Mom’s message about her lost ‘sweet, sweet boy’, a decade after Strathroy-area blaze

Strathroy mother who lost her son in a house fire 10 years ago, urges people to be safe during Fire Prevention Month. CTV London’s Sean Irvine reports.

A Strathroy-area mother who lost her son in a fire a decade ago is speaking out.

Cindy Derbyshire wants to keep her son’s memory alive. Her pledge coincides with the end of Fire Prevention Week in Ontario.

She reflected on Quinn during an interview at the family’s new home, built on the site of the fire.

“I just miss him. We all just miss him,” she said.

It was ten years ago this week that Quinn died in a fast-moving fire at the family century home on Melbourne Road, a few kilometres southwest of Strathroy.

It broke out on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 4, 2015.

Cindy, upstairs at the time, heard a noise.

“So, I went downstairs and as I came into the kitchen, my husband Steve had opened the door, and he got like, pushed back.”

A 911 call was placed as working smoke alarms sounded.

“The house was engulfed in smoke. That is the speed of what happened,” Cindy recalled with emotion.

As her husband got her son Clayton out, she went upstairs to get her sons, Jack and Quinn.

What happened next can only be described as unimaginable.

“I picked up Jack and just tossed him out on the porch, and I had Quinn, and he said ‘Mom!’ and I turned and let go of his hand, and I couldn’t, he was gone. I don’t know. I don’t know where he went.”

Cindy turned and went after Quinn. But the smoke formed a wall, and that is when she felt a force unlike any other she’d known before.

“It was like there was a big, big hand in front of my face that stopped me and said, ‘You are going to die!’” Cindy recalled.

As she pulled back from the flames, it is believed Quinn was overcome.

“I wholeheartedly believe he had gone back in to look for our cat.”

Although in unimaginable pain and grief in the days after the fire, Cindy recalls the support of her community.

From Quinn’s funeral to food and financial donations, neighbours stepped up.

“How do I how do you express a thank you to a community that is so supportive in such a tragedy?”

In Quinn’s name, the family has given back to their community over the past decade, establishing a school award and free hockey program.

“It is to support up to three families that cannot afford hockey in Strathroy,” Cindy said.

The family also remembers Quinn, in many ways, in the home they rebuilt after the fire. Examples include an image of him in a kitchen window to a puck bearing his name built into the brick.

While the home is relatively new, Cindy knows its fire systems couldn’t stop an unpredictable blaze like the one that took Quinn.

Still, as Fire Safety Week concludes in Ontario, she is hopeful her son’s story will encourage others to check their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.

“If that even helps a few people, that would be great.”

But what Cindy believes is Quinn’s true legacy goes beyond the fire.

She wants people to remember the essence of her son as a quiet young man with a dry sense of humour and a gift for compassion.

“I know it sounds corny, but absolute kindness. Be kind like Quinn! Because he was absolutely a sweet, sweet boy.”