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WINNIPEG -- If Shellan Proden wants to be with her son while he recovers from his severe and shocking beating in Australia, she’ll have a free ride.
A Calgary-based travel agency has offered to cover the cost - possibly about $2,500 - of a return flight for the Winnipeg Beach woman to Australia, so she can visit wheelchair-bound Heath Proden following his anticipated surgery on his skull.
“I just thought it’s the right thing to do,” Jason Webb, a former resident of Perth, Australia and owner of Downunder Travel, said from Calgary.
“It’s partly to do with being Australian and wanting to help her, and partly because I’m in a position that I can help. And I’m a parent - I know what it would be like. You just wouldn’t want to be on the other side of the world if your kid is lying in a hospital, beaten up for no reason. It’s shocking.”
Webb called Shellan Proden at her home after being “horrified” by a radio news report about the assault, in which the 35-year-old disabled Manitoba man was beaten - allegedly by two boys, aged 16 and 15 - with their fists and with metal parts from his wheelchair at a train station near Sydney on Tuesday night.
She told him she’ll consider the offer, said Webb.
“She’s thinking about whether she can get down there or not, and all that sort of stuff. Hopefully she does,” said Webb, who has lived in Canada for the past 14 years.
“It’s been a whirlwind couple of days for her.” Shellan Proden didn’t return calls for comment.
The cost of the trip is uncertain, Webb said, adding it could approach $2,500 - depending on what’s included.
“I have some calls in to some people to see if we can build on that,” he said, adding he wants “to try to help a little bit,” as well as show his homeland in a more positive light.
“This isn’t the Australia that I know,” he said of the train station assault. “Australians aren’t all bad people. There are some really good ones, too.” ross.romaniuk@sunmedia.ca