Hundreds gather to mourn mudslide victim Hayes,
Friends gather to mourn Connor Hayes, who died along with girlfriend while on vacation in New Zealand
Hundreds gathered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, off Shea Road in the city’s west end, to say goodbye to Connor Hayes and remember the 25-year-old’s fun-loving, sports-filled and globe-trotting life.
The lineup to get into the church stood several dozen deep almost an hour before the service began on Saturday morning. Hayes’ father, Michael, stood at the church’s entrance wearing his son’s bright red No. 20 hockey jersey with the captain’s “C” sewn on the shoulder.
The elder Hayes shook hands and greeted each of the visitors before they headed inside the church, which could easily seat 700 people. It was standing room only for the service.
Friends and family shared stories about Hayes, his accomplishments and his hobbies over the years. Hayes was a natural athlete and excelled at almost all sports he tried, he was involved in whatever community he found himself in, and he was about to begin studying at the Canadian Police College to become an officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Hayes died in September in New Zealand after a mudslide swept the vehicle he was travelling in with girlfriend Joanna Lam, 24, off a road.
After leaving the road, the vehicle went into the Haas River, which was raging about five metres higher than normal. Lam’s body was carried more than 60 kilometres downstream, but Hayes’ body was never recovered.
Attending the funeral was New Zealand High Commissioner Simon Tucker, who presented the family with a New Zealand flag, expressed his condolences and urged all of those in attendance to remember the ambition and energy that Hayes had in life and, above all, to stay strong.
“I’m sure there are many times over the past few months where being strong was difficult,” Tucker said. “Be strong; be steadfast.”
Tucker called the incident “heartbreaking” and said the people of New Zealand were treating the deaths of Hayes and Lam as if they had lost two of their own citizens.
Michael Hayes, who said he had experienced the outpouring of grief by New Zealand residents firsthand, used Tucker’s appearance as an official opportunity to thank the people of New Zealand. Hayes said residents turned out en masse to help locate the pair in the days after they went missing. He said he became especially close to the people of Haast — an isolated community on the edge of the country set in a rainforest, mountains and wilderness — at a memorial service there, when area residents he barely knew turned up and packed a local church to pay their respects.
‘I’m sure there are many times over the past few months where being strong was difficult. Be strong; be steadfast.’ SIMON TUCKER New Zealand high commissioner
He also thanked members of the New Zealand police force who worked tirelessly for weeks to try to locate the pair.
Hayes said his family and the Lam family dragged a boulder from the waters of the Haast River and took it to a cemetery overlooking the ocean. They had a plaque made and mounted on the boulder so that no one would forget what happened to the Canadian couple.
“Everybody dropped everything and went out to help look for them, the way we would if someone had gone missing here in Ottawa,” Michael told the packed church. “We wanted to leave a monument there for friends and family.”
Friends and family took time to share memories of Hayes that ranged from his time working on the course at the Canadian Golf & Country Club to his days at Queen’s University where he acted as an announcer for events on campus, a duty that his younger sister now performs.
Friends joked about Hayes’ sense of humour, which often saw him videotape pranks and upload them to popular Internet website Break. com. Hayes made enough money from the pranks that he bought several Xbox 360 video game consoles for his friends, who were also his victims, so they could all play games together.
With their lives ahead of them, the couple had taken an extended vacation before they were to return home and begin wedding plans. They had already been to South America. New Zealand was to be the last stop.
Lam’s family was in attendance at Saturday’s funeral for Hayes. Lam, a sonographer originally from Kingston, worked at The Ottawa Hospital, where more than $30,000 was quickly raised to help with the expense of returning her body to her hometown. A funeral was held for Lam on Oct. 19.