview, Karen had put together a board of directors and helped set up other chapters of Pride/Madd, with the Ontario chapter having over 1000 members within its first year of conception. Karen Mitchell (President and Founder) and chosen board members, John Bates (Vice President) and Cholvat (Secretary), met with government officials, including: Metro Chairman Paul Godfrey and Ontario Attorney General Roy McMurtry, in 1982 with a list of recommendations below and concerns that Karen had written as part of her research before her first call to Margaret Taylor.
The Toronto Star-June 14, 1982: |
