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“He said, ‘Mom, I can die in a plane, I can die in a car, I can die walking out onto the street. I don’t want to live in fear. I want to enjoy life to the fullest. Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll be safe. I won’t be crazy.'”

The police don’t believe Bourdon, 21, was being “crazy” when his bike, the one he bought just three weeks ago, veered into an oncoming tractor-trailer on a remote stretch of Highway 113 on New Brunswick’s north shore. Bourdon, who was riding what was described as a “racing bike,” died instantly between Lemaque, N.B., and Shippagan. He slammed head-on into the transport truck just after noon Atlantic time.

Police believe a strong gust of wind, estimated at more than 70 km/h, knocked Bourdon off-course to the other side of the road.

The accident left a small town in shock, a family in mourning and a mother, who was Bourdon’s “guiding light” throughout his life, screaming for her lost son. “He was my only child,” Boucher wailed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. He was everything to me. I tried to prevent him from doing this. I tried to stop him.”

Boucher, a teller at National Bank for 46 years, invested everything she had in Bourdon. Her time. Her money. Her vacations. Her life. “She was his adviser, his mom, his friend,” Bourdon’s agent, Kent Hughes, said. “She was . . . the guiding light in his life.”

When Bourdon was young, Boucher said, she never missed a game, not even a practice. “But he left home when he was 16 and I couldn’t see him as much. That was so hard on me. It was hard to be away from him,” Boucher said. “But every vacation I had — two weeks in the fall, one week after Christmas — I went to go watch him play. It cost me a lot of money but it was worth it. He was worth it. I always knew in my heart he would be a great hockey player. And he was just about to become a great hockey player. It was in him.”