‘Grief that you cannot imagine’: MADD Saskatoon launches Crashed Car Campaign

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, also known as MADD Saskatoon has launched the start of an annual impaired driving awareness campaign. Hallee Mandryk reports.

The wrecked car sitting on the front lawn of Saskatoon’s Alice Turner Library is an image that brings up a lot of emotions for Linda Van de Vorst.

“It right away brings me back to seeing the crashed car in the SGI salvage lot that had our four family members in there. It brings sadness, grief that you cannot imagine,” Van de Vorst said.

Van de Vorst’s son, daughter-in-law and two young grandchildren were killed by an impaired driver in a 2016 car crash. She said while the broken glass, crumpled metal and distorted frame of the car evoke painful memories, those feelings are important.

Now a representative of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada, Van de Vorst explained Saskatoon’s sixth annual Crashed Car Campaign is an important reminder of the impacts of impaired driving.

“People are going to ask, why is it there? What is it doing there? And hopefully they will be wise enough to understand. Impaired driving can kill or injure, and hopefully they never have to experience that,” Van de Vorst said.

The car will be moved to five different locations throughout Saskatoon between June and September. Van de Vorst shared that she hopes this display will evoke a sense of responsibility among those who understand the severity of impaired driving impacts.

“Take responsibility to say, I’m not going to drink and drive. And I want to ensure that my family knows the same thing. Or if I’m out going out with somebody, a group of people, I want to make sure that the people that are there who are drinking and driving don’t get behind that wheel,” Van de Vorst said.

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While MADD Saskatoon is working hard to spread awareness, impaired driving continues to be a serious issue on roads across the province. According to RCMP, in 2025, 33 people lost their lives due to impaired driving in Saskatchewan.

“Since the summer of 2020, there’s about a thousand road signs that have been installed in the city indicating where a criminally impaired driver has been found. So you just do the math on that for years. Still, a lot of drivers being caught around the city. And probably the most scary part of that is they’re caught all times of the day,” Craig Stevenson, the secretary of MADD Saskatoon, said.

Saskatoon Police Chief, Cam McBride said this campaign comes at an important time in the province. As warmer months settle into the province, this often means that people partake in more frequent drug and alcohol consumption as well.

“As a reminder that, yes, families need to be together. We need to celebrate with one another. At the same time, we have to be responsible not only for ourselves, but responsible for those around us, for our communities,” McBride said.

The police chief added that the issue of impaired driving continues to be something that Saskatoon police officers see frequently.

“There are times still where...we’ve got so many impaired drivers that we run out of our people to do the work. And so while we celebrate the good things, we cannot stop being diligent and we cannot stop doing the work because it still exists, it’s still out there and we have to be on top of it all the time,” McBride said.

Van de Vorst emphasized how impaired driving collisions often have impacts that extend far beyond the families of those involved.

“We didn’t realize how many people were affected by the crash. When I think of the police officers that had to go to that scene and how one of the police officers held our little grandson’s finger while he was still having a few breaths in their car. I think of the impact that it had on those officers,” Van de Vorst said.

Adding that her heart goes out to those who helped her late family members in the early hours of that January morning in 2016, and she hopes that nobody will ever have to share that experience.

“I think of the paramedics that took our family away, how the impact was there, the fire department that came, that the tow truck companies that had to come and clean up, that they know who was in those cars, the impact that it would have on them going to the hospital, the impact on the nurses and the doctors in that hospital, everyone suffers. The community suffers. Every life is important....it affects a community forever,” Van de Vorst said.