“My heart breaks every morning when I wake up and remember (she) is no longer with us.”

On Monday, the families of the victims of the August 2014 crash that killed two people and left one severely injured told the court how their lives have been forever changed since that tragic accident.

The crash claimed the lives of a 15-year-old student of Vanier Catholic Secondary School, and 20-year-old Brendan Kinney, a graduate of Porter Creek Secondary School.

Derrick Gibbons, 18 at the time, was severely injured and had to be flown to Vancouver for care.

The driver was sentenced Monday.

For the first time, the driver – whose name cannot be published because of her age – also spoke, expressing remorse.

The family of the 15-year-old teenage girl who died spoke first.

“She touched the lives of people all over this country, and a few seconds dictated her fate,” her father said.

Hours before she died, she held her father’s hands on a drive from the airport before the crash.

She kissed both her parents, saying she loved them.

“I love you,” her father said in tears, before leaving the stand.

The next victim impact statement read was prepared by Gibbons’ family.

Gibbons had been a gifted student, a star athlete, his family said.

He had been accepted into the Yukon Native Teacher Program.

That was before the accident.

His family was in Vancouver when they learned their son was in the crash.

They were waiting to know if Gibbons was stable enough to survive the medevac flight to Vancouver.

“Nothing could have prepared us for how he looked,” his mother said.

His body was covered with tubes and he was breathing on a ventilator when he arrived in Vancouver.

As he was starting to recover, he was struck by a brain aneurism a week after the accident and had to undergo another emergency surgery.

“For months, he thought it was a bad dream, and if he kicked his leg hard enough, he would wake up,” the family said.

His mother spoke about the difficult months living between Whitehorse and Vancouver, as the family has three other children in the territory.

She thanked the community for their support during that time.

She spoke about how the accident had changed his son.

“He stumbles a lot, his balance is not the same,” she said.

Gibbons now gets aggressive and impatient with his sibling, whose quirks he had always been used to, she told the court.

He was supposed to start university but now struggles to work.

Gibbons himself spoke.

The young man talked about the 30 scars he lives with, a painful reminder of the accident, and his ongoing back pain.

“I’m barely able to get both feet off the ground,” he said.

“Cold water burns like acid on my legs, I can’t do sports.”

Gibbons sustained permanent brain damage from the accident.

“I no longer have dreams,” he told the court.

“I will be forever known as that guy from the really bad accident.

“I miss my friends,” he said before slowly walking back to the public gallery.

Kinney’s mother, Linda Powers, spoke last.

She put a portrait of her son on the chair near the Crown prosecutor, so the audience could see it.

The pain of losing her son being so hard to explain in words, she opted to tell the court who her son was.

A “very curious guy” from a young age, she said.

He was an avid reader, especially of Second World War fighter planes and Winston Churchill novels, sometimes reading in the bathtub.

She recalled the time they went to the animal shelter to get a cat.

He could have chosen any happy cat there, but he chose the one that was kept separate because she was so afraid of other cats.

When asked why he chose that one, Kinney told his mother she was the one who needed him the most.

“I could not have been more proud of my son in that moment,” Powers said.

The last two months of his life, Brendan talked about travelling.

“He would have become a history prof, or a great writer,” his mother told the court.

She talked about Brendan’s relationship with his sister.

“He loved her more than anything in the world.”

They would spend hours playing on the trampoline together, her neighbour commenting on how sweet he was to her.

He would always make plans to hang out with his sister, even after he had left the house.

“I always talked about how they would have each other,” Powers said.

She talked about her own relationship with him.

“He was an old soul, wise beyond his years,” she said.

They had a special connection, she stressed.

“It was that look from across the room, a special tightness when we hugged.”

She talked about the RCMP showing up to her doorstep at 4 a.m.

She talked about seeing her son’s body wrapped in a plastic bag, with only a hand out so she could hold him.

“What’s left now is a cat who meows loudly in the middle of the night, looking for him,” she said.

“What’s left is my daughter who has lost her only sibling, her best friend, her guardian.”

She is now scared to drive, withdrawn socially, and often misses work.

People are afraid to approach her because they don’t know what to do, she said.

“What’s left is a mom who wakes up each morning and for a brief second believes everything is OK.”

“I know he is standing with us today, giving us courage to speak,” Powers said. “I hope today will bring some healing to our broken hearts.”

All the families spoke about the fact they hadn’t heard from the offender since the accident.

Many said they wished the driver had contacted them: a letter, an email, a call, anything.

Defence lawyer Bob Aloneissi told the court his client had to abide by a no-contact order.

Contacting any of the victims’ families would have resulted in her being charged with breaching her bail conditions, he said.

Since the first day, she wanted to express how sorry she was, he added.

Aloneissi read a statement the driver had prepared.

Victim impact statements were read before sentencing.

“Words can’t express how sorry I am,” the driver said in her prepared statement.

“I would give anything to change what happened.”

There isn’t a day she doesn’t think about them. In the statement, she said she kept pictures of her friends next to her bed.

“I’ve been told it gets better, but it gets worse.”

Her lawyer told the court that everyday, she has to go through that intersection.

“Most days, I feel like I’m reliving it,” she said.

She can’t get much sleep either.

The teenager expressed how she thinks she’s become a “large burden” to her parents, who now have to pay financially for her mistake.

“It should have been me.”

“I will always love them so much, and never forget them.”