'I think about her everyday,' Peter Hildebrand says about his late wife, Dereen.

'It's like having a stone in your side. It never goes away,' he says of the pain that lingers with him daily.

This is why he and his family chose not to attend last month's court proceedings that investigated the causes of the January 2004 highway collision that took Dereen's life at the age of 51.

'I didn't want to go. It would just bring up old memories and bad feelings,' he said in an interview today.

'I'm trying to get over this, you know, and move on.'

He has never seen Martin Biondelli, the 51-year-old Haines Junction mechanic whose trailer skidded into Dereen's lane and crashed into the front of her minivan. The tragedy took place in the slippery Rabbit's Foot Canyon section of the Alaska Highway.

Peter says he knows nothing about the man, beyond what he's read in the paper and heard on the news.

That's how he heard about about last Friday's sentence that gave Biondelli a $1,000-fine and six months' probation with strict restrictions on driving.

'In my opinion, it's a pretty light sentence,' says Peter. 'This person was totally ... careless.'

According to Peter the sentence is very lenient and also inappropriate.

'It's not much of a deterrent from doing it again,' he says.

The judge in the case, deputy judge Dennis Overend, said Biondelli had suffered as a result of the fatal accident. He required counselling to deal with the trauma.

'His body language in court tells me that he is still suffering,' said Overend, visiting from British Columbia.

Peter is not convinced of Biondelli's remorse, however.

'He never apologized,' he says. 'Maybe he put on a remorseful act for the judge. He's never been in touch with us whatsoever.'

Peter says Biondelli may have been advised by his lawyer not to contact the Hildebrand family.

Either way, the family has heard nothing from Biondelli.

At this point, Peter is not pursuing a civil suit. It's a time-consuming process with a heavy financial cost and a high emotional price, he says.

Reliving the painful memory of the accident brings back 'hard feelings' he says.

'Something like that, it just doesn't go away,' Peter says.

To work through the emotions he felt in the aftermath of the accident, Steve Slade, a longtime friend of the Hildebrand family, wrote a song for Dereen.

'As a performing artist and as a writer, it's how you deal with grief, how you expatiate those feelings,' Slade said in an interview today.

He was on tour in the South when the collision occurred late on the icy afternoon of Jan. 23, 2004.

Biondelli's trailer hitch broke. His trailer, a car dolly loaded with a Pathfinder, jackknifed into the northbound lane. The road conditions were extremely slippery and the trailer brakes were not attached.

Biondelli's trailer crashed into Dereen's minivan and two other cars slid in behind her.

She died at the scene of the accident.

Slade flew back to Whitehorse from Calgary in the wake of the collision to attend the funeral. The Hildebrand family asked him to play a few songs that day.

Afterward, Slade continued on in his tour. One day, a song came into his mind.

Driving between Revelstoke and Kamloops, B.C., he wrote A Simple Song of Sorrow dedicated to Dereen.

'Myself, and a lot of people, miss her,' he says.

Unassuming with quiet influence, Slade says Dereen made a difference. She left a 'wonderful legacy' behind through her work in the community, he says.

Well-known for her window paintings in the downtown core over Christmas, she was also a co-founder of the Arts in the Park summer program.

At this year's closing concert last Friday afternoon, Slade sang A Simple Song of Sorrow, as he did last summer as well.

The soft folk song blends piano with acoustic guitar and two-voice harmony.

One verse of Slade's song says, 'And If I could sing a simple song of sorrow, I would write your name on every window pane, And I'd stand there and watch you smiling at me, And I'd believe that you were here with me again.'

The song speaks to the common human experience of loss, Slade says, though it was written for Dereen.

'I don't want people to forget her,' he says.