It was a regular January day driving along the Sea to Sky highway for Jehan Jiwa and her father. They were coming back to Vancouver from their vacation home in Whistler. Conditions were unremarkable, with little snowfall or traffic that Monday afternoon, Jan. 9, 2023.
But driving along the Sea to Sky highway near Brittania Beach would change her and her family’s life forever.
“The only part I remember was that out of nowhere, an SUV started coming almost directly at us," Jiwa said.
"And I remember thinking, ‘wow, that car is coming right at us. It's going to turn, though, I'm sure it's going to turn.’ And then next thing I remember is just a monstrous collision. It seemed like the car was almost in flight."
Once the car came to a stop, she and her father tried to communicate and find out if they were both OK.
“I remember my dad and I looked at each other. We couldn't speak, just, I think, out of pure shock, but we just looked at each other like, ‘Oh my God.’ He asked me, ‘Are you OK?’" she recalled. "And I tried to say, ‘Yes, I think I'm OK,’ but I couldn't talk. I couldn't get my breath. So, I knew that something was incredibly wrong. And then that's all I remember. My next memories are waking up in the ICU two days later.”
Her father was taken to Lions Gate Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries as Jiwa went into emergency surgery at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) to remove a piece of her damaged intestine. Her extensive injuries included a fractured femur, tibia and fibula, five fractured vertebrae, two liver lacerations, a fractured thumb, two fractured fingers, a collapsed lung, intestinal resection, a dislocated sternum and severe internal bleeding.
Pique reported the accident at the time, which saw Sea to Sky Squamish RCMP, BC Highway Patrol Squamish, Fire Rescue, BC Ambulance, and Miller Capilano respond. More than a year later, Jiwa reached out to share her story of recovery, in the hopes drivers will be more careful along the Sea to Sky.
@piquenewsmagazine It was a regular January day driving along the Sea to Sky highway for Jehan Jiwa and her father. They were coming back to Vancouver from their vacation home in Whistler. Conditions were unremarkable, with little snowfall or traffic that Monday afternoon, Jan. 9, 2023. But driving along the Sea to Sky highway near Brittania Beach would change her and her family’s life forever. “The only part I remember was that out of nowhere, an SUV started coming almost directly at us," Jiwa said. Read her recovery story at wew.piquenewsmagazine.com #whistler #seatosky #localjournalism ♬ Inspirational and Motivational Strings - Iustin Galea
Road to recovery
She would spend the next month at VGH, undergoing three surgeries before starting a journey of recovery, which she’s shown in detail through an Instagram video.
“The month after that was essentially just learning to breathe again, learning to sit, to stand, to walk a couple steps, to do a couple stairs, to talk, to feed myself, to use the bathroom, you know, it was a complete loss of control, loss of ability, and essentially [I was] starting from the ground up, rebuilding my body,” Jiwa said.
The trauma extends to her father, as well, whether it was seeing her unable to breathe and bleeding from the accident, or from the time he was separated from her while at a different hospital for 24 hours.
Jiwa's mom was thousands of kilometres away in East Africa at the time, leaving her unable to immediately be by her daughter’s side.
“It’s in our consciousness all the time," she said. "It's impacted our ability to enjoy going back up to Whistler, because the Sea to Sky now will always have a bit of a tainted memory for us.”
Jiwa's recovery includes physio, kinesiology, massage, acupuncture, counselling, workouts, doctor’s appointments and consults. The extensive care is covered by ICBC, which she expects to need for the rest of her life.
She has recovered to the point someone may not notice anything out of the ordinary, except for a limp. But she said the inward trauma is still there, and sometimes people need to be reminded she needs support.
“There’s no outward signs of the trauma that I've endured. And so, people sometimes forget what has happened, and I've had to learn that you have to remind people what you're going through, because people don't know what's going on beneath the surface of anybody else," she said. "I encourage people to speak up and use your voice to let people know what you're going through, whatever it might be.”
'One shift at a time'
Before the accident, Jiwa worked with the Vancouver Whitecaps, and also has a longstanding love for hockey.
Her passion started with the Canucks' run to the Stanley Cup Final run in 1994, and she describes her desire to lace up again as a “North Star.” But what’s most beneficial to her is the mentality that comes with living life one buzzer to the next.
“In hockey the mentality is one shift at a time. So that's the way I look at it—one shift at a time. Don't get too far ahead. Don't look at things too much in advance. Just do the work hour to hour, day to day,” she said.
Jiwa is also vice president of the women’s non-profit, Grindstone Award Foundation, which provides financial aid to families or girls who can’t afford to play hockey.
While the crash has completely changed her life, there were no criminal charges laid against the driver, whose identity is unknown to Jiwa.
“I know he is a male, but I don’t know who or what he looks like, or his name—I sometimes think that I could be standing at Starbucks and he could be standing next to me grabbing a coffee. I wouldn’t know that this is the person who changed by life. We’ve had absolutely no interaction. There’s been no attempt at an apology or anything like that,” she said.
Headlines about car accidents on the Sea to Sky happen practically every week, an occurrence that makes reporting on them, or sitting through the traffic jams, normalized. Yet this normalization doesn’t show the life-changing consequences for survivors like Jiwa.
“It's meant to be a really beautiful drive, but yet, you see people that are going double the speed limit, people who are distracted or merging when they shouldn't be. And it's really unfortunate," she said. "I hope that more is being done at an RCMP level, at an ICBC level, at a government level to enforce different penalties and more policing, because people need to be held accountable.”
Full of grit and adamant about taking her trauma and doing good for herself and others, Jiwa is available to share her story as a motivational speaker, and has been featured as a guest on Women’s Hockey Life podcast and the National Hockey League Players Association.
“I’m always happy to talk to anyone who wants to learn more or wants to talk about grit, perseverance, trauma, recovery, any of those those subjects, because they're very near and dear to my heart,” she said.
