When a Bradford mother discovered her daughter was slowly waking from a nine-month coma, it brought her tears of joy, but she had no idea just how long the road to recovery would be, nor the perseverance that would be needed to find justice.
It’s been almost one year since Kim and Melinda Wasylyk were finally able to close the door on a 13-year chapter of their lives spent waiting and wondering if they would ever receive compensation after courts found the County of Simcoe negligent for failing to properly clear snow and ice from County Road 88, which led Melinda’s car to crash on the evening of Jan. 12, 2011.
Kim recalled doctors explaining the impact of the collision had caused her daughter’s brain to swell to the point that it was almost shutting down and she would likely be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life.
“It was devastating,” Kim said.
As a mother, the prognosis left her in “a cloud” where little of what anyone said was really sinking in, and made all the more difficult to comprehend since she recalled Melinda didn’t have any broken bones, and looked mostly unharmed.
That was until the swelling became so bad that doctors eventually had to remove pieces from both sides of Melinda’s skull, allowing her brain to extend about eight to 10 centimetres on each side, according to Kim.
“It was unbelievable,” she said.
Eventually the swelling went down, and despite being told that summer there was “no hope” of Melinda making a recovery, Kim still regularly visited her daughter at the Salvation Army Toronto Grace Health Centre, putting on music and reading to her, convinced that her daughter would come back to her.
For a brief moment, one cold rainy day early that autumn, she did.
Kim had brought Melinda down to the lobby for a change of scenery while they sat together when Kim suddenly thought she could see Melinda’s eyes move.
“I said, ‘Melinda if you know who I am, blink once.’ Well doesn’t she blink,” Kim recalled.
Excited, Kim said she tried to get Melinda back upstairs to the nurses, while “bawling” tears of joy, but by the time they arrived, Melinda was once again unresponsive.
Previously, Kim had become excited when Melinda moved a bit, only to have the nurses explain it was simply muscle spasms.
This had been something different, and Kim recalled the nurses actually acknowledged having seen positive signs, but didn’t want to tell her until they were certain.
Over the following months, Kim continued visiting and providing more stimulation to help Melinda recover, including “spa days” on Fridays, and watching the Twilight film series — one of Melinda’s favourites.
By December, Melinda had progressed so much that staff were in a rush to move her into a rehab facility, and as luck would have it, a spot became available at Hennick Bridgepoint Hospital for Jan. 2, 2012.
Melinda said she has no memory of waking from her coma, and the rehabilitation centre “wasn’t the greatest,” but she does fondly recall regularly scratching lottery tickets for an older gentleman who would buy her coffee and candy bars if he won.
The beginning of a long road to recovery
After about 1.5 years in various hospitals, Melinda was released to her mother for 24/7 care in June 2012.
To this day, she still suffers from short-term memory loss, can’t move the right side of her body, has balance issues and has trouble walking without assistance, but calls the idea of using a walker, a “sore subject.”
“I have been her caregiver right from the time she was released, and she’s been with me ever since,” Kim said.
Initially, Melinda said she was still in a wheelchair, couldn’t speak, and needed help eating and using the washroom.
“It was like caring for a baby all over again,” Kim said.
Fortunately, they had help from a care team including a case manager, occupational therapist, respite care worker, speech pathologist and a social worker, while Melinda also enjoyed art and music therapy as a way to provide more mental stimulation.
At the time, Kim was still running her own hair salon, Ultimate Touch.
“I could still work, but it was very, very difficult,” she said, adding that her clients were “very understanding” and she would see as many as she could in the evenings and all day on Saturdays.
However, after about two years, Kim recalled the $1 million in insurance liability paid to Melinda was running out and Melinda still needed 24/7 care, so Kim had to step away from the business.
“I had no choice,” she said.
Shortly before the crash, Kim and Melinda’s father had separated, but through everything that had happened Kim was lucky enough to remarry.
“I was very, very fortunate to have my husband help me out a lot,” she said.
While the family had begun legal action seeking damages from the county, they wouldn’t see an initial decision until 2022.
Waiting so long without any idea of what would happen was “nerve-racking” for Kim.
“You never knew what your life was going to be like. You couldn’t plan anything,” she said.
She recalled waking up every morning wondering who would take care of Melinda if something happened to her or her husband, and struggled to describe the gamut of emotions than ran through her each day.
Through it all, they both tried to remain positive by focusing on their daily routine: wake up, have coffee, and begin Melinda’s various therapies.
Without her mother, Melinda said she would be at a loss.
“We’ve been best friends, even from before my accident,” she said. “We’re just tighter now.”
That bond includes a shared sense of humour, that allows them to poke fun at each other, and while they admitted their jokes might not be appropriate to publish, they both agreed the laughter helped them to get through tough times.
“We always leaned on each other,” Kim said.
Still, Kim understands the situation put “a lot of strain” on the family, and was especially hard on her youngest daughter, who was just becoming a teenager at the time of the crash.
