The victim of last week’s fatal B.C. highway collision has been identified as 20-year-old Baylea Stewart from Airdrie, Alta.
Stewart was killed in a crash between a transport truck and a passenger vehicle on Highway 1 west of Field, B.C., on Friday. Snow and rain made conditions treacherous, RCMP said.
“I was in disbelief,” said friend Claire O’Neill on Sunday.
O’Neill is remembering Stewart as the life of the party.
“She’s my best friend, so I have an enormous amount of memories with her,” O’Neill said. “She’s the type of person who is there for everyone and she’s everybody friend. You can just see by all the posts… how many lives she’s touched.
“I’m going to miss her a lot. It feels like a huge part of me is missing now.
“I grew up with Bay,” O’Neill continued through tears. “It’s not just me — there are so many other friends that we all grew up with who are in just as much pain as I’m in. Everything about me growing up is with Bay.”
O’Neill, her sister and Stewart travelled to Scotland together in summer 2017.
“We went to so many places and saw so many beautiful things together. She liked it so much that after we came home, she even went back again,” O’Neill said.
The last time she saw Stewart was at a friend’s birthday just before Christmas.
“It was a really fun night for everybody,” O’Neill said. “She was happy and everybody was together, so it was nice.
“The biggest thing I’ve learned is to not take any of my friends for granted and remind people how much I love them.”
In the single day the GoFundMe page for Stewart’s funeral expenses has been active, it raised $8,300 of its $10,000 target by Sunday night.
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