When a shivering, incoherent woman knocked on his door just before dinner time on Dec. 23, during a roaring blizzard with zero visibility outside, Denny Vervaet of Blenheim, Ontario, didn’t hesitate. He opened his door and brought the woman inside.
“I heard a tapping at the window, kind of like a branch hitting it. I open the door, and there’s a six-foot drift. She’s standing there, worked up and scared. And I didn’t know what she was saying,” Vervaet, a married, 38-year-old father of three girls, told The Epoch Times.
The woman, Madeline, who immigrated to Canada in 2014 from West Africa, finally told him her family, including a baby, was back in the car on the road.
Vervaet and his wife, Sandy, who own Red Barn Brewing Company, said there was no question they would help the stranded strangers. “I don’t know how anyone could turn them away. We need to help each other,” he said.
Vervaet had randomly decided to make a venison chili earlier in the afternoon, after his cousin gave him meat from a deer hunted on the 100 acres out back. “It’s kind of coincidence or fate that I made a huge pot of chili, so we had enough food for everyone,” he said.
The group had been travelling from Toronto in a three-car caravan to spend the holidays as a family in an Airbnb in Windsor. The blizzard and treacherous roads brought the trip to a standstill. The massive storm caused power outages, flight cancellations, and treacherous roads throughout Ontario and Quebec.
Highway 401 had been shut down, and the group had been travelling off the main highway to try and reach their destination, already having been in the car four or five hours for what is usually a three-hour trip, said Vervaet.
“They’re taking on the side roads, and to someone that’s not experienced with that, it’s the worst thing you can do,” he said. “All the side roads that aren’t being cleared, drifts are coming. And it was just a scary experience for them.”
Madeline told Vervaet the family could not drive any further—it was dark, they couldn’t see in the blowing snow, and two of the vehicles were stuck in a ditch.
Vervaet tried to leave with Madeline’s adult son Charles to rescue the rest of the family, but his truck got stuck in the deep snow on the driveway.
As it turned out, not too long afterward, a good Samaritan picked up the other family members stranded at the side of the road, and brought them to the Vervaets’ home.
Vervaet said it was the worst storm he had ever seen. That day, 100-kilometre-per-hour winds dropped the -18 degree temperature to -35 with windchill.
“I would go outside to shovel to try and get my truck out and had to go back in, because the cold just hurt my face. It was so scary. I’ve never seen something like this. If you went outside without any protection, you'd get instant frostbite,” said Vervaet.
The family invited all 10 strangers to spend the night and wait out the storm. The group included Madeline, her sister, the children’s grandmother, Charles, and five children, one of whom was an infant.
Vervaet and Sandy served chili for dinner, and then the children played card games like Uno. The adults talked, and Vervaet took Charles on a tour of the couple’s brewery next door.
They learned that two of the women were French teachers, and Charles is an aspiring French hip-hop artist who goes by the name TJ Mix.
The family set up air beds, a futon, and couches in the basement of their ranch-style, three-bedroom house for their guests. One of Vervaet’s daughters bunked with a sister, so Madeline’s children had a bed. Vervaet said the two bathrooms had a lineup.
“We wanted to make them comfortable because they were super, just awesome people, and they had such a bad journey,” he said.
In the morning, Sandy made peanut butter sandwiches and served the family cereal and fruit, while Vervaet tried to get the vehicles dug out of the snow. Ultimately, his father-in-law, who lived down the road, used his tractor to physically free the cars. Around 11 a.m. the next morning, Dec. 24, Madeline and her family headed off again to their destination.
“By the time they left, the wind had died down, visibility was back up,” said Vervaet.
He said the two families have spoken every day since, and went from being strangers to being friends, overnight. Madeline’s family even sent a special Christmas video message after they arrived safely in Windsor.
