‘The obvious question is how’: Family of CP Rail worker killed in Port Coquitlam seeks answers

The family of the Canadian Pacific Railway locomotive engineer who died last week at the company’s Port Coquitlam rail yard wants answers.

Kirk McLean, 56, had 32 years of service with CP. He was also a husband, the father of two boys and a hockey coach in his hometown of Mission.

His brother-in-law, Allan Serwa, says all the family has been told is that McLean died of head trauma after being struck by a yard train as he was walking across tracks after his shift had ended.

Moments before the collision, he had called his wife to say he was heading home.

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“When you find out your husband’s been killed in the yard where he works the obvious question is how,” said Serwa.

“It’s so bureaucratic; there’s not one simple answer from anyone about anything. There’s just nobody that has stepped forward and said, ‘this is what happened to your husband.'”

Serwa told Global News McLean was a safety trainer with CP and a “by-the-books kind of person,” so he says many questions remain.

“He was not the kind of guy who was going to step outside of procedures and is going to end up in this kind of an accident,” said Serwa.

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“So then what did happen? Is there something about the environment there that is not as safe as it could be?”

The family has been told by the coroner that surveillance images she has seen show it was dark in the railyard when McLean was hit and that he had his hood pulled up, which is something he never did.

After the Dec. 2 fatality, the Teamsters union, which represents CP Rail workers, said the death was the 10th involving one of its members in the last two years, and noted that workplace safety was at the heart of the recent CN Rail strike.

“Our hearts go out to the locomotive engineer’s family and everyone who worked with him,” said TCRC president Lyndon Isaak in a media release.

“The rail industry is in crisis. We have lost 10 of our sisters and brothers over the past 24 months. It’s 10 too many.”

Canadian Pacific, the Transportation Safety Board, Transport Canada, and the BC Coroners Service are all investigating McLean’s death.

A celebration of life will be held on Thursday, December 12 at the Best Western Hotel in Mission at 3pm.