“I wasn’t there for her,” Kim said, explaining the “chaos” of dealing with Melinda’s collision left her with little time or energy.
Legal process like a roller coaster
The family had little luck with the first two legal teams they hired, according to Kim, who said the second “essentially gave up” after two years and encouraged them to settle with the insurance company.
“I just broke down into tears,” Kim said.
Shortly after that, a friend suggested Kim reach out to Tim Boland of Boland Romaine LLP and was relieved to hear that Boland thought they could win.
It didn’t come easily though, as Kim recalled the process seemed to drag on with mediation, discovery and other stages, including having to respond to requests from opposing counsel for tests and analyses from various doctors, plus being followed by a private investigator — all while rumours swirled as “everybody was talking” in “small-town Bradford.”
Meanwhile money was tight and Kim said Melinda’s physiotherapy had to be reduced to just once every two weeks.
“I had to cut way back,” she said. “I was in a lot of debt and it was building up, but when you have a child, you have to do whatever you can do to help them.”
At one point, Kim recalled beginning negotiations for an out-of-court settlement, but the amount offered was “way off” what would be needed to support Melinda for the rest of her life.
Now 32, Melinda was about two months shy of her 19th birthday at the time of the crash, and should still have most of her life ahead of her.
“I just needed to know that she is going to be taken care of,” Kim said. “Not put in some home to rot.”
On July 29, 2022, more than 11.5 years after the incident, Justice Annette Casullo initially ruled in their favour.
“I was on cloud nine,” Kim said of receiving a call from Boland with the good news. “We were just crazy when we first found out.”
The mother-daughter duo was in the process of booking a trip to celebrate, when about one month later, Boland called again to tell them the county had filed an appeal on Aug. 30.
Their high spirits immediately sank and all Kim could think was “you’ve got to be kidding me.”
When Kim asked how long the appeal process could take, she recalled Boland warning her that it wasn’t certain and could depend on the availability of the courts.
Having already put their future on hold for years, Kim said there was nothing else they could do but continue to persevere.
“We just had to stay positive,” she said, emphasizing the importance of being thankful that Melinda was walking and talking instead of stuck in a hospital bed.
A little more than a year later, on Nov. 24, 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario dismissed the county’s appeal in a decision written by Justice David Doherty.
The county did not seek leave to appeal that decision, meaning after more than a decade, the Wasylyks' journey for justice had finally ended in their favour, allowing them to “close the door” on that part of their lives.
“It’s the best feeling in the world,” Kim said.
Total judgment approved by Casullo on April 3, 2024 is about $18.3 million, including roughly $16.7 million in damages, of which about $10.3 million is for Melinda and about $900,000 is for Kim.
While she’s happy to know that Melinda will be financially sound for the rest of her life, Kim stressed that it’s not just about the money, but about being able to move on.
“We are definitely free,” she said. “Nobody can take this away from her.”
Still, Melinda remains cognizant that their lives will never be the same, and she expects to continue requiring various therapies for the rest of her life, including physiotherapy five days a week for the foreseeable future.
“Honestly, I don’t feel like it’s over,” she said.
Making a new life
Melinda, Kim and her husband have since moved to a new home, where they hired a builder to convert a separated garage into a private suite for Melinda.
That features its own kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, living room and a full gym to help with recovery.
“This was our huge purchase,” Kim said.
Despite always having felt close with one another, the duo are relieved to have a little more physical space these days, after having spent most of the last decade living on top of one another, which they admitted could become tense at times.
That also offers a little more privacy for Melinda and her new fiancé, who are set to be married in July next year, with Melinda proudly showing her engagement ring.
Kim and Melinda were also finally able to take their trip to celebrate, going to Costa Rica and later taking a friend of the family with them to Cuba as thanks for all their help over the years.
So far, Melinda said Costa Rica was her favourite, because it gave her a chance to see the monkeys.
“They’re so cute and they would come right down,” she said. “I’ve got two cats (Heidi and Harry), and I love animals.”
In an effort to help others benefit from her misfortune, Melinda also began making presentations at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket around 2017 about the seriousness of motor vehicle crashes, and during the COVID-19 pandemic joined the Prevent Alcohol and Risk-Related Trauma in Youth (P.A.R.T.Y.) program at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie.
As an ambassador with the program, Melinda shares with students in grades 10 to 12 her experiences, how her life changed, what it’s like for her learning to live with “the new Melinda,” and how one incident can change your life forever.
“Anything can happen in the blink of an eye,” Melinda said.
Based on their reactions, Kim feels like the experience “does the kids a world of good,” and in addition to the positive responses and words of thanks from the kids, Melinda said speaking about her experiences helps her as well.
“Oh, I love it,” she said of speaking in front of crowds of young people. “Am I shy? No.”
While they no longer live in town, Kim said they both regularly return to Bradford to visit family, and despite everything that’s happened, they don’t have any negative feelings about being there, and even do their best to make a joke if they need to drive past the location of the crash.
