In 2014, Jamie Napier was spending a fun weekend with a group of friends at a ski chalet in the Blue Mountains. Napier wasn’t a winter sport enthusiast, but growing up in northern Ontario, he had experience with tobogganing and building snow jumps and ramps during the winter months. Late one night, his friends were looking for something to do when the toboggan hanging over the mantel caught Jamie’s eye. What the group did not expect was that their late-night toboggan ride would end in an Ornge transport to Sunnybrook. 

In the early morning of March 16, Napier and his friends grabbed helmets and the metal display toboggan from their chalet and began to hike up a ski run at Blue Mountain.

“I want to say we went up between half and three-quarters of the way, and we put the toboggan on the run and then myself and two other guys got on it, me being in the middle,” said Napier. “I don’t have any memory of the actual accident.”

Napier has no memory of his accident, but from friends and family, the events of the day and the weeks of recovery have been told to him. 

Napier and his friends had jumped off the toboggan as they noticed they were heading towards a tree line. Napier jumped off in the opposite direction of his friends, which sent him headfirst into a tree. His helmet was shattered, and he lay face down in the snow, bloody and incoherent. 

“My phone in my pocket was ironically the only phone amongst the group, and somebody pulled it out to call 911,” said Napier. “We were still halfway up the run at this point, and then I’m told that a snow groomer on an adjacent run either spotted us or we flagged it down.”

Napier managed to get up and climb into the snow groomer to get down the rest of the ski hill to meet the ambulance waiting at the bottom. Napier was loaded into the ambulance, where he was transported to Collingwood General and Marine Hospital (CGMH) with his friends by his side. It was at this point Napier’s condition started becoming more severe.

“It started coming out that I’ve got a concussion, and a broken jaw, and then it kind of progressively got worse with the status,” said Napier. “I broke my orbital bone and one of my arms, and I was told the final update to the group is that I was being flown to Sunnybrook due to brain hemorrhaging.”

During this time, Napier was in and out of consciousness and did not know he was about to be transported via helicopter with an Ornge medical transport team. CGMH requested a transport to Sunnybrook because of the brain hemorrhaging and the extent of Napier’s head injuries. Friends of Napier had started to reach out to his family at this time. The only proof Napier has of his transport with Ornge is a photograph taken by his friends as he was being loaded into the helicopter. 

“It all went black. I don’t remember getting on it even, and then I was in Sunnybrook, said Napier. “I know there is a photo of me being wheeled into the back of the helicopter, from a distance, somebody took that. But aside from that, there’s nothing between setting the toboggan down on the ski run and then waking up in ICU.”

Once at Sunnybrook, the extent of Napier’s injuries was finally revealed. Napier suffered from “multiple severe bilateral facial fractures and skull base fractures involving anterior left temporal skull base, a right mandible fracture, a depressed right orbital floor fracture with fat herniation, intraparenchymal contusions in both basal frontal lobes were seen along with a small epidural hematoma, multiple small contusions involving both frontal and parietal lobes and a lacerated bone also on the forehead.” 

“Of course, I had to Google this to make sense of it, you know, for those of us that didn’t go to medical school,” said Napier.

Napier spent a week and a half in ICU, had several reconstructive surgeries, specialist appointments, and eventual rehab and recovery. Napier now lives with five titanium plates fused to his skull, an epilepsy diagnosis and continues to have no memory of this time. 

“It’s really foggy. I remember, but it’s just kind of in flashes. I remember wanting to put it behind me and get out of there,” said Napier. “It’s like the better part of a week, it just doesn’t exist, for me at least, it definitely existed, it definitely happened, I have no recollection of it.”

Despite having difficulty remembering this experience, Napier acknowledges the impact the Ornge pilots and paramedics made during his transport that day and on his life currently. 

“Obviously, they were integral to my recovery and my survival. The team at Ornge provided much more than emergency transportation; it provided me time. Enough time to undergo the surgery, begin recovery, and you know, more long-term time to build a career and start a family and be married,” said Napier. “Those were things that would’ve been taken away had they not stepped in to transport me and provide the services on board that were probably imperative to keeping me alive.”

Today, Jamie lives a relatively normal life, cognizant of the limitations of surviving a traumatic brain injury, as he continues to work in the media industry at the University of Toronto. He and his wife have also welcomed their first child together. 

We acknowledge and thank the Ornge pilots, paramedics and Operations Control Centre staff for understanding and exhibiting the importance of our mission, “we overcome time and distance when it matters most”. For Napier, transporting him to Sunnybrook in a timely, safe, and compassionate manner saved his life. 

“I don’t know how many people were involved, I don’t know what they looked like, but I just know what they gave me. My most sincere thanks because I wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for their stepping in,” said Napier.
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• Patients and Families