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Joe MacDonald had seen enough. It was February 5, 2014 and the chief of the Barney’s River, N.S., volunteer fire department had spent the better part of a cold, grey-skied afternoon at an accident scene on Highway 104. Prying the body of a 17-year-old kid from the twisted wreck of a minivan.

Christopher Karam graduated from high school five days before the crash. He worked at a Swiss Chalet, had a girlfriend, a twin brother, a mom and a dad and was heading to Newfoundland’s Memorial University in the fall to study engineering.

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Then he hit a tractor-trailer head-on, and now he was dead.

Killed on a 38-km stretch of single-lane highway between Sutherland’s River and Antigonish that winds through scenery locals refer to as God’s country, with green hills rolling for miles, on to the sea. But all MacDonald ever sees when he drives the road on his way to work are the bodies.

Fourteen since 2009, a parade of dead faces and devastating highway scenes that he carries around in his head and that compelled him to come home, on that February day in 2014, and write to Nova Scotia premier, Stephen McNeil.