How strangers saved each other during fatal Christmas Eve B.C. bus crash

Bad weather disrupted Mia Keane’s plans to fly home for the holidays, so on the early afternoon of Christmas Eve, the UBC-Okanagan student bought a ticket for a bus from Kelowna to the Lower Mainland.

“I got the last ticket for the bus. I thought I was so lucky,” the 20-year-old said.

Kathy Le, who had been in Kelowna visiting a friend and was travelling back to her Aldergrove home on the same Ebus, sent an Instagram message to her boyfriend, Alexander Vaz, that its departure was delayed. She seemed stressed.

“So I called her when she was waiting at the bus stop, and we just talked about the bus would arrive soon,” Vaz, 18, recalled.

Ryan Henry, a UBC-Okanagan student, had just finished exams. After several flights were cancelled, he boarded the Ebus so he could try to catch a plane from Vancouver to his home in Texas.