Students from across Saskatchewan gathered in Saskatoon on Saturday for the 39th annual Students Against Drinking and Driving (SADD) Provincial Conference. The event is intended to inspire students to advocate against distracted and impaired driving within their communities. “There’s such big impacts that all the families here, they talk about losing someone or knowing someone who’s lost someone, and it just devastates your family. And so to help stop that and prevent that will be it’s just vital for everyone,” Mason Lackner, a Grade 12 student from Melville, said. The hope is that those in attendance will learn from other students in SADD chapters from across Saskatchewan and take that education home with them to share. “They’re just really representatives of their own cities, their own towns. And it’s easy if they all come here, we can spread the message, and then they themselves go into their own communities and just spread the message that their communities know, without actually having to visit,” Lackner said. SADD has chapters across the province of varying sizes, and many branches of the organization work collaboratively with one another. “I’ve learned a lot about how other schools are really making a lot of differences too. And inspires me that our community can be like that and we can have such a huge change for the best,” Lilith Sieben, a Grade 11 student from Macklin, said. Guest speaker Krystle Shewchuk shared her story of being in a car crash at the age of 13, which left her with injuries that resulted in her needing to use a wheelchair. “I was driving back from the lake with....And as we were turning off of the highway, the guy behind us was talking on his cell phone. So he hit us on the right side of a car...So I ended up, breaking T9 and T10 in my back. So I have no feeling from the belly button down,” Shewchuk said. Despite her injury, Shewchuk eventually became an athlete in both sailing and skiing, and has competed in the Canada Games. She said while the crash was a life-altering moment, she is thankful for the support system that allowed her to pursue her passions. “It was definitely quite hard. But I am quite grateful that it happened when I was so young, so I was willing to learn and adapt to the lifestyle changes. And I had such good family support to help me deal with the fact that I couldn’t walk it, that my life would be completely different. So I think just having like a good support and then being young and being able to adapt really helped me overcome the obstacles,” Shewchuk said. Since the collision, Shewchuk has spoken with various groups about the dangers of distracted driving and the impact that it has had on her life. “I really like telling my story and hope that kids can take something from it. So I know for myself, I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt. So maybe if they take from my story that to wear a seatbelt or things like that, and just to make a bit of a change,” Shewchuk said. The two-day conference also featured awards and bursaries handed out to SADD chapters for the work that they have done on the local level. “Organizations like SADD can really bring awareness to students, rather than just having local dealerships or having your community police do something, having students stand up to it can be inspirational for both adults and younger kids to look up to,” Sieben said.
