Province promises to preserve memorial off Highway 3 in honour of crash victims

The orange construction fence that surrounds two trees planted about 50 metres off Highway 3 near Cameron Side Road in Kingsville makes them more noticeable. Otherwise, the average driver might miss the pair of oaks with the branches reaching out to touch each other. 

That's unless you remember.

With plans to widen Highway 3, the province has promised the trees will be preserved based on what they represent — a horrible vehicle collision that occurred on the highway on Oct. 15, 1990, but also 34 years of friendship and efforts to give back to the community. 

On that fall day, Steve Cowell went to meet his friends Shane O'Brien and Peter Taves for lunch at their regular spot on the University of Windsor campus. 

Cowell lived on campus but his friends would drive in from Kingsville for classes. 

They never showed up for lunch and instead Cowell got a call from another friend who told him the two had died in a crash on Highway 3. 

"I couldn't believe it so I tried calling their parents, nobody answered," said Cowell. 

He would later find out the two 20-year-olds were driving when a school bus pulled out onto the highway from the 9th Concession. To avoid the bus, they tried to go around but were hit head on by a transport truck.

"It was horrific," said Elaine Incitti, Peter Taves' older sister. "I am tearing up now just talking about it."

She said she remembers the police showing up at her door and thinking the worst. She would find out, it was the worst.

"They were really, really sweet young men."

The collision didn't just rock her family but the entire community. Friends and family were eager to find ways to commemorate their lives and the planning started as early as their joint funerals.

"We didn't want to leave trying to figure out something we could do and I think at that time somebody suggested we plant some trees at the site," said Cowell.