Their first bottle drive was to help pay for travel to Europe. Seven months later, they’ve been sorting bottles again – this time to cover legal fees.
Children of Pender Harbour Secondary School and their parents are seeking legal advice because they have yet to be reimbursed for educational trips cancelled due to COVID-19 – trips they paid extra to insure.
“We’ve changed from bottle driving for funds to send these kids off for trips [to] sorting bottles and cans to develop a legal fund,” said Tracey McClelland, one of the affected parents.
School District No. 46 (SD46) cancelled all overseas travel in early March as COVID-19 cases surged globally, affecting 62 families on the Sunshine Coast who had organized educational trips to Europe through travel company Explorica. Thousands of families across Canada have been affected, according to the tour operator.
“Most students self-funded their trips out of necessity,” McClelland told Coast Reporter, adding that some families who were planning on sending more than one child have lost up to $15,000.
McClelland’s daughter, Sarah Gooldrup, participated in fundraisers including bottle drives, car washes and a raffle and quiz night to afford her $4,785 trip to Italy and Greece with about 25 other students and parents. Those efforts generated $900 for her travel. She worked full-time at Tim Hortons last summer to cover the rest.
After the cancellation, the school district said it couldn’t act on behalf of the families because the policies are in the travellers’ names. The district advised them to seek independent legal advice to answer questions about their insurance rights, forcing families to start fundraising again.
After learning she would have to return to sorting bottles to raise money for legal fees, Gooldrup was “a little irritated” at first, but was also “amazed it had got to that point.” About 10 children ended up back on sorting duty. “We just want to do our part to help,” she said.
As with other families, Gooldrup purchased insurance through Explorica, which resold policies brokered through Trip Mate, with Arch Canada and Old Republic Insurance Company of Canada as underwriters.
An apparent dispute between Explorica and the underwriters is causing a logjam. At least two class action lawsuits were announced in October, including one on Oct. 20 by legal firm Curtis Dawe, which is launching a proposed class action against Explorica and the underwriters that would apply to all affected Canadian travellers.
Legal advice will help families prepare for what appears to be a litigious road ahead, said McClelland. “We’re basically having to take a crash course in class actions, contract writing and insurance limitations.”
Letters to the insurers, insurance regulators and other authorities, meanwhile, haven’t produced concrete results, said McClelland.
The office of Liberal MP Patrick Weiler, representing West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, described the issue as a provincial matter after parents sought political advocacy. “The MP cannot intervene,” said the Oct. 29 letter, before recommending the group contact their MLA instead.
“If there was a government push of some kind, or someone who could do something to advocate for these kids, it would be helpful and encouraging for them to see that there is [someone] out there looking out for them,” McClelland said, “because right now it really feels like there’s nothing.”
So far, the only help for the Pender Harbour Secondary students has come from the community.
Another Pender Harbour group that had been collecting refundable items for a separate fundraiser offered the cans and bottles to the families. “They’re troopers. Every kid that was available came,” said McClelland. Over two weekends of sorting they raised about $1,600.
Gooldrup, who graduates this year and hopes to study criminology at Vancouver Island University and the Justice Institute of B.C., said if the money she’s owed is returned, “it would 100 per cent” be used to cover tuition or housing.
And while she wasn’t able to go on what she hoped would be an education trip of a lifetime, she has learned a lesson from the debacle. When it comes to insurance, she said, “I’m not as trustful.”
