ELLERSLIE, P.E.I. — Brenda MacCaull doesn't remember the airbags going off.
The Ellerslie woman also doesn't remember feeling any pain following the car accident, but she'd soon learn she had 10 broken ribs and had three fractures in her sternum.
"Now that I think about it, my glasses were a mess," she said. "(I've since) had to take them in and have new lenses put in."
Needless to say, her 85th birthday was going to be a little different later that month.
She and her husband, Roy, were in a hit-and-run car accident in Inverness on June 9. Their vehicle was rear-ended by another driver, causing it to flip and land upside-down in a nearby property's driveway. The driver fled the scene.
They both survived, and luckily there were people on the property to help them out of the vehicle.
Brenda's recovery was challenging at first, but shehas been attending physio appointments and has been seeing progress, she said.
"It's going to take a while," she said. "You can only do so much."
But the accident wasn't the only reason her birthday was different. As a way to help cheer her up, her daughter, Sandra, put out a request for people to send "happy birthday" and "get well" cards to encourage her, as she loves to hear from the many people she's met over the years and to take a stroll down memory lane.
The Guardian ran an article on the request in mid-June to help spread the word and surprise Brenda. In the end, both the mother and her daughter ended up being surprised by how many letters were sent.
"I have so close to 500 it would scare you," Brenda said. "And some of them I have to answer."
What surprised her more is how many came from people she's never met, which may be because the article was shared widely across social media. She received cards from strangers across Canada's provinces and territories, as well as from across the United States, she said.
"Facebook really travels, doesn't it?"
The Guardian even received an email from a woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which was forwarded to Brenda.
"While reading newspaper articles from around the world to dust off my English I read about what happened to you," the email read. "I wish you a speedy recovery from the other side of the world."
MacCaull bought a carrying bag specifically to store her cards in, and even though she had limited movement early on in her recovery, she was able to make a hobby of cutting the stamps off of each letter to give to her sister-in-law.
"So, it gave me something to do," she said.
Overall, she's feeling very lucky. She is especially thankful for first responders and the Prince County Hospital staff, as well as Mark Arsenault, John Phillips and Jessie Adams for their help at the scene of the accident.
The driver who rear-ended the MacCaull's vehicle is scheduled to appear in court later this month, a representative with Summerside Provincial Court said.
Daniel Brown is a local journalism initiative reporter, a position funded by the federal government.
