A Sturgeon County mother is trying to get answers, after her 9-year-old son was left alone on a school bus for several hours earlier this week, after falling asleep on his way to school.

It was a normal morning for Colby Fennell, who - like hundreds of his classmates at Namao School - had taken the bus on Monday, but on that morning, Colby fell asleep during the trip.

Two hours later, Colby woke up, alone, inside the bus that was parked in an area he didn’t recognize.

With temperatures outside sinking to -8 degrees Celsius that day, he told CTV News his feet started getting cold very quickly.

“I just kind of lifted them up, and put them on the seat and rested my knees on the seat so they weren’t on the bus floor,” Colby said.

Colby’s mother, Diane Kimmy, said she was told the bus driver parked at her own home in Cardiff, located eight kilometres away.

Kimmy told CTV News she’s angry her son was somehow forgotten.

“If I did that to him, left him outside all day, I would be in jail,” Kimmy said – saying she was thankful she had made Colby wear a winter coat that morning, and that he had his lunch with him.

However, Kimmy said her son was too embarrassed to leave the bus, even when he said he thought he saw the bus driver leave in another vehicle.

At one point, he needed to use a washroom.

“He loves popcorn, so his dad packed him popcorn in a Tupperware container, which he spilled out into his backpack and he used it to urinate in,” Kimmy said.

The mother also said the school called her to tell her Colby wasn’t in class, but later checked in again with another phone call.

“I said to them ‘I put him on the bus, could you check again?’ And then they called back about 5 minutes later and said ‘He’s here, don’t worry’,” Kimmy said.

The principal of Namao School said the incident was under review.

“So we are reviewing the whole process, the bus process, and the absentee process and we’ll take that information and go forward,” Principal Vernice Pollmann said. “We also do not want this to happen again.”

Pollmann said many questions surrounding what happened can’t be answered at this time, as the incident is under review.

“I personally have apologized, and so has our transportation department, we are going forward from there, we certainly do not want this to occur again as well,” Pollmann said.

The principal said she was telling other parents what happened in a letter sent home Wednesday.

As for Colby, Kimmy said her son doesn’t want to take the bus again – and there’s concern he might have been traumatized by the experience, so she told CTV News she wasn’t sure if her son would return to the school.

With files from David Ewasuk