We are the Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal family benefit society.

If you are: male, 18 or over, and a practising Catholic in the eyes of the Holy See you are eligible.

For more information call: Brian MacDonald at 392-0964 or any other Knight.

Guardian Angels: A Knight's Story

For those who still don’t believe in guardian angels, I have a true story that happened recently to me and two fellow Knights of Columbus.

On the night of Sunday, April 28, 2002 after assisting at a 3rd Degree ceremony in the Ottawa Valley community of Arnprior, we embarked on our three-hour drive back to Trenton. In horrible weather battling a combination of wet snow, rain and high winds, we drove down two-lane highways south towards the city of Kingston, and then west on highway 401 home to Trenton.

About an hour out, after passing through the town of Smith's Falls, our driver suddenly realized to his horror that his car was out of gas. The night was pitch black and it was raining very hard when we drifted to a stop. As we were well out in the countryside in the middle of the Sunday evening hours, there was not a car in sight.

We had been sitting there for about five minutes when headlights appeared to our rear. When the car got close enough Kevin, our driver, opened the driver’s door just enough to wave frantically. Lo and behold, the car stopped about 100 feet in front of our position. Kevin ran up to the car where he found the help our guardian angel sent, a woman.

After Kevin explained our situation, she told us that her husband was somewhere behind her driving his friend home using the friend’s pickup truck, since he had had too much to drink at a party the two men had attended. She felt certain that her husband could get us some gasoline.

With that she turned her car around and drove back up the highway towards Smith's Falls.

About ten minutes later she, her husband, their friend and the pickup truck were back carrying a red gas can containing about five gallons of gasoline. After pouring the precious fluid into our tank and not accepting more than $10, they drove off.

And the guardian angel?

As I said, the woman who stopped was going to meet her husband because he was driving a friend home in his friend’s pickup truck after he had too much to drink at a party. She stopped to help us only because she missed her turn-off to her home in Athens in the pitch-black night and had to turn around anyway. The unnamed friend being driven home just happened to have a nearly-full can of gas in the back of his pickup truck. We had intended to stop at the Tim Horton’s restaurant in Smith's Falls but because of the late hour had decided not to. And, finally, this was not the route we had initially intended to use to get home!

Our helper's husband, too, is a Knight of Columbus.

Brian McDonald, Knight