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Hero on the Highway
by Peter Carter
"When the police show up at your door at 6:00 a.m., and your son's serving in Afghanistan, you know something bad has happened." That's Raynald Bouthillier telling me about the night he learned his only son Jack had been killed in action. The owner-operator, who runs out of the northern Ontario town of Hearst, was home with his brother the night he learned of Jack's death. His wife Elaine and daughter Michelle were in Edmonton, visiting Elaine's niece. It was March 20, 2009. Only three weeks earlier, Jack, 20, had shipped out to Afghanistan on his very first mission. "I lost a few minutes of what happened next," Bouthillier says, recounting his horror. "The police told me later that I just sat on the stairs crying. I couldn't take it in." What he was told was this: Trooper Jack "Bouts" Bouthillier of the Royal Canadian Dragoons was killed instantly when the armored vehicle he was riding in struck an improvised explosive device, or IED. Regaining his composure somewhat that horrible night, Bouthillier dialled Elaine's cousin, a Mountie in Edmonton. He told her the news and asked how long it would take to get to the motel where Elaine and Michelle were. Bouthillier wanted Elaine and Michelle to have somebody there when they got the news. The officer estimated a half hour. Bouthillier waited that long and then phoned to share with a mother the worst information she will ever hear. Elaine and Michelle flew home to Hearst via Thunder Bay the following morning. By Monday, they found themselves at the Canadian Forces base in Trenton, Ont. from where Jack's body moved along the Highway of Heroes, along with three of his comrades also killed the same day. Trooper Jack Bouthillier's body is now buried back home in Hearst. But his spirit? His parents are confident he's in Heaven. And his image? Emblazoned on the side of the nicest truck they've ever owned, Jack's boyish beaming face is now visiting communities and highways and truckstops around Ontario and the northern United States. Bouthillier and Elaine turned their 2007 Peterbilt 379 into a 500-hp tribute to their son as well as to all the other Canadian troops killed in Afghanistan. It started with Bouthillier, after the funeral, deciding to put a small image of Jack on the side of the cab. But a friend convinced him to do something more elaborate. With the help of the artists at Nord-Est Printing in Hearst and then Creations Jules Internationales in Brossard, Que., the job became a complete wrap. And now, added to Jack's name are, high up on the back of the sleeper berth, the 131 names of Canada's other soldiers lost in Afghanistan. Bouthillier says he hopes the list ends now. While he's not too specific when discussing the cost of the spectacular graphics on his Pete, Bouthillier says with a smile, "this is not a profitable part of my business." Neither he nor Elaine have withdrawn support for our troops. Au contraire, they'd say. (Their first language is French. He's originally from Quebec; she's a Hearst native. They both speak English fluently.) In fact, they hope Canada continues its mission so Jack won't have died in vain. I met Raynald, Elaine, and the driver of their rig, Luis Dufour, for breakfast after they appeared on CTV's morning news program. The ýJack project' has not only caught the attention of the Canadian Military, the Globe and Mail, CTV and other media, Dufour says whenever he wheels the rig into a parking lot, it's an attention magnet. "You want to empty an office building? Just drive this truck up beside it because that's what happened in Milton a few weeks ago when I stopped in a parking lot. Everybody came out to look," he says. Born two decades ago in Hearst, Jack was named after Elaine's brother. He, too, died young, at 11, suffocated while playing around their father's cement-making operation when Elaine was 13. Elaine says she now understands a bit more how her mother felt, all those years ago. Which changes things but it doesn't make them any easier. Jack Bouthillier enlisted at 17, right out of high school. From the start, his mother says, Jack wanted to see action; to win a medal. And from all accounts, he would have done it. "We knew Jack had a very high IQ," Elaine says. "He could have studied to be an officer but he wanted to be in the special units; he wanted to be where the action was." "Jack joined because he felt a calling to serve his country," says Paul Mackey, another member of the Royal Dragoons who trained with Jack in Texas. "He was a good young man who still had the heart of a boy." Mackey was Jack's senior by 13 years. He was married, with three kids, and going through some tough times when he befriended Jack. "I was going through so much and I kept to myself, but Jack would come and sit with me. Jack was young but he would listen and ask questions and gave me his thoughts on everything. Not only did he listen, but he would often put his arm around me," Mackey said. Christine Plamondon, a Hearst native now studying in Ottawa, knew Jack for 10 years and towards the latter part of that time, was his girlfriend. She was, Elaine says, "The one." "Jack," says Plamondon, "was always there for his friends; it could be for a ride to work, to lend some money, to take care of a friend's pet, to show them a fighting technique or to lend an ear. Jack always had the right thing to say." If you talk to Raynald and Elaine, you see quickly where Jack earned his character stripes. Strongly religious with a deep sense of purpose, the couple decided when Jack and Michelle were preteens to home-school them. Imagine being schooled by an astute and successful owner-operator team like Raynald and Elaine Bouthillier. While other kids were seated in a classroom somewhere, the Bouthillier pair could often be found traveling throughout Ontario and the northern U.S. with Raynald and Elaine. Elaine would conduct their formal lessons in the mornings. She says because there are no other kids to distract the students or parent, it's easy to get through the obligatory 3-R stuff quickly. The rest of the days would be open to other, real-life learning. Home-schooled kids must also pass regular Ministerial exams to prove that their parents are doing as good as, or better than, the regular schools. As for preparation for the real world, the Bouthilliers have run a successful trucking business out of Hearst, a lumber community with an economy that's been ravaged by recession. They not only run the splendid Pete (it's number 409 of the last 1000 Pete 379s ever built) Elaine and Raynald own seven other flatbeds and they're all busy being pulled by brokers. Anybody who can remain profitable in an economy like Hearst's should be teaching business at Harvard. Elaine's two students returned to the classroom for the latter years of high school and scored top marks. Michelle is now enrolled in a bilingual university program in Sudbury. Not only, as Raynald says, did he and Elaine win some very precious moments with their homeschooled kids, and not only did Jack and Michelle experience life like very few others, but there's something almost fateful about Jack's image and patriotic message trucking around the country on a semi. After our breakfast in Toronto, driver Luis Dufour pulled the bob-tail Pete out on to the ramp, heading onto the 401 to pick up a load in Milton. As we watch him run up through the gears, he yanks on the air horn. The truck pulls away, the names of the lost soldiers becoming smaller and smaller on the horizon. "When I see that truck on the road," Elaine offers, "it makes me sad and proud, all at the same time." I asked Bouthillier what he thinks when he sees his truck drive by like that. Does it make losing Jack any easier? "Well," Bouthillier says, wiping a tear away, "it doesn't make it any worse."
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