Honouring Craftsman Kyle Sinclair in Port Hope

Pete Fisher
5 years ago
• Categories: Editor Choice, Local

Port Hope’s Silver Cross Mother Anna Loveman was greeted on Sunday morning (August 4, 2019) by Cobourg’s Highway of Heroes Earth Angel, Lorna Dickson, Silver Cross Mother Kathleen Smith, Grafton’s Silver Cross Mother Dianne Knight along with a dozen volunteers who travelled from Montreal, Kingston, Whitby, Oshawa, Newmarket and Barrie to clean the on and off ramps on Toronto Road in Port Hope which was recently adopted in Memory of Loveman’s son Craftsman Kyle Sinclair.

Corporal Nick Kerr, Master Corporal (retired) Collin Fitzgerald and Civilian Kerri Tadeu adopted the entire 344 km (172 East and 172 km West) of the Highway of Hereos in Memory of Grafton’s Major Michelle Knight Mendes “Honouring All That Gave Some and Some That Gave All” in the Spring of 2017, cleaning the Highway of Heroes twice a year with the Veteran Community (Military, Veterans, First Responders, Families of the Fallen and people who care about them).

Loveman has travelled a great distance with the Veteran Community cleaning the sacred stretch of Canadian soil where 158 Fallen Soldiers and four civilians were repatriated home from the Afghanistan War. The trio who adopted the Highway of Heroes worked with the Ministry of Transportation over a number of months to adopt the on and off ramps at Toronto Road in Port Hope to pay their respect to Craftsman Kyle Sinclair’s service and sacrifice.

Craftsman Sinclair’s preventable death transpired while he was working alone inside a Coyote armoured vehicle at CFB Petawawa on Friday, Nov. 21, 2014.

Sinclair’s superiors were attending a hockey tournament at CFB Borden, about 400 km away when Sinclair was ordered to fix a seatbelt inside one of the Coyotes so it could be back in service by Monday.

Sinclair was working behind the driver’s seat, located under a hatch at the front of the Coyote, when it’s believed he leaned forward and pulled a lever that raised the pneumatic seat in order to clean under it, without being aware of the hazards the seat posed. The seat shot up before Sinclair had time to move out of the way and he was pinned by the neck against the hull of the vehicle. There was no one around to help, and no way for him to escape, according to his Board of Inquiry report.

A Similar incident happened to a CFB Edmonton soldier, Trooper Kevin Zufelt, back in 1999. At Zufelt’s Board of Inquiry it was recommended that the driver’s seat in the Coyote be modified to eliminate the flagged “threat” but at the time, Commander 1CMBG Andrew Leslie, did not implement the recommendation.

Loveman believes safety has to come first to protect soldiers and her goal is to make sure every recommendation in her son’s Board of Inquiry is implemented and she is succeeding, one recommendation at a time.

To date, the driver’s seat in the Coyotes have now been replaced with the exception of five that are currently being used in Latvia.

Military personnel have and will continue to receive an education about the danger of the Coyote’s driver’s seat and Brigadier General Paul has written a policy that no On the Job Trainee’s are allowed to work alone. Most recently a poster was created with Craftsman Sinclair’s picture on it with “Work Place Safety is Everyone’s Responsibility. Let’s not let history repeat itself”

Loveman shared “Knowing that Kyle’s incident will not happen again, and that the changes that have been implemented since his death will or has already saved lives, Kyle is still protecting his comrades.”

Loveman believes the Coyotes are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2022.