‘He would move mountains for his kids’: family mourns the loss of father who died following collision in Ottawa

An eastern Ontario family is mourning the loss of a young father whose body was found in the snow a day after a crash. CTV’s Katelyn Wilson reports.

Loraleigh Bailey describes her fiancé, Cole Misner, as her “own personal superhero,” as she speaks out about the life they were building together before his death last week.

Misner was 24, a fiancé, a father of two, and the centre of that future.

“We wanted to own our own little farm. He wanted to build our house. He was in construction and could build houses and that was his career. He would sketch out different design plans, and we would talk about it, I wanted a wraparound porch, he wanted a big garage,” Bailey said.

“We wanted chickens, and he wanted cows. That was kind of our big goal, and we wanted lots of bedrooms and lots of kids.”

Bailey says she and Misner moved from Guelph to Winchester five years ago and were planning to get married this fall.

“My wedding dress is hanging in my closet,” she said. “We had kids, and he was an amazing father, he would move mountains for his kids.”

But that future was cut short last Friday during a snowstorm, while Misner was on his way home from work.

Investigators say Misner’s minivan rolled over around 11:30 p.m. on Friday in the 8700 block of Bank Street near Morningside Avenue. Officers searched the area but did not find anyone at the scene.

“The police showed up at my door around midnight and told me that the van was in a ditch and that nobody was around and they were asking if Cole was home,” Bailey said. “The next morning, he still wasn’t home, and I started frantically calling everybody we knew trying to find him. I was so scared, more scared than I’d ever been in my entire life.”

Misner was found dead beneath the snow near the collision on Saturday.

“I know he’s gone, but there’s a piece of me that hopes that this just isn’t happening,” Bailey said. “I have a million questions. He works a lot of early mornings and late nights and every time on his way home he gets in the van, hooks up the phone to Bluetooth and calls me and we talk his whole drive home. On Friday, he didn’t call me and that’s something nobody can answer for me, why didn’t he call me?”

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is investigating because police were at the scene.

Investigators are asking anyone with dashcam video or photos from the area at the time to come forward, in hopes of providing answers.

“Just the thought of him in the snow for that long it just, my sister is having nightmares about it,” said Misner’s aunt, Amanda MacDonald.

MacDonald says the outpouring of community support has been overwhelming and the goal is to focus on supporting Bailey and the couple’s two children with a fundraiser.

“The kindness of people in the community, I’m just shocked,” she said. “It’s just unbelievable.”

As for Bailey, she says she’s holding on to the memories they were planning to make, as the investigation continues.

“He was genuinely caring about every single person he met,” she said. “And he did love everybody.”

The SIU investigation into the circumstances surrounding Misner’s death is ongoing. In an email to CTV News, it says it aims to complete its investigations within 120 days.

Bailey says the family is planning two celebrations of life for Misner, one in the Ottawa area, the other in Guelph.

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