GUELPH/ERAMOSA – Sabrina Genereaux and Kathleen Pronk know all too well that car crashes can wreak havoc.
Their husbands were involved in separate collisions on a notorious stretch of Highway 6 between Guelph and Fergus.
Both men lost their lives in the crashes, and their absence continues to shape the course of the widows’ lives.
Sabrina’s husband Dave Genereaux died on Dec. 29, 2023, just south of 8th Line and Wellington Road 22.
A kilometre or so north from there, Kathleen’s husband James Pronk died in a three-vehicle collision on Oct. 10, 2013.
Dave was 40 years old and father to a newborn baby. James was 48 and father to three.
Sabrina and Kathleen told the Advertiser their husbands’ deaths changed everything.
Both women moved out of the homes they shared with their husbands – Sabrina lodging with her parents and Kathleen settling somewhere smaller and more manageable.
Genereaux family
“I lost my home, I lost my best friend.” Sabrina said.
“It’s horrible and devastating and I feel like my whole life was just flipped upside down.”
She described the challenges of raising her son, Jason, without his father, noting it feels like she missed the first year of Jason’s life because she was stuck in a fog of grief.
Jason is a happy, active kid, Sabrina said, “running around like he’s a little two-year-old who isn’t afraid of anything and knows everything … he never stops.”
Sabrina said Dave was the kind of man who would give you the shirt off his back, and was beyond excited for fatherhood.
“He was just very loving and caring and he was always trying to better himself and be the person he thought other people wanted him to be.”
She said Dave was nervous about holding Jason in the early weeks of his life, but by Christmas Dave’s confidence shone and he was taking Jason from Sabrina “like he was a pro.
“He was becoming the person he wanted to be,” she said.
If Dave hadn’t died, Sabrina said the family of three would probably be going on a roadtrip this year.
If it hadn’t been for that Highway 6 accident, “we would have our happy little family,” she said.
Dave and Sabrina Genereaux’s son, Jason, was born two months before Dave died in a collision on Highway 6 between Fergus and Guelph. (Advertiser file photo).
Pronk family
Kathleen said when James died on Highway 6, her plans for the future were erased in an instant.
“He was a great husband and dad,” Kathleen said. “Family was everything to him, so it was devastating when he passed.”
She called him the family’s “rock” and said without him, everything fell apart.
Four years after James’ death, their son Justin died of a carfentanil overdose.
And things have been awful for their youngest son too, Kathleen said.
Their daughter is staying strong, she said. She has three children James never got to meet, but they keep Kathleen busy and smiling.
Kathleen is staying strong, too. After James’ death she continued to work at Portage, supporting youth recovering from drug addiction, until it closed last year. She is now settling into retirement.
‘Terror highway’
Kathleen calls Highway 6 a “terror highway” and said her husband isn’t the only person in her life who died there – she also lost a babysitter and multiple friends to accidents on the road.
James owned Fergus-Elora Taxi, so he was an experienced driver, said Kathleen, who added she is confident if there was any way to avoid the crash, he would have done it.
“It’s weird how it’s all the time, at that hot spot,” she said, referring to the area around the intersection with 8th Line and Wellington Road 22.
Wellington-Halton Hills North MP Michael Chong lost both of his parents, his mother in 1978 and his father in 1999, to collisions at the intersection, and there were at least three serious accidents there in 2024 and 2025.
Between 2016 and 2021, Wellington County reports 25 collisions at the intersection, with nine injuries and 16 reports of property damage.
The Advertiser has submitted a Freedom of Information request to obtain data about the frequency of collisions at the intersection.
Kathleen said people often zip onto Highway 6 without being certain it’s clear or considering how long it will take to reach the speed of traffic while climbing the hills.
The intersection is in a valley surrounded by hills in all four directions and often sees dense fog, high winds and/or icy roads.
“Something should be done,” Kathleen said, and the key is increasing awareness so that people drive more cautiously.
A recent petition, with 4,627 signatures as of Jan. 12, calls on the Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) and local officials to make immediate changes to increase safety at the intersection.
The MTO determined it would be beneficial to improve the intersection in 2020, but little has changed.
In 2021, MTO officials said they were in the design stage of bringing traffic signals and left-turn lanes to the highway, with provincially-funded construction anticipated to begin in 2023.
By January 2025, construction had not yet begun and plans pivoted to a roundabout instead.
Construction of the roundabout is anticipated to begin this spring.
“I don’t think putting a roundabout would help,” Kathleen said, because the large trucks that travel on Highway 6 would struggle.
Instead, she suggested reducing the speed limit and installing flashing lights and signs to alert people of the dangerous intersection.
While Sabrina doesn’t attribute the intersection to Dave’s death, she agrees it is not safe.
In Dave’s case, the other driver was impaired by fentanyl and methamphetamine.
It would have taken that driver making different choices to spare Dave’s life, she said, not a safer intersection.
But she does feel things need to change.
“It’s so dangerous,” Sabrina said.
Because of the surrounding hills, she feels lights would be hard to see and “a roundabout is only going to cause way more chaos.
“I feel like an overpass might be the only safe thing in that corner to keep people from getting in crashes.”
The petition states: “Don’t wait until another life is lost or another family is traumatized. Fix the … intersection now.”
To read the petition click here.
