Van de Vorst family speaks out about drinking and driving

It’s been six months since four members of the Van de Vorst family – Jordan, Chanda and their two children Miguire and Kamryn – were killed in a drunk driving crash on Highway 11.

In court Wednesday, Catherine McKay pleaded guilty to four counts of impaired driving causing death.

Louis Van de Vorst, Jordan’s father, went to the courtroom.

“I’m thankful that she plead guilty definitely. I’m glad that we don’t have to go through the process of a trial, however long that would be because I think that would be salt on a wound, even worse,” he said to Saskatoon Afternoon host David Kirton during an one-on-one interview.

Van de Vorst said there needs to be a more serious look at drinking and driving in the province.

“Yes it’s affected us personally, and our family personally and a lot of other people personally, but I look at impaired driving in Saskatchewan as a whole, and I’m looking at the big picture,” he said.

“We need to do something about the fact that Saskatchewan has such a high record of impaired driving and leads the country in fact in impaired driving and impaired driving causing death. I think we need to change, I think our society needs to change.”

He said he hopes that their case will lead the way to show that there needs to be responsibility taken when people chose to drink and then drive.

“I would like to see something and it’s our case that hopefully will do this and I want to see a sentence that reflects a severity and how seriously people should be taking this,” he said.

 “If I can use the terms precedent setting, I would want it to be precedent setting.”

It has been a difficult time for Van de Vorst and the surviving family.

“We are working our way through it, and we have good days and we have really bad days,” he said, choking up as he spoke.

May had Mother’s Day and would have been Jordan’s birthday and in June there were supposed to be more birthdays and Jordan and Chanda’s wedding anniversary, Van de Vorst said.

“All those special occasion makes it really hard,” he said.