When 25-year-old Vanessa McGibbon decided to relocate to Jasper for a career move, she was looking forward to embracing small town living.

Little did she know how much the small town would embrace her.

On February 5, barely a month after she started her new job as a physiotherapist in Jasper, McGibbon was driving home from Valemount when her car hit a patch of black ice. 

“I tried to correct but my car started sliding into the other lane,” she recalled. “I was heading right towards a semi.”

McGibbon’s Toyota Rav4 collided with a west-bound transport truck. The impact sent her car careening across the road. Inside, McGibbon was hurt, but alive. As a fellow traveller approached the car, he was shocked to find McGibbon conscious and lucid.  

“There was blood everywhere, my arm was disfigured, I knew from how he looked at me that I looked bad,” she recalled.

It was bad. Her right arm had two cuts down the bone. Her left arm was broken. She had two severed tendons in her hand and her pelvis was bruised. She had broken teeth and a concussion. 

But it would be hours before doctors could diagnose all that, and she spent an agonizing hour on the side of the road before paramedics arrived. In the meantime, a gaggle of good samaritans helped McGibbon keep warm and safe. Trying to cheer her up, someone brought her a puppy.

“They took care of me,” she said.

And now it’s her friends and colleagues who are helping take care of her. McGibbon is a contractor who does not earn a salary. She doesn’t have benefits. Not having the use of her arms means she can’t work. That’s why a GoFundMe campaign has been organized on her behalf.

“Any sort of accident impacts more than one’s loss of wage,” said McGibbon’s friend, Jasper’s Su Young-Leslie, a co-organizer of the campaign. “All of the additional costs associated with an accident like this puts you out of sorts.”

Young-Leslie was struck by the fact that McGibbon, a physiotherapist, devotes herself to helping others overcome injuries and now needs help doing that same thing.

“Jasper is known for taking care of its own,” Young-Leslie said. “Right now, Vanessa needs our help.”

The money raised will help McGibbons and her boyfriend pay for basic living expenses as she recovers. She’ll soon be discharged to Jasper’s Seton Healthcare Centre from the
St. Albert hospital where she’s been since February 5, but it will be months of rehabilitation before she can go back to her physio caseload. Her boyfriend will take time off work to care for her.

Gibbons expected that her loved ones would help out (her mom has been by her side since she went to hospital), but she’s been amazed by the wider response.

“People’s support has been incredible,” she said.

Click here to view the GoFundMe page

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com