The muddy and rocky Langford trail where Christopher James Tousignant died should be blocked off, his mother says.
“I want answers,” Debbie Thibeault said.
Thibeault said her son must have fallen on the way home from a trip to a store to buy cigarettes.
“I would like to see it torn down or blocked off [so] nobody can go there, so an accident like this won’t happen again,” she said of the trail.
Tousignant is father of a 13-year-old son, Kasai, she said.
A memorial of flowers and a Christmas decoration has been placed next to the path where the body of the 33-year-old Tousignant was discovered Friday morning.
The Coroners Service said someone walking his dog found the body on the trail about 7 a.m. A cause of death has not been confirmed.
Tousignant’s mother said: “It was an accident. An accident that should not have happened.”
Tousignant, a flagger, was living on Whitehorn Place in Langford with his eldest sister. The trail where his body was found runs uphill from Whitehorn Place, next to the fence around the Millstream Village shopping centre, and ends at the mall, facing McCallum Road. The Coroners Service said the short, unnamed trail is narrow and steep.
Tousignant left the house at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday to go to the shopping centre to buy cigarettes, his mother said. A receipt stamped 10:04 p.m. was found, she said.
Police said that change was found on the trail, she said. Tousignant might have bent down to collect it and tumbled over.
A large rock spans the trail near where the memorial to Tousignant has been placed. People on the trail have to clamber over the rock. If they are heading toward Whitehorn, that means they have to go over the rock and get back on the path as it slopes downhill.
Thibeault visited the memorial on Sunday. When she saw the rock, she said she thought: “Oh, my God.” The footing is poor on the trail. “Especially at night,” she said. “It is dark. It is wet. We have had rain for the last few days — muddy.”
Tousignant is the second of four children. He was born in Victoria, and the family moved to Moose Jaw when he was four or five years old and then to Winnipeg.
He was a loving father, his mother said. “He had a heart of gold for anybody. He would give you the shirt off his back. That’s the type of person he was.”
Thibeault’s concerns about the trail were echoed by Kristine Wagg, of Whitehorn Place, who lives immediately next to it.
“Fix it or shut it off and not let anyone in there,” she said.
Wagg fell in the same spot five years ago. She used the path as a shortcut to reach McCallum to catch the bus.
“That big high rock that you have to come down, well I have trouble with my leg, so I would have to put my bags down and then get down like a little kid on her bum, and scoot down onto my feet,” she said.
“But when I turned around to get my bags, I lost my balance and I tumbled just a few feet. I got banged a little bit. I bonked my head on the big rock. It just really scared me.”
Wagg, who is retired, does not use the path anymore, but her husband does and had an accident in the same location. “My husband has fallen in the rain. He slipped on there and gashed out his elbow just a few years ago.”
She said her kitchen faces the trail and she frequently sees people on it.
“Little kids go up there all the time,” she said. “Everyone uses it.” Children with their parents will return from school on it, she said. People are on the trail at night, using the flashlight function on cellphones to navigate.
Wagg’s home is one of six on Whitehorn. Another neighbour, who did not want his name used, described the path as “tricky” and like a “little goat trail.”
“You don’t want to do it at night without a light. That’s the bottom line.”
The family is collecting money to help with funeral expenses and has set up a Go Fund Me page. It is at https://www.gofundme.com/help-with-chriss-funeral-costs.
