Man shocked to find strangers he saved 30 years ago are familiar faces

It took three decades for a Yarmouth County man to connect the dots and realize a couple he's known for years are the same people he rescued from a snowy Nova Scotia highway.

Thirty years ago, Glen Surette was driving along Highway 101 between Meteghan and Salmon River in southwestern Nova Scotia and noticed a set of tire tracks leading off the road.

"I kept going and then it was playing on my mind that they would have been fresh or they would have been covered," Surette told CBC's Maritime Noon.

"So, I turned back and went back and then I followed the tracks and eventually found a van in the ditch."

There, he found Anita and Jerry Goodwin. Neither was seriously injured, but Jerry had mobility issues and that combined with the snowstorm made it impossible for the pair to climb the steep embankment and flag down help.

"We were in pretty good shape, but very cold. I remember seeing the car roll by my car and I cursed the car it didn't stop," said Anita.

'We would have froze to death'

"I remember getting almost up the hill and I saw this man with black hair and he came down and rescued me."

Surette managed to get the pair up the embankment and into his car. Since the Goodwins weren't injured, he took them home.

Anita has no doubt Surette saved the couple's lives that day.

"I think we would have froze to death," she said. "There was no cars anywhere."

A blast from the past

Today, Surette works as the maintenance director at Villa St. Joseph-du-Lac, a long-term care facility in Dayton, N.S., about four kilometres north of Yarmouth. The Goodwins are residents there.

Surette said it never clicked that it was them until two weekends ago. He and his wife were out for a Sunday drive and passed by the house where he dropped off the Goodwins 30 years ago.

"And just like that, I said, 'Holy smokes! I think, I think they're living … at the Villa,'" said Surette.

He can't say for sure how it all came together for him, but he said Jerry looks a lot like he did in the 1980s.

'Do you remember me?'

At around the same time, Anita noticed Surette's once black, now partially grey, hair and the pieces began to fall into place for her as well.

"I met him in the hallway and I asked him, 'Do you know me? Do you remember me?'" said Anita.

Surette called the reunion "pretty amazing."

"You'd never think you'd ever meet the people again," he said. "It's just something that happened."