SEVERN TWP. — More than two-and-a-half years after David Pinkney’s death, and a year after an inquest into the workplace accident that took his life wrapped up, a plaque in his memory has been installed at Walker Aggregates.
Pinkney died Feb. 6, 2017, at the Walker Aggregates quarry in Severn Township. He was removing snow and ice from a conveyor when he became caught between the belt and the pulley, which killed him instantly. He was 31.
On Sunday, Pinkney’s mother, Kathy Green, made the drive from Peterborough to the quarry on Nichols Line to see the plaque the company had installed at the entrance.
“This will probably be the last time I come here,” Green said. “It makes me sad. It makes me angry. It’s everything.”
A six-day coroner’s inquest into Pinkney’s death came to a close in an Orillia courtroom on Aug. 1, 2019. Among the jury’s recommendations was that Walker Aggregates change the name of the Severn Pines Quarry to the David Pinkney Quarry.
At the time, Green said that would’ve been “the biggest honour ever.” She has since changed her mind and feels the plaque is more fitting.
“I thought at first it would be an honour to David, but what kind of honour is that when he’s not here anymore? It’s morbid,” she said.
Sunday was the second time Green had visited the quarry site since her son’s death. She went last month to see the area where she was told the plaque would be placed.
“I said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ As soon as I heard ‘Nichols Line’ on the GPS, I got tense,” she recalled. “When I got there, I just broke down. I couldn’t stop crying. All I could think about, all I could see, was David’s face. I want my boy back.”
While Green feels her son would be pleased with the plaque placed in his memory, it isn’t quite what she expected. It’s a small plaque.
From ground level, it is obstructed by a large, wooden part of the fence. One has to walk right up to it, up a small hill, to see what it says: “In memory of David Ian Pinkney,” followed by the dates of his birth and death.
“It should’ve said, ‘I was killed at work here,’” Green said. “How do people know? I’m hoping people ask why the plaque is there.”
Before she left to head back to Peterborough on Sunday, she tied two photos of Pinkney to the fence, putting a face to the name of the son whose loss she grieves every day.
